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KealanPatrick wrote:

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Jason:

The books I write, I write for myself, first and foremost. I hold myself to a literary standard I'm not always able to meet, but if not for the eventual and essential tempering of that inner critic, I wouldn't be able to write at all.

Which is as it should be, Kealan.

I also write for the reader, knowing full well that they may regard it as a treasure, or a travesty. Preoccupation with such verdicts only exacerbates the self-criticism I mentioned above. Disassociation from such concerns is essential in order for the creative process to flourish.

Also as it should be.

Similarly, for the reader, appreciation of the work should not be influenced by the verdicts of others.

In other words: If you dig the work, fuck what anybody else thinks.

Kealan

But I'm not sure of that last statement. Everyone inclined to take art at all seriously benefits from a discussion of a work or works of art. Also of a discussion of a work that doesn't meet the standards of art -- whatever those might be at a given time -- because the discussion which we're calling criticism, which began long before any of us or our grandparents or their grandparents, continually refines our ideas on art and also helps us arrive at and/or revise our standards. (Remember, we are working on what these standards are even now, even here. They are fluid: In the mid-1800s, the standards dismissed Moby Dick; the standards of a later generation in the 1920s or so re-evaluated the book, gave it the standing of a masterpiece.)

Really, the discussions here on lit. crit. are disheartening. The critic is not necessarily an enemy of literature (granted, some may be but their own written work will eventually expose them as such), and many creative writers have also written a good deal of criticism (think Mark Twain's "The Literary Offenses of Fenimore Cooper"; look, too, at John Kessel's "The Big Dream," a scathing inditement [yes, it's a cliche phrase, but I like it] of Raymond Chandler's world view). Criticism is not the antithesis of creative writing, but another part of literature.

Maybe I should offer a definition so you have a better idea of where I'm coming from here: For me, and I think by extension for many other readers, literature is not just poetry and prose fiction. Literature is a word applied to mankind's long discussion with itself about the state of humanity in the context of our social, cultural, ideological, religious and political past and present. Fiction is one form of this discussion, at its best obliquely showing humanity in action and drawing conclusions from it, using the form to criticise and critique -- sometimes positively, sometimes not -- our society and culture, our politics and ideologies, our beliefs and dreams and aspirations through dramatizing the actions of individuals. No one writer can encompass it all, each writer coming at the aesthetic problems as well as the content from a different perspective than her/his peers, and almost always building on the work that preceded them.

Criticism is another form of literature, the application of logical (well, sometimes logical) thought to poke and probe at the arts, including literature and prose fiction, in the attempt to evolve standards for the arts. Criticism is discussion of the forms we choose, the power they have, the best way to apply them. The opinion of any one critic may be total hogwash on one or many points, and still offer insights into a given work or works or genre, and so we have many critics just as we have many fiction writers and many poets and many essayists, and so on. Essentially, reading any one critic may be frustrating, but reading several may help an individual reader triangulate what it is they get from fiction besides entertainment.

Admittedly, these definitions are attempts to describe an ideal and the politics of literature can and do interfere with that. Still, published criticism in vetted forums like The New York Review of Science Fiction is where the most in-depth discussion of a work and its place in its own time and in literary history begins.

Now, the question from all this is, do you have to read criticism to be a good reader? Hell, no. Read what you like. I do and some of what I like is literary criticism in its more accessible forms. But don't feel threatened by lit. crit. or belittle it because some other readers take seriously enough to investigate and evaluate the fiction you enjoy.

Randy M.