There's a lot of talk in various web locations about the nature of criticism, mostly written by people who engage in it for a living. I thought I'd take a whack at it from the point of view of someone who does a small amount of it as a hobby (see: Amazon reviews), but who most often relates to criticism as a consumer of it.
Here's a critic's take on some of the talk about criticism lately. This whole discussion has made me think about why I like to read good criticism. (Note that to my way of thinking, "good criticism" is not necessarily "criticism I agree with".) It also started me thinking about what criticism really is, and what it's not.
Here's a critic's take on some of the talk about criticism lately. This whole discussion has made me think about why I like to read good criticism. (Note that to my way of thinking, "good criticism" is not necessarily "criticism I agree with".) It also started me thinking about what criticism really is, and what it's not.
I'll start with what it's not.
Criticism is not an objective overview of a piece of work (or a body of work). It is not sociology or psychology, and it's not intended to answer the question "why do people react to X in the way they do?" The question of why something is popular (or not), and what, if any, relationship that popularity has to the intrinsic quality of that something is not something that critics need to address. A critic may address these topics, at least obliquely, in analyzing why she reacted to the something the way she did, but doing so is not the point of criticism.
Criticism is not an objective analysis of the quality of a piece of work. A good piece of criticism may address quality, or aspects of quality, if they matter to the response the critic had to the piece, but failure to do so does not necessarily doom the criticism to being worthless.
Criticism is not a hammer to beat other people up with. It's not a moral judgment. If a critic likes something that you don't like, the critic is not saying you are stupid for not seeing the value in the work. Likewise, if a critic hates something, that's not an indictment of the taste intelligence, or general human value of people who like it. This is true, even if part of why the critic doesn't like the work is because of genuine flaws.
As an example, many popular books are poorly written from a grammatical standpoint. That doesn't mean that they cannot also tell good stories, or portray vivid characters, or even be ungrammatical for an intentional purpose. And even if the writing is sloppy just because it is, that doesn't mean that people who like the work are illiterate bozos. It just means that they like the work despite (or who knows? maybe because of) its flaws.
Disagreeing about whether a piece of work is good, or enjoyable, or worth time spent consuming it -- this is never a moral disagreement.
Good criticism is a report from the experience that the critic had when engaging a piece of work. It grows out of a respect for the genre of the work, a belief that the things one writes about matter in some way, the willingness to think about and understand where one's reaction to that work came from, and the ability to communicate the reactions and the reasons for them in a way that works for the person consuming the criticism.
Some critics are annoying -- to me. Some are opaque. I don't know enough about the technical aspects of film making to get much out of a critique that focuses on those things. While such a piece of critical work may be very good, it doesn't engage me.
In thinking about the critics I enjoy the most, I recognize that they write at a level that is accessible to me.
I know a lot about food -- about how to cook it, about details of different culinary traditions, about recent and not-so-recent trends in food and culture. So food criticism that speaks to me is food criticism that addresses food in a fairly sophisticated manner. I don't want to know that the food tasted good, and I'm not terribly concerned with the ambience of the place where it was served. I want to know why it tasted good, how the layers of flavor interacted, where the work (the dish) fell short. I want to read the work of a person whose palate I trust, whose biases about food I understand, and who addresses the things about food that I care about, too. There is a lot of food criticism I enjoy, and a lot that I dislike. I'm uninterested in most of what Toby Young writes about food, because he cares a lot more about the non-food part of the restaurant experience than I do, and I don't want to spend 20 minutes reading a restaurant review in which one paragraph is devoted to saying that the food was fine.
I know a lot less about film, so criticism that spends a lot of time on the nuances of the cinematography will go right over my head. When I read film reviews, I want to know about the experience of watching the film, of what it made the writer think of. I'm less concerned with techniques (because I don't understand or notice them so much myself) and more concerned with how the film affected the writer.
What I want a critic to do is to engage a piece of work, be changed by it (or not), and then report on how the experience happened. What was it like for her to read the book, eat the food, watch the film? And why? What did it make her think about, and why did it matter (or not) to her?
The cultural objects we encounter change us, help form our view of the world and of ourselves. The best criticism recounts the critic's own encounter with something in a way that exposes what happened during that encounter. When I read good criticism, it doesn't matter if I agree with the writer about whether the thing being reviewed is "good" or "bad". It matters that the critic has engaged me, given me something to think about, exposed a piece of the truth about what can happen when a human being engages a piece of work.
I disagree with a lot of Roger Ebert's ratings of films (for one thing, I like a lot fewer films than he does), but I love to read him. I have little interest in much of what Linda Holmes writes about, but I'll read anything she writes about pretty much anything. And I don't have the exact same palate as Dominic Armato, but I trust him to be able to express what his experience of a meal was. Sometimes, one of these people will even inspire me to read a book, watch a film, watch a TV show, or seek out a restaurant I would otherwise have missed, but that's a bonus. I read them to expand my mind, to understand more about what the world is and can be. Finding a new favorite author is just a nice surprise.
Good criticism can be as life-changing or mind-blowing as good art, an interesting book, or a great meal.
Criticism is not an objective overview of a piece of work (or a body of work). It is not sociology or psychology, and it's not intended to answer the question "why do people react to X in the way they do?" The question of why something is popular (or not), and what, if any, relationship that popularity has to the intrinsic quality of that something is not something that critics need to address. A critic may address these topics, at least obliquely, in analyzing why she reacted to the something the way she did, but doing so is not the point of criticism.
Criticism is not an objective analysis of the quality of a piece of work. A good piece of criticism may address quality, or aspects of quality, if they matter to the response the critic had to the piece, but failure to do so does not necessarily doom the criticism to being worthless.
Criticism is not a hammer to beat other people up with. It's not a moral judgment. If a critic likes something that you don't like, the critic is not saying you are stupid for not seeing the value in the work. Likewise, if a critic hates something, that's not an indictment of the taste intelligence, or general human value of people who like it. This is true, even if part of why the critic doesn't like the work is because of genuine flaws.
As an example, many popular books are poorly written from a grammatical standpoint. That doesn't mean that they cannot also tell good stories, or portray vivid characters, or even be ungrammatical for an intentional purpose. And even if the writing is sloppy just because it is, that doesn't mean that people who like the work are illiterate bozos. It just means that they like the work despite (or who knows? maybe because of) its flaws.
Disagreeing about whether a piece of work is good, or enjoyable, or worth time spent consuming it -- this is never a moral disagreement.
Good criticism is a report from the experience that the critic had when engaging a piece of work. It grows out of a respect for the genre of the work, a belief that the things one writes about matter in some way, the willingness to think about and understand where one's reaction to that work came from, and the ability to communicate the reactions and the reasons for them in a way that works for the person consuming the criticism.
Some critics are annoying -- to me. Some are opaque. I don't know enough about the technical aspects of film making to get much out of a critique that focuses on those things. While such a piece of critical work may be very good, it doesn't engage me.
In thinking about the critics I enjoy the most, I recognize that they write at a level that is accessible to me.
I know a lot about food -- about how to cook it, about details of different culinary traditions, about recent and not-so-recent trends in food and culture. So food criticism that speaks to me is food criticism that addresses food in a fairly sophisticated manner. I don't want to know that the food tasted good, and I'm not terribly concerned with the ambience of the place where it was served. I want to know why it tasted good, how the layers of flavor interacted, where the work (the dish) fell short. I want to read the work of a person whose palate I trust, whose biases about food I understand, and who addresses the things about food that I care about, too. There is a lot of food criticism I enjoy, and a lot that I dislike. I'm uninterested in most of what Toby Young writes about food, because he cares a lot more about the non-food part of the restaurant experience than I do, and I don't want to spend 20 minutes reading a restaurant review in which one paragraph is devoted to saying that the food was fine.
I know a lot less about film, so criticism that spends a lot of time on the nuances of the cinematography will go right over my head. When I read film reviews, I want to know about the experience of watching the film, of what it made the writer think of. I'm less concerned with techniques (because I don't understand or notice them so much myself) and more concerned with how the film affected the writer.
What I want a critic to do is to engage a piece of work, be changed by it (or not), and then report on how the experience happened. What was it like for her to read the book, eat the food, watch the film? And why? What did it make her think about, and why did it matter (or not) to her?
The cultural objects we encounter change us, help form our view of the world and of ourselves. The best criticism recounts the critic's own encounter with something in a way that exposes what happened during that encounter. When I read good criticism, it doesn't matter if I agree with the writer about whether the thing being reviewed is "good" or "bad". It matters that the critic has engaged me, given me something to think about, exposed a piece of the truth about what can happen when a human being engages a piece of work.
I disagree with a lot of Roger Ebert's ratings of films (for one thing, I like a lot fewer films than he does), but I love to read him. I have little interest in much of what Linda Holmes writes about, but I'll read anything she writes about pretty much anything. And I don't have the exact same palate as Dominic Armato, but I trust him to be able to express what his experience of a meal was. Sometimes, one of these people will even inspire me to read a book, watch a film, watch a TV show, or seek out a restaurant I would otherwise have missed, but that's a bonus. I read them to expand my mind, to understand more about what the world is and can be. Finding a new favorite author is just a nice surprise.
Good criticism can be as life-changing or mind-blowing as good art, an interesting book, or a great meal.
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