Wyatt Mason, a contributing editor at Harper’s, has recently produced a number of articles for the Harper’s website concerning the relationship between novelists and their critics. It is Mr. Mason’s feeling, as most recently expressed in an article that reprints a letter Phillip Roth never sent to Diana Trilling, that novelists have not only a right but a duty to respond to criticism of their work. This is obviously something that Mr. Mason has thought about deeply, and he makes compelling and interesting arguments.
If only I could agree with him.
As an aspiring novelist–and O! for the day when I can get Drayton published and have that accursed “aspiring” removed–I’ve thought about critics, reviewers, and what my relationship with them should be, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it is all none of my damned business. It seems to me that the relationship between a writer or any kind of an artist and a critic is similar to the relationship between the Grand Canyon and somebody who stands on its edge and judges it to be too deep or not wide enough. The thoughts of the person evaluating the Canyon are meaningless to the Canyon itself.
We don’t expect the Canyon to suddenly fill in or widen just because some guy–no matter how fine and beautiful that person’s aesthetic sense may be–says that’s how it ought to be. It’s the same with any work of art. All critics are looking at the thing after the fact. It is what it is, and nothing said by the most perceptive critic is going to change that. In relation to the artist who created the work, all critiques of the work are too late because they are too late to be helpful–if helpful, in fact, they are. This is why artists often agree with Aristophanes, who famously said that critics are legless men who teach running.
However, I don’t think that’s really true. To understand this, we have to understand what the critic’s role is. To me, the critic’s function is twofold: Critics interpret, and critics evaluate. Now, I believe that Mr. Mason’s thesis is that artists have a vested interest in making sure that their work is interpreted and evaluated correctly. The problem with that is, I think, that it is the artist’s job to merely create. Interpretation and evaluation are functions outside the job description.
Many times, over the years, as I’ve looked back on one or another of my failed projects, I have seen themes that I hadn’t realized were there when I was working on it. I found meanings implicit in the work that I had not intended and themes I hadn’t consciously designed. Typically, the unconscious stuff was better than what I had consciously intended, and probably wouldn’t have been there had I been aware of it. My point in this is that the artist is not necessarily the best interpreter of his or her own work.
Creating any work of art is the act of being overwhelmed. It is a huge endeavor, the writing of a novel perhaps more so than other artistic endeavors, and my experience of it was not so much one of control as much as a kind of dogged floundering. As I’ve said before, “Writing a novel . . . mostly feels like you’re trying to swim from the White Cliffs of Dover to Coney Island. You spend most of your time alone and at-sea, and all you can do is to follow the sun over the horizon.” There’s no time for interpretation because your main concern is just trying to keep alive.
And so, interpretation and evaluation are the realm of the critic. And should Drayton get published and reviewed and picked apart, even in the most flattering way, I will make no effort to find out what is said. For one thing, I won’t be going back to change it, so any criticism–which would, perforce, be specific to that project–won’t have any effect on it. Second, since what one can expect is that different critics will have different interpretations and evaluations of the book, how is one to sort out who is right and who is wrong? Why should I predicate any future works on the comments of anyone? The artist who works to please anyone, no matter how refined their taste, is aesthetically dead.
That’s because there are only two things that can happen when an artist reads a review. It’s either going to hurt terribly and pointlessly or it’s going to fill the artist’s head with all sorts of notions that are best avoided. Praise is perhaps even more deadly than bile, and little can undermine true talent more quickly than coming to believe in one’s own genius.
Finally, I think that reviews and critical essays are conversations between readers–in the case of novels–and that the author might be an object appraised in that discussion, but is not properly a party to it. If the work of a reviewer or critic is without merit, let it be attacked, but not by the poor author. Let the other readers do the job. They have far more of a vested interest in the matter and shouldn’t expect the artist to do their dirty work for them.
