`This is an Age When There Are Too Many Words'

Almost unknowingly I found myself collecting observations by writers I admire about the role of the critic. My motivation for this harmless hobby is a lingering sense of guilt. When younger, I read many critics and reviewers, looking for suggestions on books to pursue and avoid. I sought out the New York Times Book Review, not always easy to do in Ohio in the nineteen-sixties and -seventies. Rather touchingly, I came to trust certain critical brand names but in my innocence I was often easily awed.

Decades later, I read little criticism and can’t remember the last time I even saw a copy of the Times Book Review. What changed is a growing confidence in my taste and judgment, coupled with the slow realization that most literary culture has devolved into trivia and tedium. Fashion and reputation no longer impress, and I feel no compulsion to “keep up.” I read what I like and like much of what I read; if I don’t, I stop reading. The latest addition to my growing collection of critical mini-manifestos is by the wonderful English poet Stevie Smith (1902-1971). It’s her conclusion to “Statement on Criticism,” written in 1958 and collected in Me Again: Uncollected Writings of Stevie Smith (1981):

“Attention, impartiality, disrespect of persons – these are the legal virtues of judgement (learning the judge must have, or he would not be where he is). To these add the critic’s virtues of judgement – knowledge of life, art, books and people (that is already a good deal) and a gift for writing well. Enough, I think. Enough to ask and a good deal more – you glum ones will say – than you will usually find.”

It sounds so common-sensical, who could argue with her? Today, of course, “knowledge of life, art, books and people,” not to mention “a gift for writing well,” are prerequisites so audacious, for critics and writers generally, as to be radical. Smith is a writer one trusts. She is reliably funny, grim and unsentimental. One of her best poems, “Silence,” adds something to this talk of criticism, writing and other forms of “attention”:

“Why do people abuse so much our busy age?
They can withdraw into themselves and not rage
It is better to do this and live in one’s own kingdom
Than by raging add to the rage of our busy time.

“This is an age when there are too many words,
Silent, silent, silent the water lie
And the beautiful grass lies silent and this is beautiful,
Why can men then not withdraw and be silent and happy?

“It is better to see the grass than write about it
Better to see the water than write a water-song,
Yet both may be painted and a person be happy in the painting,
Can it be that the tongue is cursed, to go so wrong?”