Why critics need to stop getting personal in their essays
April 15, 2016 2:08 AM Subscribe
"Contemporary criticism is positively crowded with first-person pronouns, micro-doses of memoir, brief hits of biography. Critics don’t simply wrestle with their assigned cultural object; they wrestle with themselves, as well. Recent examples suggest a spectrum, from reviews that harmlessly kick off with a personal anecdote, to hybrid pieces that blend literary criticism and longform memoir."
"Some of these pieces are certainly excellent, and, as an editor, I’ve certainly commissioned my share of what might be called “confessional criticism.” I’ve even written some, too. But—confession!—I’ve never felt especially good about it. Relating works of art to one’s life, after all, is easy. (No reference library required.) Moreover, the confessional voice is dangerously attractive; as Virginia Woolf put it, “under the decent veil of print one can indulge one’s egoism to the full.” Such a voice doesn’t necessarily guarantee more honest criticism, and, in some ways, its subtle designs on the reader make it even more deserving of our wariness."
"Some of these pieces are certainly excellent, and, as an editor, I’ve certainly commissioned my share of what might be called “confessional criticism.” I’ve even written some, too. But—confession!—I’ve never felt especially good about it. Relating works of art to one’s life, after all, is easy. (No reference library required.) Moreover, the confessional voice is dangerously attractive; as Virginia Woolf put it, “under the decent veil of print one can indulge one’s egoism to the full.” Such a voice doesn’t necessarily guarantee more honest criticism, and, in some ways, its subtle designs on the reader make it even more deserving of our wariness."
"Unlike this piece, which is science fact"
posted by Potomac Avenue at 2:35 AM on April 15, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 2:35 AM on April 15, 2016 [6 favorites]
I strongly disagree with this guy. If anything we need more people writing eloquently about their personal connections to art--at least it gives us something to relate to and think about rather than just some boring thumb's opinion. It's certainly more useful than the cliches of half-educated formalism or the rote nonsense of post-modern theory. Criticism is an art, and this is the current mode, get over it.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 2:39 AM on April 15, 2016 [7 favorites]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 2:39 AM on April 15, 2016 [7 favorites]
Indeed, DoctorFedora! It is pretty amusing that the term 'New Games Criticism' is pointing in the exact opposite direction to the 'New Critics' of literature. Both come as responses to what came before, I guess. No doubt there will be a backlash to New Games Criticism when it becomes too pervasive (the actual current backlash, from the GG crowd, obviously has nothing to do the form of the pieces and is its own void of horror).
Potomac, I think that the writer of this piece is saying there's plenty of room for both, but he feels the confessional style is crowding out reviews/responses that focus more on the text and its relationship with other texts:
"Some of these pieces are certainly excellent, and, as an editor, I’ve certainly commissioned my share of what might be called “confessional criticism.”"
"On its own, this can seem like engaging, moving stuff. As part of a trend, it blends into a choir of exceedingly competent critics who can’t seem to keep themselves out of their sentences."
"None of this is to suggest that critics should sink a dentist’s sharp into their prose, inject artificial chill into their voice, aspire to the frozen state of Eliot, Adorno, and the like. But they should want to be wary of the zeitgeist. If criticism has reached peak confession, critics would do well to simply scrutinize the cultural product at hand (as well as its influences, social context, and, yes, tradition; we need to read beyond ourselves) and put a temporary moratorium on the memoir—especially if the picture painted is of a quirky, sincere, self-deprecatory soul."
Maybe he's wrong about the ratio. Maybe he's just reacting to the pieces his friends tend to share online, or the six magazines he reads are on a particular confessions bender right now.
I totally agree that 'Criticism is an art, and this is the current mode, get over it.' I would say that one of the ways that the way the critical body develops is by writers reacting to the current mode. Otherwise we'd be stuck with the exact same critical tools and approaches forever. Jason writes this, a talented memoir-reviewer writes a great rebuttal (perhaps even a memoir-driven rebuttal), we all come away with a couple of new insights.
I really like a well-written confessional/memoir review – if you have any favourites it would be great if you could share them!
posted by Cantdosleepy at 3:04 AM on April 15, 2016 [3 favorites]
Potomac, I think that the writer of this piece is saying there's plenty of room for both, but he feels the confessional style is crowding out reviews/responses that focus more on the text and its relationship with other texts:
"Some of these pieces are certainly excellent, and, as an editor, I’ve certainly commissioned my share of what might be called “confessional criticism.”"
"On its own, this can seem like engaging, moving stuff. As part of a trend, it blends into a choir of exceedingly competent critics who can’t seem to keep themselves out of their sentences."
"None of this is to suggest that critics should sink a dentist’s sharp into their prose, inject artificial chill into their voice, aspire to the frozen state of Eliot, Adorno, and the like. But they should want to be wary of the zeitgeist. If criticism has reached peak confession, critics would do well to simply scrutinize the cultural product at hand (as well as its influences, social context, and, yes, tradition; we need to read beyond ourselves) and put a temporary moratorium on the memoir—especially if the picture painted is of a quirky, sincere, self-deprecatory soul."
Maybe he's wrong about the ratio. Maybe he's just reacting to the pieces his friends tend to share online, or the six magazines he reads are on a particular confessions bender right now.
I totally agree that 'Criticism is an art, and this is the current mode, get over it.' I would say that one of the ways that the way the critical body develops is by writers reacting to the current mode. Otherwise we'd be stuck with the exact same critical tools and approaches forever. Jason writes this, a talented memoir-reviewer writes a great rebuttal (perhaps even a memoir-driven rebuttal), we all come away with a couple of new insights.
I really like a well-written confessional/memoir review – if you have any favourites it would be great if you could share them!
posted by Cantdosleepy at 3:04 AM on April 15, 2016 [3 favorites]
Grantland.com :(
posted by Potomac Avenue at 3:10 AM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 3:10 AM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
I should certainly clarify that I don't have anything against what appears to be a criticism piece being more personal in nature. I just happen to find the emotional center of "Tim Rogers is way cooler than you" to be tedious and unrewarding to spend 5,000 words on.
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:34 AM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:34 AM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
I feel very strongly about the idea that objectivity does not exist, and I find confessional approaches to be a very effective means of centering the subjectivity of the experience and giving me, as a player of games, a way to calibrate my own tastes against that of the critic I'm reading.
I would like to see more intertextual approaches to games criticism, certainly. But most games are simply not operating on that level of complexity right now, even the best of the consciously-artsy ones.
(As for recommending good confessional/memoir games writing, everything Cara Ellison has ever written comes to mind.)
posted by tobascodagama at 4:37 AM on April 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
I would like to see more intertextual approaches to games criticism, certainly. But most games are simply not operating on that level of complexity right now, even the best of the consciously-artsy ones.
(As for recommending good confessional/memoir games writing, everything Cara Ellison has ever written comes to mind.)
posted by tobascodagama at 4:37 AM on April 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
I feel very strongly about the idea that objectivity does not exist
You pretty sure about that?
posted by thelonius at 4:47 AM on April 15, 2016 [3 favorites]
You pretty sure about that?
posted by thelonius at 4:47 AM on April 15, 2016 [3 favorites]
could we apply this suggestion to recipes though
i mean i'm glad people have a strong association with the food they ate in their childhood during their summers at cape cod or whatever but i'd prefer not to spend 10 minutes reading through your memoir just to get a reasonable idea of what i need to do to make hermit bars
posted by suddenly, and without warning, at 4:55 AM on April 15, 2016 [8 favorites]
i mean i'm glad people have a strong association with the food they ate in their childhood during their summers at cape cod or whatever but i'd prefer not to spend 10 minutes reading through your memoir just to get a reasonable idea of what i need to do to make hermit bars
posted by suddenly, and without warning, at 4:55 AM on April 15, 2016 [8 favorites]
It's certainly more useful than the cliches of half-educated formalism or the rote nonsense of post-modern theory.
Yeah, the postmodernists killed the author only to discover that everyone's an author. This can be interesting and useful - and certainly liberating -, but only up to a point. Much like autoethnography: once you go past a certain limit, you discover that, hey, I can do science about myself! And forget about why reflexivity was needed in the first place.
posted by sapagan at 5:01 AM on April 15, 2016 [3 favorites]
Yeah, the postmodernists killed the author only to discover that everyone's an author. This can be interesting and useful - and certainly liberating -, but only up to a point. Much like autoethnography: once you go past a certain limit, you discover that, hey, I can do science about myself! And forget about why reflexivity was needed in the first place.
posted by sapagan at 5:01 AM on April 15, 2016 [3 favorites]
You pretty sure about that?
I mean, I can't be certain, but...
posted by tobascodagama at 5:45 AM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
I mean, I can't be certain, but...
posted by tobascodagama at 5:45 AM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
Every critic in every piece of criticism should be wrestling with themselves, their experiences, the context they bring, the associations they make or don't make, the blind spots they have, and so forth. It is the height of arrogance for a critic to believe it's possible to remove yourself and your unavoidably distorting personal lens fully from the criticism you write. Whether you make that part of the piece or not is up to you, but that's a question of transparency, not objectivity. What you owe people is the best effort you can make to learn what that lens does, how it bends your perception, how it differs from the lenses of others, and so forth. You can also specifically try to combat its effects by pushing in the opposite direction from some of your natural and personal tendencies in order to render your criticism more meaningful to more people.
But you are always looking through that lens, even as you try to examine it. It can't be helped.
posted by Linda_Holmes at 5:47 AM on April 15, 2016 [7 favorites]
But you are always looking through that lens, even as you try to examine it. It can't be helped.
posted by Linda_Holmes at 5:47 AM on April 15, 2016 [7 favorites]
Actually, shortly after posting my previous comment, I did think of a pair of games that were extremely intertextual, one of which was extremely ill-served by the criticism it received in the confessional game. I mean The Stanley Parable and The Beginner's Guide, of course.
Nearly everyone who talked about the latter wrote as if the events described in that game literally happened and their gut reaction to the violation they committed by playing the game, when it was pretty clearly a Pale Fire story that would have benefited a lot from deeper analysis. As for the former, few critics had anything to say about it at all beyond "gosh, that was clever, really makes you think".
posted by tobascodagama at 5:50 AM on April 15, 2016
Nearly everyone who talked about the latter wrote as if the events described in that game literally happened and their gut reaction to the violation they committed by playing the game, when it was pretty clearly a Pale Fire story that would have benefited a lot from deeper analysis. As for the former, few critics had anything to say about it at all beyond "gosh, that was clever, really makes you think".
posted by tobascodagama at 5:50 AM on April 15, 2016
Relating works of art to one’s life, after all, is easy. (No reference library required.)
This is a super weird thing to say. In my experience, writing well about your own life is a thousand times harder than learning some interesting history or science material from the library and writing well about that.
posted by escabeche at 5:50 AM on April 15, 2016 [4 favorites]
This is a super weird thing to say. In my experience, writing well about your own life is a thousand times harder than learning some interesting history or science material from the library and writing well about that.
posted by escabeche at 5:50 AM on April 15, 2016 [4 favorites]
It was ever thus. As soon as I was reading criticism, I learned that stuff which didn't seem to concentrate on the matter being critiqued was generally more annoying, and that there was quite a lot of it.
This informed how I wrote criticism, when I started at that. One of my first editors had this advice - when you've finished a piece, go through and count the first person pronouns. I still do that, and note that this piece has an exceptionally high quotient - on reflection, given the subject matter, that seems apposite. You can always play games with the passive ("was generally more annoying" instead of "annoyed me more") but that's cheating. I won'f mention myself again after this sentence. Even if I am given to cheating.
There have been plenty of splendid reviews that barely touch on the subject matter. There are no master rules here; a good editor will play to their writers' strengths when assigning work in the service of a balanced, varied, appropriate mix for the readership, and a writer will use their knowledge of that readership and the editor's expectations in judging the best tone and approach. A good editor should not, on the whole, experience misgivings on commissioning if it is in their power to give the task to someone better suited.
Sometimes, readers want to hear the writer's voice; sometimes, they just want to know about the subject at hand, in criticism as in anything else.
posted by Devonian at 6:17 AM on April 15, 2016 [4 favorites]
This informed how I wrote criticism, when I started at that. One of my first editors had this advice - when you've finished a piece, go through and count the first person pronouns. I still do that, and note that this piece has an exceptionally high quotient - on reflection, given the subject matter, that seems apposite. You can always play games with the passive ("was generally more annoying" instead of "annoyed me more") but that's cheating. I won'f mention myself again after this sentence. Even if I am given to cheating.
There have been plenty of splendid reviews that barely touch on the subject matter. There are no master rules here; a good editor will play to their writers' strengths when assigning work in the service of a balanced, varied, appropriate mix for the readership, and a writer will use their knowledge of that readership and the editor's expectations in judging the best tone and approach. A good editor should not, on the whole, experience misgivings on commissioning if it is in their power to give the task to someone better suited.
Sometimes, readers want to hear the writer's voice; sometimes, they just want to know about the subject at hand, in criticism as in anything else.
posted by Devonian at 6:17 AM on April 15, 2016 [4 favorites]
Before I go against the thread, I want to say that I like and read a lot of personal criticism, ranging from bloggy tumblry stuff to Very Serious Literary Theorists. Also, I don't think anyone who hates personal criticism would enjoy metafilter very much. So take this as a sort of "yes, but also" rather than anything else:
I do encounter some banal personal criticism - yea verily, even on the left, amongst activists and people I generally like. If the choice is between "vague reminiscence that is supposed to bring the FEELINGS and which uses artificially simple vocabulary, plus a lot of isolated sentences" and "interesting merely textual analysis which draws, like, parallels and brings in science facts", I will always choose the latter.
Also, I don't think that not writing yourself into your essay is the same as being impersonal, because you can't be impersonal. If you read, for example, Umberto Eco's literary criticism, you quite readily see the person who is there, and I don't think this is because Eco is too dumb to hide himself behind a scrim of writerly objectivity.
Also, also - how does this argument relate to other kinds of writing? There's personal scholarship I like a hell of a lot, like Selina Todd's The People: The Rise and Fall of the British Working Class, or even David Graeber's "when I was sitting on the roof with all the cool anti-capitalists" stuff in his anarchist writing. There's also "impersonal" scholarship I like - I don't feel that Franco Moretti needs to tell us a lot about himself when writing Atlas of the European Novel.
I also feel like there's a risk with the directly personal - you put yourself out there at the beginning of your essay and people like me (who are basically giant marshmallows of sentiment) will tend to read your whole essay with, maybe, sympathy it does not deserve. (It's not just good people who personalize their essays.) And rejection of the essay can feel like - or be framed by the rejecting writer - as rejection of the person. It's possible to believe absolutely that someone experienced what they said they experienced and still feel that the argument they make based on their experience is really, really wrong. (Vide the deeply felt personal essays one sometimes encounters about, say, a cis woman who encounters a trans woman at the gym and freaks out, etc.)
I think that this risk is the equal and opposite of the risk that exists in the nominally impersonal. I don't think there's a form of writing which gets at truth and removes social risk just by its nature.
And again, I want to stress that the personal always appears in the writing (maybe most weakly and obscurely in peer-reviewed science/math/medicine).
I tend to think that a stronger set of readerly tools is what's needed, more than anything else. You can sit there and parse the most "objective" NYT editorial, or whatever, and still pull out the (relevant) biases and personal quirks of the writer, given practice and self-confidence.
posted by Frowner at 6:22 AM on April 15, 2016 [8 favorites]
I do encounter some banal personal criticism - yea verily, even on the left, amongst activists and people I generally like. If the choice is between "vague reminiscence that is supposed to bring the FEELINGS and which uses artificially simple vocabulary, plus a lot of isolated sentences" and "interesting merely textual analysis which draws, like, parallels and brings in science facts", I will always choose the latter.
Also, I don't think that not writing yourself into your essay is the same as being impersonal, because you can't be impersonal. If you read, for example, Umberto Eco's literary criticism, you quite readily see the person who is there, and I don't think this is because Eco is too dumb to hide himself behind a scrim of writerly objectivity.
Also, also - how does this argument relate to other kinds of writing? There's personal scholarship I like a hell of a lot, like Selina Todd's The People: The Rise and Fall of the British Working Class, or even David Graeber's "when I was sitting on the roof with all the cool anti-capitalists" stuff in his anarchist writing. There's also "impersonal" scholarship I like - I don't feel that Franco Moretti needs to tell us a lot about himself when writing Atlas of the European Novel.
I also feel like there's a risk with the directly personal - you put yourself out there at the beginning of your essay and people like me (who are basically giant marshmallows of sentiment) will tend to read your whole essay with, maybe, sympathy it does not deserve. (It's not just good people who personalize their essays.) And rejection of the essay can feel like - or be framed by the rejecting writer - as rejection of the person. It's possible to believe absolutely that someone experienced what they said they experienced and still feel that the argument they make based on their experience is really, really wrong. (Vide the deeply felt personal essays one sometimes encounters about, say, a cis woman who encounters a trans woman at the gym and freaks out, etc.)
I think that this risk is the equal and opposite of the risk that exists in the nominally impersonal. I don't think there's a form of writing which gets at truth and removes social risk just by its nature.
And again, I want to stress that the personal always appears in the writing (maybe most weakly and obscurely in peer-reviewed science/math/medicine).
I tend to think that a stronger set of readerly tools is what's needed, more than anything else. You can sit there and parse the most "objective" NYT editorial, or whatever, and still pull out the (relevant) biases and personal quirks of the writer, given practice and self-confidence.
posted by Frowner at 6:22 AM on April 15, 2016 [8 favorites]
I ctrl+f'd for "lyric essay" and go no hits, which is bizarre to me, because that's exactly the genre that his examples (David Foster Wallace, Leslie Jamison, Geoff Dyer) are writing within, not straight up "criticism".
I'm personally tired of "criticism" such as this piece that offer no actual criticism, but merely present a stance. Why is the lyric essay a poor mode for criticism? Why is it popular now? What does it do that differs it from other modes? Reading Guriel's piece didn't answer any of those questions, but it sure let me know he doesn't like it!
I mean, the author himself follows the form he's criticizing, starting the piece with his personal interaction with the issue ("Browsing the arts and culture pages of various websites recently, I kept running smack into it..."). I don't know how intentional this was, since the piece doesn't read as parody, but what am I to make of that?
I think there's much to be said about the rise of the lyric essay as a mode of criticism, touching on the confessional nature of online writing (Livejournal, blogs) as well as the popularity of reviews/criticism descending from the Lester Bangs-school (Pitchfork, AV Club), but this piece doesn't even attempt any of that. It's just a customer's complaint, written as if the audience was the customer service department.
If anyone's at all interested in the lyric essay and/or personal essay/criticism, I highly recommend Maggie Nelson. Her recent work, The Argonauts and The Art of Cruelty, are absolutely phenomenal pieces of writing.
posted by fryman at 6:32 AM on April 15, 2016 [4 favorites]
I'm personally tired of "criticism" such as this piece that offer no actual criticism, but merely present a stance. Why is the lyric essay a poor mode for criticism? Why is it popular now? What does it do that differs it from other modes? Reading Guriel's piece didn't answer any of those questions, but it sure let me know he doesn't like it!
I mean, the author himself follows the form he's criticizing, starting the piece with his personal interaction with the issue ("Browsing the arts and culture pages of various websites recently, I kept running smack into it..."). I don't know how intentional this was, since the piece doesn't read as parody, but what am I to make of that?
I think there's much to be said about the rise of the lyric essay as a mode of criticism, touching on the confessional nature of online writing (Livejournal, blogs) as well as the popularity of reviews/criticism descending from the Lester Bangs-school (Pitchfork, AV Club), but this piece doesn't even attempt any of that. It's just a customer's complaint, written as if the audience was the customer service department.
If anyone's at all interested in the lyric essay and/or personal essay/criticism, I highly recommend Maggie Nelson. Her recent work, The Argonauts and The Art of Cruelty, are absolutely phenomenal pieces of writing.
posted by fryman at 6:32 AM on April 15, 2016 [4 favorites]
The LA Review of Books is really into this style of moi-based critical essay, too much so I think. You shouldn't have to write at length about yourself to get your critical personality across, it should be implicit in the voice and the way you go at things.
I like hybrid stuff like Elif Batuman writes, but not everyone has such an engaging persona or knows how to use it. In reviewing I think a whole lot of moi is mostly tolerable if it's important enough for the reader to know where the critic is coming from that it would be weird and dishonest to leave some idea of that out.
Also, I'm English and have the impression that the informality threshold is lower in US magazines - like, that you can be a bit more rambly and slangy and personal before an editor starts wanting to intervene or the reader starts wanting you to knock it off.
posted by Mocata at 6:41 AM on April 15, 2016
I like hybrid stuff like Elif Batuman writes, but not everyone has such an engaging persona or knows how to use it. In reviewing I think a whole lot of moi is mostly tolerable if it's important enough for the reader to know where the critic is coming from that it would be weird and dishonest to leave some idea of that out.
Also, I'm English and have the impression that the informality threshold is lower in US magazines - like, that you can be a bit more rambly and slangy and personal before an editor starts wanting to intervene or the reader starts wanting you to knock it off.
posted by Mocata at 6:41 AM on April 15, 2016
Actually, though, despite having said that I'm not always about the personal criticism, "impersonal" criticism seems like it potentially puts a lot of the burden on people with marginalized identities, since I think that in a lot of readerly circles the "impersonal" voice is always assumed to be white and cis, and usually assumed to be male, straight, a citizen, able-bodied, etc, unless someone metaphorically raises their hand and says "no I am writing this essay and I am [identity]".
I mean, personal criticism does too, I guess, since there's still a higher expectation for marginalized people to share deep and maybe painful stuff in order to legitimize themselves - it is a lot easier for me to share kind of banal stuff about my non-marginalized personal experiences than it would be to write something about being fat, queer, gender-nonconforming/transish, because those experiences are intense to talk about, and complicated, even when they are not negative. Also, more complicated to explain to people who do not share those identities, and potentially negative - like, if I write something that talks about complicated feelings about gender or sexuality, is that going to be used to bash on some other queer/trans person?
posted by Frowner at 6:52 AM on April 15, 2016 [4 favorites]
I mean, personal criticism does too, I guess, since there's still a higher expectation for marginalized people to share deep and maybe painful stuff in order to legitimize themselves - it is a lot easier for me to share kind of banal stuff about my non-marginalized personal experiences than it would be to write something about being fat, queer, gender-nonconforming/transish, because those experiences are intense to talk about, and complicated, even when they are not negative. Also, more complicated to explain to people who do not share those identities, and potentially negative - like, if I write something that talks about complicated feelings about gender or sexuality, is that going to be used to bash on some other queer/trans person?
posted by Frowner at 6:52 AM on April 15, 2016 [4 favorites]
Also, you know who needs to be named when talking about this lyric/confessional essay thing? James Baldwin. I didn't realize until reading Gore Vidal's memoir what a giant figure Baldwin was - I'd always assumed that he was famous-on-the-left, like someone who writes for the Nation, but not famous-like-appearing-on-TV-regularly. I can't imagine we'd have had David Foster Wallace (or, honestly, a lot of the big names in seventies/eighties feminist writing) without Baldwin.
posted by Frowner at 7:06 AM on April 15, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by Frowner at 7:06 AM on April 15, 2016 [5 favorites]
I edit out nearly 50% of most essays, most talk that leads to recipes. I parse until I arrive at the subject matter, the rest is matter I don't want to be subjected to. The chatty web has inflated all writing, writing is the web, so writers who compete for pay, have to mirror the zeitgeist.
Food writers, recipe sharers, so much verbiage before you get to the cabbage.
"Less is more."
Mies van der Rohe
posted by Oyéah at 7:59 AM on April 15, 2016
Food writers, recipe sharers, so much verbiage before you get to the cabbage.
"Less is more."
Mies van der Rohe
posted by Oyéah at 7:59 AM on April 15, 2016
(David Foster Wallace, Leslie Jamison, Geoff Dyer) are writing within, not straight up "criticism".
I'm trying to remember if there's a single piece in The Empathy Exams that is primarily about analyzing another work of art, and one's not coming to me, but I don't have it to hand. At least DFW did write literary criticism.
posted by praemunire at 8:19 AM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
I'm trying to remember if there's a single piece in The Empathy Exams that is primarily about analyzing another work of art, and one's not coming to me, but I don't have it to hand. At least DFW did write literary criticism.
posted by praemunire at 8:19 AM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
The editing-out-the-personal-stuff is an invaluable tool on YouTube, where I've given up on a number of channels ostensibly of interest to me because the signal to noise ratio is so low. Others are really spiced up by the personality ol the presenter (I will not say vlogger, because it is avhorrent to me) but only when they have the wit to keep the meat coming.
You've got to have a story to tell, and you've got to know how to tell it. Everything else is up for grabs.
posted by Devonian at 9:13 AM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
You've got to have a story to tell, and you've got to know how to tell it. Everything else is up for grabs.
posted by Devonian at 9:13 AM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
I feel very strongly about the idea that objectivity does not exist
You pretty sure about that?
I can't prove a negative, but if objectivity exists, I've never seen it and can't even imagine what it would look like.
posted by straight at 11:55 AM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
You pretty sure about that?
I can't prove a negative, but if objectivity exists, I've never seen it and can't even imagine what it would look like.
posted by straight at 11:55 AM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
Also, I don't think that not writing yourself into your essay is the same as being impersonal, because you can't be impersonal. If you read, for example, Umberto Eco's literary criticism, you quite readily see the person who is there, and I don't think this is because Eco is too dumb to hide himself behind a scrim of writerly objectivity.
Which the linked essay agrees with as I read it
Good criticism, like good films, will always give the impression of depth, of a presiding, trustworthy personality. Smart sentences, one after the other, are usually heartbeat enough.
The main thing I think is just that there are certain "tricks" of the confessional/personal framing that can get as formulaic as anything.
posted by atoxyl at 9:37 PM on April 15, 2016
Which the linked essay agrees with as I read it
Good criticism, like good films, will always give the impression of depth, of a presiding, trustworthy personality. Smart sentences, one after the other, are usually heartbeat enough.
The main thing I think is just that there are certain "tricks" of the confessional/personal framing that can get as formulaic as anything.
posted by atoxyl at 9:37 PM on April 15, 2016
The real thing about criticism is insight. It's the way that a critic can make a work reflect other depths and dimensions than you might have considered otherwise.
The use of the first person singular, or not, isn't the defining factor in criticism. I was heavily influenced by Lester Bangs when I did critiques, but that's not the point. My favourite critic was the late Jay Scott, and he had a style that was casual but always sharp and smart.
posted by ovvl at 6:46 PM on April 19, 2016
The use of the first person singular, or not, isn't the defining factor in criticism. I was heavily influenced by Lester Bangs when I did critiques, but that's not the point. My favourite critic was the late Jay Scott, and he had a style that was casual but always sharp and smart.
posted by ovvl at 6:46 PM on April 19, 2016
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posted by DoctorFedora at 2:20 AM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]