Readers and Professional Readers

Much literary criticism, whether homely book reviews or academic effluvia, is written with little thought for readers, who generally return the compliment. Robust readers use critics the way prudent shoppers use Consumer Reports – rarely, and with a skeptical eye. If a trustworthy critic, one who tempers enthusiasm with caution, expresses admiration for a work, and presents it in artfully composed prose, we might investigate further. But guarantees do not accompany endorsements. Some years ago, our most reliably sensible critic, James Wood, wrote something admiring about the stories of D.H. Lawrence. I have always found Lawrence nearly unreadable, but resolved to try again. I did, and I still find Lawrence impossibly awkward and portentous. After half a dozen stories, I again put him aside.

Normally I would be unlikely to pick up a volume by Morris Dickstein, an English professor at the City University of New York, but in June he published an appreciation of Stoner, the great novel by John Williams that is perennially in need of reclamation. Dickstein rightly called it “a perfect novel, so well told and beautifully written, so deeply moving, that it takes your breath away.” It’s always exhilarating when a critic writes so boldly, and I filed away Dickstein’s name, only to retrieve it on Tuesday when I noticed his latest book, A Mirror in the Roadway: Literature and the Real World, on a shelf in the library. It was the subtitle that grabbed me, as well as the echo of Stendhal in the main title, though I almost reshelved the volume as I flipped through it and saw the names of such literary wet blankets as Edward Said, György Lukács, Derrida and even Paul de Man, the anti-Semite and Nazi collaborator. How could someone appreciate Stoner while taking seriously this pathetic bunch? And why do so many lousy critics espouse unpalatable politics?

In at least one essay, “Damaged Literacy: The Decay of Reading,” I found Dickstein’s redemption. In form and theme, the piece will feel familiar to many readers. Dickstein has composed a threnody for the culture of books.

“As educators worry about the role of video and electronic media in displacing the written word, as the skills of ordinary readers seem to languish, the sophistication and territorial ambitions of academic readers continue to grow, widening a split that has been one of the hallmarks of the modern period. This doesn’t mean that the common reader no longer exists. But many professional readers dissociate themselves on principle from the habits of the tribe: they deliberately read against the grain of the text, against common sense, against most people’s way of reading – indeed, against their own way of reading in their ordinary lives.”

Some of Dickstein’s essay is heavy going, betraying his academic background. He spends too much time seriously addressing the culprits mentioned above, but at heart he seems to love books and that is a critic’s first prerequisite. By lambasting lousy books, he is upholding the honor of good ones. Later in his essay, Dickstein wisely puts critics on the same spectrum as uncommon common readers:

“The role of the critic is not to read notionally and cleverly, and certainly not to arraign writers for their politics, but to raise ordinary reading to a higher power – to make it more insightful, more acute, without losing the vital authenticity of a deeply personal reaction. Criticism can remain intuitive even as it turns analytical; its communal speech has private sources.”

And do you remember what Chekhov told Gorky, according to the latter’s Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreev?

“Critics are like horse-flies which prevent the horse from ploughing,’ he said, smiling his wise smile. “The horse works, all its muscles drawn tight like the strings on a double-bass, and a fly settles on his flanks and tickles and buzzes . . .he has to twitch his skin and swish his tail. And what does the fly buzz about? It scarcely knows itself; simply because it is restless and wants to proclaim: `Look, I too am living on the earth. See, I can buzz, too, buzz about anything.’ For twenty-five years I have read criticisms of my stories, and I don’t remember a single remark of any value or one word of valuable advice. Only once Skabichevsky wrote something which made an impression on me . . . he said I would die in a ditch, drunk.”