Criticism of the Criticism

Is criticism too "snarky" these days? Or is everybody too nice? Those age-old questions have been revived and batted around by a certain art-focused segment of the blogosphere recently.

I think it began with Neal Pollack's New York Times account of his "break-up" with Dave Eggers. Or rather, it began with Eggers's lengthy "small correction" to that piece. (Read the Pollack piece, at minimum: it's funny.) Anyway, Eggers envisions a literary environment that is caring, encouraging, and mutually supportive all around. Which is a nice thought, but also kind of a dippy one, as some have been unable to resist pointing out, and in a manner that really isn't all that caring, encouraging, or mutually supportive.

These people have a point: earnestness in search of niceness is funny, irritating, and often quite lame. A common target of such criticism is the literary journal The Believer and its surrounding culture, described as "the literary equivalent of Up with People" in this article about Nick Hornby, and embodied in this famous manifesto contra crabby reviews. (The current Believer is the music issue, which includes a CD of artists covering each other's songs. That strikes some as obscenely smarmy and mutually-supportive - I guess if this is your first encounter with the covers comp. concept, it might seem that way.) As this New York Times piece points out, the blog The Shins Will Change Your Life, a collection of gushing music "criticism" presented without comment, is a kind of antidote.

The creeping niceness infects not only the critics, but those they criticize. Everyone has joined forces in a dippy, soppy, mutually-supportive mess. Except for a few bold critics of the critics who aren't afraid to stand up and be counted. They've never met anyone, they'll tell you, who didn't understand a slap across the mouth or a slug from a 45. Matthew Wilder ties it all together, denouncing the "new male infantilism" exemplified by Conor Oberst, Jonathon Safran Foer, and Wes Anderson. Everyone is a "Smurf Boy" these days. Where have all the tough guys gone?

Now, the hard-drinking, bar-brawling, womanizing, cigar-chomping, tough son of a bitch novelist is just as much a cliché as the supposedly-neo sensitive-artist figures caricatured here. And earnest nostalgia for an imaginary world populated primarily by these guys is funny in its own right. It's pretty common, too. There's always someone who will, for the sake of contrariness or as a cry for help, dismiss the year's entire book list as too effete and express the fervent wish that Norman Mailer would just come over and slap everyone around. "Don't make me come down there," they imagine Hemingway saying from his heavenly, rough and tumble cloud. You all better watch out, they say. Hemingway's coming. And when he does, he's gonna cut you.

It's the same way with music. The frail, bespectacled free-lance writer who once sold a piece to Rolling Stone and now works for the local alt-weekly can be seen down at the club, cowering in the corner and madly scribbling in his notepad: "where's the threat? where's the danger? Rock and roll is supposed to be about fucking and fighting. Fucking and fighting! Fucking and fighting! Its center of gravity is located in the hips, not the brain. It's the siren song of the switchblade, the muscle car, hard drugs, and paternity suits, not some weeping adolescent's bedroom. Where is this band's third leg? Oh, God, I hate myself..." Similarly, rock writers in Britain want you to be "American," or you don't compute: and by "American," they mean a kind of cave man. It's a dreamy fantasy.

As for whether criticism is too nice or snarky, it depends on whose ox is gored. An over-the-top hit piece can be enjoyable in its own right if it's done skillfully enough, even if you like the thing being trashed. But as a rule: if you like the target, you get irritated, and if you don't like the target, you say "hear hear" and forward it to your friends list and post the link on your blog.

And if you are the target? Well, you pretend to be a good sport about it. And then you put this critic on your personal enemies list and fantasize constantly about his or her destruction. And you never forget. Years later they call your publicist and ask to be on the list for a show, at which they try to pal around with you like you're old friends who've been through a lot together. Most of them don't seem all that concerned with keeping an eye on their drink just in case someone might put something in it when they're not looking. Which is mystifying.

Anyway, when it comes to criticism of the criticism, poisoning someone's drink is, perhaps, a bit over the top. Understatement and irony are far better, which is why The Shins Will Change Your Life is the perfect critic criticism. Read the whole thing and laugh heartily. Because someone, somewhere, is laughing at you.

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