'To Entertain As Well As Illuminate'

“Here’s a thought: literary criticism ought to entertain as well as illuminate. That puts most critics out of business on two fronts. So much of our exegesis reads like the minutes of a country club meeting in which we are all agreed on the value of this and that, so little of it chases the vitality literature itself is devoted to.”

Rousing words that I used to think were self-evident. You get the impression that most critics, academic and otherwise, are striving after tedium and succeeding. I’m thinking in particular of one longtime online book critic whose prose is irresistibly soporific. His writing is earnest, humorless and militantly postmodern. This guy has never expressed pleasure in any book he has read. His own writing is ahedonic, closer in texture and content to think-tank white papers than belles-lettres.

The author quoted at the top is David Mason, writing in The Hudson Review about two poet-critics, John Burnside and the late Clive James. He continues: “Readers easily offended by anything remotely transgressive ought to toughen up and face the world in all its bloodiness. No one has permission to do anything in this life, so you might as well see what you can see, say what you can say, and hopefully do so as beautifully as possible.”

Two of Mason’s word choices are central: “entertain” and “beautifully.” To entertain is to amuse or provide enjoyment. Admittedly, the capacity for entertainment is as vast and varied as humanity, spanning everything from translating Linear B to snuff films. A critic who entertains must love words. A lexically incompetent critic or one indifferent to his medium hardly inspires confidence in his critical judgment. And, of course, a good critic is often funny – conclusive evidence in some quarters that he can’t be taken seriously.

A good critic comes to the job with a sensibility and not a box of prefabricated opinions. He knows the territory. If he writes about books, he’s read most of the good ones and knows the lousy ones to avoid. He has the obligation when wrong to be interestingly wrong. I don’t go to critics to have my prejudices confirmed or refuted. I go to learn something I didn’t suspect and to be entertained in the process.

I don’t know Burnside’s books but for years I’ve been entertained (and educated) by James’ work in multiple genres. Like Joseph Epstein, he’s equally gifted at praising and dismissing. Near the conclusion of Latest Readings (2016), James writes: “’The critic should write to say not ‘look how much I’ve read’ but ‘look at this, it’s wonderful.’” Or awful.