A critic's job isn't easy

It happens.

Which is to say that occasionally, collective critical opinion will fail to give a particular work its due in terms of artistic and future artistic merit. Naturally, for the artist who has remained chained to his canvas, writing desk or music stand for months and often years, mistaken opinion does not occur often enough. He is convinced his work is brilliant, even genius. He quickly critiques his criticism, calls it shoddy or quick or hackneyed or utter crap.

But within a year he is generally proven wrong. The work remains unread or unheard and its so-called global significance is proven nonexistent. He must accept that his piece was not genius, accept that his critique was bad sportsmanship and resolve to try harder next time. So it goes.

But sometimes it doesn’t. Following the publication of James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” playwright George Bernard Shaw likened the work to a cat rubbing its nose in its own filth. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was lampooned for its length. Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” was meanly deferred as “a mass of stupid filth.” “Moby Dick” became “an ill-compounded mixture of romance and matter-of-fact” (which may not be entirely untrue).

Why does this happen? Because the critic is your average Homo sapien. He makes mistakes. Call it myopia or quick reading, or just plain mean-spiritedness. Whatever it is, it fails to see the work as precedent setting and dismisses its innovation as artistic merit taken too far.

But humor the critic by putting yourself in his shoes for a moment. Realize that your job isn’t only to assess the work within its historical and cultural context, but to provide your reader with a meaning he can understand. You can’t compromise the integrity of the magazine or journal or newspaper by lauding praises on something that most will consider boring or, in the case of “Ulysses,” pornographic. That angers your editor and, what’s worse, your loyal reader.

You’re unsure of your own opinion and you can’t sit with the work and decide because you have a deadline. Maybe you’re hesitant to shoot down a piece you’re still unsure about, but choosing a compromise isn’t an option because your job is to provide staunch opinion. So you go with what you know: you say the work is confusing or boring or stupid and you throw in some clever sentences so that your reader will agree with your opinion. Then you sigh, refill your coffee, decide which of the 100-plus manuscripts deserves reviewing and go through the same process all over again.
As described by food critic in the film, “Ratatouille,” “The work of a critic is easy. We risk very little.” This is not true. As soon as the critic has achieved some level of reader agreement he is immediately unsafe, on the firing squad. One false step, one bad opinion where it counts, will destroy his reliability. And because he provides the voice of reason and meaning to the public, his first opinion must be the correct opinion. There can be no going back. He either defends his battles to the death or he melts into obscurity.

No one can ever see all the components of a piece of art because to do so would be to foresee wars and bans and fickle readers. Maybe one day we can learn to forgive the critic once we realize the burden that he carries. But whether or not we choose forgiveness once one we’ve achieved empathy remains our own opinion.

Unfortunately for the critic, he must never forget that his reader has one too.