Question 1: - What do you think a critic’s for? This is the equivalent of asking someone “Why do you want this job?”. If, as is often said, no-one remembers a critic, why on earth become one? Basically, there are two sorts of critic, as TS Eliot helpfully informs us in his excellent, if slightly snotty essay ‘The Perfect Critic’: there’s critics who JUDGE and critics who ELUCIDATE. So, once you’ve got your hands on a text, is your ultimate aim to make pronouncements on it, or to try to explain it? In short, will your investigations lead to a value judgement, or an appreciation - or both? Eliot leaves us in no doubt as to what he considers to be the proper business of criticism. First off, it’s a “disinterested exercise of intelligence”, by which he means the cultivation of a “free mind”. And free minds don’t rush to judgment. The “tendency to legislate rather than to inquire” curtails any act of perception - and curtailment, in Eliot’s view, is equated with distortion. The critic, he writes, should “have no emotions except those immediately provoked by a work of art”, so importing preconceptions from outside should be avoided wherever possible (which, as I’ve just noted, may well be an impossible ambition to fulfil). Nor should the critic write criticism because he can’t hack it as a creative writer, because this too will interfere with his ability to do the job properly: ideally, Eliot writes, “the critic and the creative artist should frequently be the same person.” That way, you’ll guarantee that his criticism is criticism, and not the “satisfaction of a suppressed creative wish”, which, if indulged “is apt to interfere fatally”. Or, put another way, result in a massive case of sour grapes. How many times have you read reviews that sound like the writer’s trying to take revenge, or has a personal score to settle with someone more talented than him? A lot, I’ll warrant. And this is precisely what Eliot’s saying here; personal feelings just don’t enter into it. Or shouldn’t, anyway. Particularly if you’re slagging someone off for being able to do something you can’t. But the fact remains that to judge something is by its very nature existential; you’re automatically placing yourself above it. It’s an act of self-definition; and it’s a common misconception that the louder you fulminate, the more notice people will take of you. And this approach has led to some splendidly entertaining criticism, from Johnson to Brian Sewell, who are never backwards in coming forward with their opinions. They’ll leave you in no doubt where they stand on an issue. Any issue. But to avoid the charge that the empty vessel rings the loudest, mere opinions are not enough - you have to provide the evidence to justify your stridency. As the critic Edmund Wilson notes, literary criticism "should deal expertly with ideas and art, not merely tell us whether the reviewer 'let out a whoop' for the book or threw it out the window." So if you are by temperament a judgmental creature, maybe you should consider a career in reviewing, where your opinions are valued as much for the entertainment they provide as the knowledge they impart. The more perverse the better, in fact. Just don’t, Eliot begs, confuse them with literary criticism. On the other hand, the Elucidator isn’t about directly imposing himself on the text, or primarily setting himself us a literary arbiter; he’s trying to explain not so much what something means, but how it means it. This approach is pretty much dominated by the backroom boys of criticism, who stamp their mark on literature in much subtler and insidious ways than the Fulminator. Which takes us on to Question 2: - Is any one critical approach more attractive to you than another? No form of criticism is innocent of theory, but some wear their theories on their sleeves more than others. Here’s a few to choose from: 1. Biographical: a writer’s meaning cannot be fully understood without frequent reference to his life story. Byron, for example, wrote the way he did because of who he was - aristocratic, libidinous and impulsive. Primarily Elucidatory, but can be Judgmental if you don’t approve of your subject’s lifestyle. See also (5). 2. Comparative: your criticism proceeds from examining the differences and similarities between two or more texts, writers, genres - whatever. Elucidatory, but Judgmental if you’re playing one text off against the other. 3. Ethical: assessing meaning from a moral standpoint. Hubert Selby Jnr’s seminal novel ‘Last Exit To Brooklyn’ isn’t good art because it deals with society’s dregs in a sensationalist manner. Primarily Judgmental, unless you’re a Humanist or an Atheist. 4. Expressive: a tricky one, this: the work of art is the product of the writer’s imagination, and so Expressive criticism focuses on the quality of the imagination or vision that produced it. Elucidatory, unless (3) intervenes. Can get very personal. See also (9). 5. Historical: approaches meaning with the assumption that the relationship between art and society is organic, each being a reflection of the other. So how a piece of writing reflects, or doesn’t reflect the period it was written in. Elucidatory, unless you’re also a journalist or historian whos doesn’t take kindly to inaccuracies. See also (7) and (10). 6. Impressionistic: an examination of the reaction the work in question evokes in the critic. The capacity to be very Judgmental, entirely down to the personality and tolerance of the critic. Most criticism up to the early 20th century fell into this category. 7. Mimetic: a comparison between how the writer finds the world and how he subsequently transforms it in his art. Very tempting to be Judgmental here if you find the writer’s vision pointlessly distorts the world. Or, in extreme case, if he distorts it at all. 8. Pragmatic: is of the opinion that the purpose of a piece of writing is to evoke specific reactions in its audience. Pragmatic criticism assesses what those reactions might be, and how well the writer has succeeded. Potentially Elucidatory and Judgmental. If the writer sets out to shock, as in Brett Easton Ellis’s ‘American Psycho’, did he succeed? 9. Psychological: what sort of mind dreams this stuff up? Psychological criticism peers into the writer’s subconscious, and, by extension, those of his characters. Primarily Elucidatory, but Judgmental if the critic doesn’t like what he finds in there. 10. Social: a huge growth area, this. Examines meaning from particular social and political viewpoints, including gay, feminist and racial perspectives. Hugely judgmental, and highly PC. 11. Textual: a detailed investigation of a text through close reading, focussing on the writer’s strategies for delivering his meaning. Mainly Elucidatory, and the central focus of this book. 12. Theoretical: formulating a principle of how meaning should be organized, then pouncing on a book and seeing if it conforms to this pre-ordained ideal. Again, hugely judgmental if the book fails the test; but Elucidatory if the book is allowed to dictate its own aesthetics. That’s just a few of the more mainstream ways of pulling a text apart. In practice, however, they’re mixed and matched depending on how much the critic is conscious of what he’s doing; some are rigidly doctrinal, others just pile in with no notion of what they’re after. Basically, however, all critical approaches can be coralled into one of two categories: those that judge literature by exterior standards, and those that are happy to allow literature to exist on its own terms. It’s basically an extension of the Judge/ Elucidator distinction we’ve just established. It’s also pretty obvious that those critics who import ideas and standards from outside the text are going to find more faults, usually of non-conformity, than those who don’t. So if you think the purpose of literature is to reflect life, then you’ll have no problem using Methods 1, 5 and 10 to dig around in the text, then Method 2 or 7 to look at the ways those two worlds, the real and the literary, stack up against one another. And then rate them accordingly. Which is fine if you’re critiquing a ‘faction’ novel about John F. Kennedy but completely inappropriate for the Symbolist poem that sets out to create its own interior world separate from the real one, because it will always be found wanting. In which case why not try Methods 4, 6, 9 or 12 that are more Elucidatory? You’ll be able to achieve a much more sympathetic appreciation of the poem’s meaning than if you simply diss it for being other-worldly. That’s not to say a social approach (Method 10) isn’t useful to look into the context of the poem - what cultural forces shaped the Symbolist movement; but it falls down completely when you actually delve into the text itself, because although Symbolist poets were, obviously, the products of society, their aesthetic tried wherever possible to ignore it. It’s a case of apples and oranges. Or, as Evelyn Waugh once memorably stated when a critic slagged off PG Wodehouse’s novels for not being realistic, “like taking a spade to a souffle”. Now this may seem self-evident, but actually, critics are falling into this trap all the time. And, if we’re to believe TS Eliot, have done for ages. “Our critics,” he wrote in his essay ‘Imperfect Critics’, “are often interested in extracting something from their subject which is not fairly in it. Critics are often interested - but not in the nominal subject, often in something a little beside the point.” And that, in a nutshell, is the problem with coming at literature with a pre-packaged approach. Literature doesn’t conform to your enthusiasms and therefore can’t be any good. But why on earth should it conform, either to what you think should be in it, or how you think it should be written? Shouldn’t it be allowed to determine its own agenda, both in terms of content and style?