March 7th, 2011 / 4:19 pm
Snippets
Snippets
Matthew Simmons—
Charles Baxter on “Owl Criticism”: “To say that something is ‘boring’ is not a statement about a book, although the speaker may think that it is; it’s a statement about the reader’s poverty of equipment.” (That’s the pithiest line. Many less pithy, more fiercely argued and substantial lines are included in the essay, as well.)
If I review this review of reviews, then who will review my review of this review of reviews?
I thought this essay was great.
If someone unpacked a book’s verbal economies and thematic gestures, and in so doing found them labored, tedious, and cliched, and all fruitlessly so, and concluded that the book was “boring”, would that person be a less owlish owl?
That essay had a Reviewer in it, and the essayist doesn’t like Reviewers.
Good essay and food for thought. Baxter’s comment on books that the “jury has decided on” makes sense. Why knock ’em? I have been bored by some classics, and find the criticism and hoopla far more interesting than the dry texts, yet I would not bother mounting arguments against them. That being said, well written negative criticism is much harder to write…and sets the critic up to be exposed if the review is not sharp.
Quick help me dig myself out of this hole!
For Athena’s sake, use your beak and talons and tunnel upward, wise and mighty Raptor!
I can live with that moniker.
“Raptor, in hole, with Moniker.”
I’d paint that.
It would be an abstract painting, of course. It would have a concrete companion piece, too.
“Raptor, in hole, with Monocle.”
Paint it!
Look how deep I’ve gotten!