W.H. Auden, in the essay “Reading” from the collection The Dyer’s Hand:
What is the function of a critic? So far as I am concerned, he can do me one or more of the following services:
- Introduce me to authors or works of which I was hitherto unaware.
- Convince me that I have undervalued an author or a work because I had not read them carefully enough.
- Show me relations between works of different ages and cultures which I could never have seen for myself because I do not know enough and never shall.
- Give a “reading” of a work which increases my understanding of it.
- Throw light upon the process of artistic “Making.”
- Throw light upon the relation of art to life, to science, economics, ethics, religion, etc.
From Mark Ford’s review of William Logan’s new book “Our Savage Art”:
Certainly his own critical persona owes much to this model; in his introduction to this book he figures himself as a version of Diogenes, the austere ancient Greek philosopher who lived in a tub and despised all people and possessions. “A critic who does his job,” Logan observes, “must be a good hater if he’s to be a good lover, because if he likes everything he reads he likes nothing well enough.”
Yes — but if he ‘hates’ nearly everything he reads or encounters, which seems like the case with Logan (I have not read him) and was certainly the case with Diogenes, does his opinion tell us anything about the work reviewed? Or just about the distance of the reviewer from human experience?
Or, is the belittling expression of disgust more excusable if it is articulate and sometimes witty, rather than merely frothing?
Or, does it simply arouse the same lesser passions as gossip and social intrigue?
Or, is passion passion, regardless of its sub-type nuance?
I have always felt a nostalgic longing for the sort of passionate art audiences that rioted at the premiere of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring”…
