I’ve been meaning to make a fairly straightforward post about criticism and my thoughts thereupon, as that seems to be a step in the average critical aniblogger’s acquisition of internet tenure. But when an alternative presented itself, I resolved to do something a bit different. What follows is an IM conversation between myself and my younger brother, hereafter referred to as Otouto-kun (he wanted the -kun, don’t ask me why), an enterprising young hikikomori-type with game design aspirations. We got on the topic of criticism somehow, and I ended up spilling all my most recent thoughts on the subject. Being an IM conversation, it’s a bit spur-of-the-moment and rough around the edges, but I’ve cleaned it up for the sake of readability — and I think it makes a little sense, anyway. There are certainly enough of you out there to correct me if I’m mistaken.
Otouto-kun: Just remember, there will come a time when you have to choose: creator, critic, it’s a tough choice, but it must be done.
Pontifus: I don’t have to choose, I can do both.
Otouto-kun: You will be influenced too much by the one you excel in.
Pontifus: Granted, I think Eliot was a better critic than poet, but that’s just me; most people [who are English majors] love his poetry.
Otouto-kun: Which do you expect to do more, creation or criticism?
Pontifus: I can’t say…I mean, if I end up as a college professor, I expect I’ll write more criticism than fiction, because 1. it’ll pay my bills, and 2. it takes less time. Ultimately, my goal is early retirement paid for by fiction writing. I used to think there was a huge difference between the two — now, though, I’m not so sure.
Otouto-kun: On one side, you’ll be a creative critic, and on the other side, you’ll be an observant creator. I suppose I’m a lot like the way you used to be. I think the way you do it is the way it should be, but not the way it is.
Pontifus: Maybe…I [think] the majority would disagree with my ideas.
Otouto-kun: I think people shouldn’t be critics unless they create, but that’s just my opinion.
Pontifus: I agree, but artists and critics each tend not to trust the other group, without ever realizing that all critics are artists, and all artists are critics.
Otouto-kun: I rue the day when there is critical criticism; does that make any sense?
Pontifus: You mean, like, the criticism of criticism?
Otouto-kun: Yeah.
Pontifus: It’s called hermeneutics.
Otouto-kun: AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH
Pontifus: I actually think it’s interesting, because criticism is a kind of art, so you can analyze it…and in doing so you’re doing criticism, which is a kind of art…it’s very cyclical.
Otouto-kun: AAAAAAAAAAHHHHH, IT BURNS, don’t utter those words. Criticism art, bah!
Pontifus: I like [Cuchlann's] opinion on the subject: “Derrida claimed that any work based on another work — he was primarily concerned with acts of criticism and scholarship here, probably not being aware of fanfiction at the time — is its own self-contained work, and not a kind of ‘lens’ to view the original through. That is, T. S. Eliot’s famous essay about Huckleberry Finn is just as much an original piece of work as his The Waste Land is. The audience for criticism, then, reads criticism to get ’something good’ out of it, just as they might read the ‘original’ pieces that the criticism is based on.” Derrida is a lunatic of a theorist, by the way.
Otouto-kun: I hate to see criticism; I feel like the only relationship that need be is the one between artist and viewer.
Pontifus: You’re making the mistake of viewing criticism as some kind of confounding influence. It seems to me that you think of criticism as something that jumps between the artist and the reader/viewer.
Otouto-kun: Umm, yeah, I guess you could say that. I applaud what they are trying to do, but I don’t think it can be done.
Pontifus: Well, I’ll refer back to my quote of Cuchlann quoting Derrida. Criticism is a text in and of itself. It creates a new relationship, one between (surprise, surprise) writer and reader/viewer.
Otouto-kun: Damn it, you’re getting all critical on me. Like I said, I applaud what they are trying to do, but is it happening?
Pontifus: What do you think they’re trying to do?
Otouto-kun: I don’t know; like you said once, you have to drop the reader/writer mindset to be a critic, but in my opinion that leaves out all of the feeling. I just feel like it’s not helping the writer/reader or, in my case, player/creator relationship. To me it feels like a mass of smart words without feeling.
Pontifus: Well, a lot of people would agree with you, but what are they trying to do that they’re failing at? In other words, they’re turning out a mass of smart words instead of…?
Otouto-kun: What true criticism needs to be. A love for the art, but still…I can’t think of that word, it means you can’t pick a side, hate it or love it you…fuck.
Pontifus: Objective?
Otouto-kun: Yeah.
Pontifus: Say, for example, I can look at Lucky Star and say, “Well, this is pretty boring, but I can accept it as art.”
Otouto-kun: Yeah.
Pontifus: But what you’re saying is that, in the face of that, of being able to genuinely dislike something and accept it anyway, the critic needs to have a love for all art. The critic doesn’t have to like it, but by God the critic has to love it. Because if that’s your point, I absolutely agree.
Otouto-kun: Well yeah. Not exactly where it was going in the beginning, but yeah.
Pontifus: I think that’s part of love, whether we’re talking criticism or human beings, being able to accept something in spite of (and sometimes because of) its flaws. To be a critic, you must love art — not one work of art, but all art, just because it’s art. And your complaint is that love of art doesn’t come across most of the time?
Otouto-kun: I’m confused now; that’s what I was saying, but I’m second-guessing myself.
Pontifus: How so? I mean, on what point?
Otouto-kun: I guess I looked past what the critic can do, and what he/she has to do. I guess I took objectivity as no love for the art. Also, I realized I need to start being objective; it’s similar when you’re a creator.
Pontifus: Well, I’d argue that true objectivity is impossible, and that what you’re calling objectivity is just love of art, but I think you’re right in that the artist and critic should have a similar love of art. That doesn’t mean you have to like every marginally artistic thing you see; it just means you can look beyond your own dislike for it.
Otouto-kun: Yeah.
Pontifus: I mean, the artist in particular has a lot to learn from the successes of the past.
Otouto-kun: Of course.
Pontifus: I don’t like Eragon, I think it’s a triumph of good marketing over any kind of requirement for good writing…but tough shit, it made that little rich kid even richer. Something went right in that situation even if it was only situational. Granted, I didn’t learn a whole lot from reading it.
Otouto-kun: That’s something else that kicks my balls.
Pontifus: Commercialization?
Otouto-kun: Writers who have no love for what they write. How much do you think he really put into those books?
Pontifus: You know, I don’t fault the kid for being inexperienced; I have no reason not to believe he has passion. He just has a lot to learn. It’s hard to write something that long and not love what you’re doing…fuck, I love writing fiction, and I get too dissatisfied with my writing to continue longer than a few thousand words without stopping in frustration.
Otouto-kun: I’m no Picasso myself — in fact, I suck — so I suppose if I had a chance to easily get something published, I would take it. Damn it, we’re arguing the same point.
Pontifus: I mean, most people at his level of talent end up on FanFiction.Net or deviantART…he just happened to come from a family of publishers. Like I said, it’s situational. I don’t fault him in any way, though.
Otouto-kun: You know what? I can’t truly say anything about those books; I haven’t read them. All I know is he blatantly used things from other artworks.
Pontifus: Yeah, he is pretty obvious with his borrowings. One could argue that the borrowings being so obvious renders each of them a meta-literary reference, that the Eragon books are the fantasy equivalent of Ulysses…and as much as that sounds like bullshit to me, I’m bound to accept as valid any criticism, as there can be no “wrong” criticism if it’s supported by evidence. Joyce would probably be furious at that comparison…but, eh.
Otouto-kun: Oh man, Joyce…from what I’ve heard, that man was a writing god.
Pontifus: That’s because all you know of Joyce you’ve heard from me.
Otouto-kun: True.
Pontifus: I mean, here’s the thing about depth — and I’ve been talking about this a little lately — I don’t think works of art come with depth attached, I think depth is a matter of how deep someone, anyone, even if it’s only one person, is willing to dig, and if one and only one person can dig deeply into Eragon, who am I to say Eragon isn’t deep? It’s like, a hundred people on the surface can say the ground is only a foot deep, but if one person digs down twenty feet, clearly the surface-dwellers were wrong, regardless of whether they bust out shovels and dig for themselves.
Otouto-kun: I found my argument again. Well, one argument.
Pontifus: Have at it.
Otouto-kun: It’s hard for me to believe that there can be criticism of something that can be interpreted in as many ways as there are people in this world.
Pontifus: There exist people who think that the goal of criticism is to establish the “right” way of reading a text, I guess. I would argue that those people are [misguided, assuming one can even judge a critical approach]. Granted, they’d say the same of me.
Otouto-kun: I didn’t say that critics are trying to pinpoint the one correct way; it’s the opposite, in fact. How can there be criticism when there are so many ways?
Pontifus: Ah, so your question is more along the lines of, how can anyone be right?
Otouto-kun: Exactly.
Pontifus: To which I respond: how can anyone be wrong?
Otouto-kun: I didn’t say anyone could be wrong, just that no one person can be right. I guess it’s more of, there is no wrong, and everyone is right on their own.
Pontifus: I mean, what’s your complaint about everyone with some modicum of evidence being right?
Otouto-kun: That brings me back to, can there really be any such thing as criticism in a field where it all depends on the individual?
Pontifus: I don’t really understand your question.
Otouto-kun: How can there be criticism where the experience changes between each individual?
Pontifus: Well, I keep mentioning the need for evidence from the text. That’s why it’s important. Reading experiences differ, yeah, but if you can say, “Well, Leopold Bloom’s marriage is pretty tragic,” and cross-examine it with Frye and Aristotle, it doesn’t matter that most people think it’s comically ironic; they’ll be able to see where you’re coming from if you did a good enough job. (And, where that example is concerned, my grad school applications hinge upon whether I did a good enough job…)
Otouto-kun: I just don’t see the importance in that. How does that help the reader?
Pontifus: I thought you might ask that.
Otouto-kun: They see what they see no matter what.
Pontifus: Well, people have different answers because people’s goals as critics differ. My goal is, I think, to better understand human beings, and to understand the effect literature has on them, and its importance…you know, the same goals I have as a fiction writer. My goal is to raise questions. I’ll nod to Socrates here: you can’t learn if you think you already know.
Otouto-kun: Readers need questions, yes, but what about the answers?
Pontifus: No, I mean, my goal is to raise questions in readers about themselves: “huh, this could be ironic or tragic, maybe I should broaden my reading…” or “huh, this could be ironic or tragic, reminds me of my own marriage…” It reminds me of Aria. Your mind needs to be in a certain state to see itself most clearly, and literature can help it get there (so can gondolas on Mars, but that’s a different matter).
Otouto-kun: What is important about getting the reader to relate [art] with his/her life?
Pontifus: All I want to do is get readers to think. If they disagree with me, they had to decide consciously to disagree, so I’m fine with that.
Otouto-kun: To get them to better understand themselves?
Pontifus: Right.
Otouto-kun: I like it.
Pontifus: So, with any luck, I’ve answered your question about what criticism is good for, somewhere in that wall of text. But again, everyone does it for a unique reason, I’d imagine. Ask ten people, get ten answers. Actually, ask ten people, get eleven answers.
Otouto-kun: I understand.
Pontifus: And since I write fiction with the same goals in mind, I can’t help thinking of criticism and fiction writing as more similar than I used to admit. There’s also entertainment, but I think both have to be entertaining, on a certain level. I have a broad definition of entertainment.
…After which we spiraled into a largely irrelevant conversation about my ex-girlfriend, the Bible, and Catcher in the Rye, but I’ll spare you that. Feel free to leave comments for Otouto, if you like; he’s sure to see them eventually.
Haha. Hilarious.
I would add that one of the reasons I do criticism is that it increases my enjoyment of the text in question, and I assume at least some readers will enjoy it in the same way. In the sense that Aristotle (I think, maybe Plato, I’m not at my best when dealing with the ancient Greeks) claimed that “the unexamined life isn’t worth living,” I feel that — not being as bold or acerbic as our mystery Greek — an examined text is a text more fully enjoyed.
I believe that was Socrates, as reported by Plato? All Greek to me.
Do you distinguish between the hunt for meaning (‘the elucidation of works of art’) and aesthetic judgement (‘the correction of taste’)? I have this suspicion that anyone with a modicum of evidence can be right about the former, while only some of those with evidence are right about the latter. Granted, there’s a tendency for them to bleed into each other. Or maybe the latter isn’t criticism?
Meta-criticism?
But I like the way that the conversation went. I think criticism also helps increase an understanding of what’s being criticize, by seeing how others can look at things differently. We can get that through other means, but critiquing works I feel can be more effective because it makes you take notice with a sharp contrast or sharp delineation with what someone believes.
Or something like that.
@IKnight
That’s a really good question. I think what I would have to say is, I think it’s all aesthetic, but I don’t think of “aesthetic judgement” as “correction of taste.” That might very well be how everyone else thinks of it, but I think I’ve re-valued it in my head. A crazy professor, last semester, set us the homework assignment of defining “truth” — never mind the difficulty philosophers have with it. I defined it as an aesthetic experience. Basically, the “meaning” inside art is, I think, simply another aesthetic experience, which is why some people just won’t like it no matter how well it deals with its themes. I’m not thinking of a work in particular, hence the vague pronouns.
@Cuchlann
I absolutely agree that the critical process makes the experience of art more enjoyable. To be honest, I’ve only recently reached a point at which I can genuinely enjoy something based almost solely upon how thought-provoking it is. Had I started watching Aria six months ago, I probably would’ve given it the same treatment I gave Lucky Star, but at this point I think it’s great. Hell, now that I’ve convinced myself that I missed some of its more interesting little facets, I may try Lucky Star again (though I don’t expect I’ll enjoy it too much more — my tastes and state of mind have changed quite a bit recently, but my sense of humor has not).
@IKnight
Well, when thinking critically, I prefer to forgo aesthetic judgment in favor of non-judgmental aesthetic evaluation, which to me seems a part of the hunt for meaning. I’d say that aesthetic judgment isn’t the purpose of criticism — or rather, because I can’t speak for any critic but myself, that it isn’t one of my purposes as a critic. To me, aesthetic judgment seems more a factor of personal taste than anything. But I’m of the sort that doesn’t think there can be objectivity in art criticism, which probably has a lot to do with my stance on the question you raise. Perhaps, in the act of criticism, in pointing out only certain possible aspects of a text and not literally everything, we are judging texts, but in that case we come back to the question of right and wrong being a moot point; no two people will see all the same things, and no objective evidence exists to change that. I tend to think meaning isn’t inherent in a text anyway, and, given that, anyone who says “this element of this text means x” cannot practically be right; the more logical “this element of this text means x to me” is necessarily subjective for its “to me.” I guess that puts me somewhere in the constructivist-subjectivist range…damn, I’ve been finding all kinds of interesting words to describe myself with lately.
I’m quite tired at this point, having been through class and a four-hour meeting today, so forgive me in the likely event that I’ve rambled on without addressing your question at all.
@TheBigN
I’m not sure how thoroughly one can understand a text — there may be no limit — but I think understanding requires taking contrasting criticisms into consideration. Even if no critic (who isn’t lying about finding something outrageous in a text for the sheer sake of outrage) can technically be wrong, there’s still a definable body of “right” criticism consisting of everything that has been said and nothing that hasn’t. The most informative part of criticism, for me, isn’t the writing process (though that’s informative in itself); it’s being disagreed with.
@ Cuchlann: I’m not sure about ‘the correction of taste’ either. (I’m just quoting Eliot since he’s supposed to be such a good critic!) My degree course, and indeed the teaching of literature earlier in my education, never address(ed) how you tell how good something is or why you should bother trying to figure that out in the first place. From what you say it sounds like there’s mileage in linking aesthetics and what I’m calling, in a slightly worried way, meaning, but I think it’s an idea that needs expanding on (in a blog entry, for example, hint hint).
@ Pontifus: Certainly by training (see above) I hold myself back from aesthetic judgement, so evidently in walking-the-walk terms I agree with you that it isn’t the purpose of (my) criticism. I have a stance on objectivity which is a rather toxic mix of Hume and Plato: we will never know for sure which interpretations are the best, and we will never know for sure which works of art are the best, but just because our minds are inadequate doesn’t mean there aren’t some definitive truths (and a definitive canon, for that matter) out there in the realm of, erm, forms.
@IKnight: Yes yes. I’m actually in the middle of defining my own aesthetic / critical theories, so, uh, I’ll have to get back to you on that. For instance, I only had the realization that, for me, “meaning” and “enlightenment” are simply forms of entertainment, oh, back in April or thereabouts. I won’t mind at all, producing my crazy manifesto, but I have to figure it out for myself first. Though I’m often a proponent of writing to explore, so I might do a disjointed kind of thing in an attempt to figure out what’s going on.
But first, I meant to get to the nature of slice-of-life in context of the latest Lucky Star OVA. Which means, uh, that I have to watch it first. So, yeah.
@IKnight
I suppose I should clarify that I think objectivity is effectively impossible. There might very well be some set of greater truths that we can’t comprehend — but that we can’t comprehend them renders them nonexistent, for all intents and purposes. I’m existential about it. My Plato is very rusty, so correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t “Phaedo” imply that whatever greater knowledge exists can only be obtained (or recalled) in death, and that all we humans can do is keep raising questions? That considered, I’m of the opinion that, insofar as art criticism is a human endeavor (as is art), it necessarily consists of questions with no definitive answers. If you wanted to set the boundary between subjectivity and objectivity at the far edge of possible human comprehension, though, I’d say that makes practical sense.
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