Joseph Epstein
In his 1928 essay “The Critic Who Does Not Exist,” Edmund Wilson asked a question that was pleading to be asked: “How is it possible for our reviewing to remain so puerile?” He then offered this typically Wilsonian observation: “When a new book of American poetry or a novel or other work of belles lettres appears, one gets the impression that it is simply given to almost any well-intentioned (but not even necessarily literate) person who happens to present himself; and this person then describes in a review his emotions upon reading the book.”
If that was true in 1928, glance around to see how much truer it is now. The average reviewer’s idea of literary comment is indistinguishable from a primary school book report: summary flanked by quotation, interspersed with how the book made him feel, as if his feelings have anything at all to do with the artistic success or failure of what he’s read. They do not. Where the novel is concerned, part of the problem is that many publications harness other novelists to do the reviewing. They must go this route for the obvious reason that our culture currently suffers from a dearth of Edmund Wilsons, H. L. Menckens, Elizabeth Hardwicks, and Lionel Trillings. But one can’t get around the fact that most creative writers don’t know the first thing about the critical mind. They can’t tell F. R. Leavis from R. P. Blackmur and they don’t much care to.
