I just came across "The case for critiquing the critics" by Jane Sullivan, published in The Age, May 21, 2010, and liked the following - which I'm republishing as much for my future benefit as anyone else's.
The advice is aimed at book reviewers but applies to any other form of criticism you care to mention.
"John Updike. In 1975, writing about his reviewing experience, he included this rigorous but generous advice: 'Do not accept for review a book you are predisposed to dislike, or committed by friendship to like. Do not imagine yourself a caretaker of any tradition, an enf
orcer of any party standards, a warrior in any ideological battle, a corrections officer of any kind."'Never, never . . . try to put the author 'in his place', making of him a pawn in a contest with other reviewers. Review the book, not the reputation. Submit to whatever spell, weak or strong, is being cast. Better to praise and share than blame and ban.
"The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys of reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.'"
2 comments:
Sound advice. Thanks for sharing.
I read this a while ago: it's spot on in every respect. In any case to be waspish you have to be so much more brilliant than most of us are, it's hardly worth the risk.
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