September 10th, 2009 / 11:46 pm
 Snippets
—

God, speaking of great criticism, the latest issue of The Quarterly Conversation devotes a good deal of its space (and an editorial response) to a JC Hallman essay on criticism. Enjoy.

6 Comments

  1. September 11th, 2009 / 3:13 pm Molly Gaudry—
  2. September 11th, 2009 / 11:13 am Molly Gaudry—
  3. September 11th, 2009 / 3:50 pm Ryan Call—

      thanks molly for the links, i had never read anything by hallman before, but liked this essay a lot.

  4. September 11th, 2009 / 11:50 am Ryan Call—

      thanks molly for the links, i had never read anything by hallman before, but liked this essay a lot.

  5. September 11th, 2009 / 6:40 pm panoptican—

      So writing about writing is also like dancing about architecture?

      I think “writing” in response to “writing” is generally going to elicit a much more interesting essay than if you were to “write about” “writing” but I doubt that you would be able to deduce from such a creatively written response whether the book accomplishes some arbitrary goals or if you should buy it. You may become interested in the author of such criticism and by virtue of your interest in them you might become interested in the focus of their essay. Maybe. Which is to say, I don’t believe that the goal of literary criticism in its entirety should be to establish goal accomplishability or buyability, necessarily, but literary criticism that does serve that function is dominant for a reason. It’s easier to read an essay about a book then it is to read the book and decide for yourself.

      I think most literature makes fairly clear the goals entailed by the written pursuit and thus it is only fair for one to evaluate a piece of literature on those grounds. Probably though, only those qualified should be enlisted in literary criticism and then maybe we wouldn’t need to worry about critics “missing the point.”

  6. September 11th, 2009 / 2:40 pm panoptican—

      So writing about writing is also like dancing about architecture?

      I think “writing” in response to “writing” is generally going to elicit a much more interesting essay than if you were to “write about” “writing” but I doubt that you would be able to deduce from such a creatively written response whether the book accomplishes some arbitrary goals or if you should buy it. You may become interested in the author of such criticism and by virtue of your interest in them you might become interested in the focus of their essay. Maybe. Which is to say, I don’t believe that the goal of literary criticism in its entirety should be to establish goal accomplishability or buyability, necessarily, but literary criticism that does serve that function is dominant for a reason. It’s easier to read an essay about a book then it is to read the book and decide for yourself.

      I think most literature makes fairly clear the goals entailed by the written pursuit and thus it is only fair for one to evaluate a piece of literature on those grounds. Probably though, only those qualified should be enlisted in literary criticism and then maybe we wouldn’t need to worry about critics “missing the point.”