O Melhor Amigo

I find the very idea that one should “respect” the authors of books by publishing only positive reviews to be absurd. I think that, rather, the exact opposite must be true: real respect means having balls enough to publish the unvarnished results of a close reading. No adult author writes for praise alone. Surely any serious writer writes because he has an urgent message to impart, one that he hopes will be of some use to the reader. I don’t know the origin of the idea that writers are such delicate creatures, barely able to withstand public scrutiny of their genius, but it seems ever-present.

The respectful critic, then, is the critic who, to borrow Julavits’s phrase, “reads hard.” He brings the results of his researches, whatever they may be, to interested readers who can then take his views and use them to begin compiling their own. If we accept that the making of meaning is a collaborative process between artist and audience, then the value of honest criticism becomes immediately apparent. Dialogue is what counts: praise or blame are similarly irrelevant.

It’s possible that the myth of the lone genius on his crag is so romantic that readers, authors, and critics can’t help but subscribe to it, at least somewhat. (I don’t care for it a bit myself, and subscribe instead to the Edward Lear view: “ ‘You earnest Sage!’ aloud they cried, ‘your book you’ve read enough in!/We wish to chop you into bits to mix you into Stuffin’!’ ”) That would help explain why we keep having this argument about the correct role of criticism: if authors were sages, then it really would behoove the rest of us to just pipe down and accept their words from on high. Fortunately, they’re no such thing.