The Role of the Critic: The Role of the Reviewer

SYMPOSIUM THE ROLE OF THE CRITIC THE ROLE OF THE REVIEWER The relationship between literary criticism and book reviewing is the focus of the following symposium. Is this one of those unspoken controversies that continues to bubble along, influencing opinions, decisions, and judgements? Do reviewers suspect that scholar critics are afraid or incapable of making value judgements about any books which aren't already safely canonized? Do they believe literary criticism is dull and irrelevant, as self-referential as alchemy? Do critics, on the other hand, see reviewers as merely puff writers or ax grinders, corrupted by the tides of the marketplace? Have the two roles become mutually exclusive and, if so, why? Is this either a necessary or healthy state of affairs? Here, some respected scholar/critics and critic/reviewers offer their comments about such questions. We welcome further responses by our readers. VARIETIES OF BOOK-MEDIATION / Robert B. Heilman "Reviewers" and "critics" do not divide themselves into distinguishable classes as clearly and comfortably as our use of the terms might suggest. Granted, "reviewers" are more likely to do their thing in dailies or weeklies, to report on a book rather close to its publication date, to get it done in a thousand words or less, to prefer routine to spectacle, and to treat a book as a piece of news which, like all news, is born today and dies tomorrow. "Critics," of course, do their thing mostly in monthlies or quarterlies, are usually free to wander all over the maps of their minds and memories before settling down to the book or books in hand, find it hard to stop short of five thousand words, and may not get the job done until one to three years have prolonged the anxieties of the authors. Granted, too, that thinker-commentators of this order fall into two subgenres—the "critic," whose main area is either the little mags (mostly non-paying) or the big quarterUes, magisterial in mien and often handsome in honoraria; and the "scholar," who is less the roving intellect-at-large and more the "expert" who patrols a chosen field with authority and sees that its rules, regulations, and patterns are kept in mind, and whose honorarium is whatever honor may accrue to his conduct of the rites of approval and disapproval. Now to sketch not only an A class and a B class but also a B-I type and a B-2 type may suggest diversity rather than homogeneity or even analogy. Besides, there is enough mutual disesteem in the air to encourage the casual observer to think of reviewer and critic as different and hostile species. Critic on reviewer: rapid-fire journalist, clichés instead of analytic thought, voice of current attitudes, his ship always feeling the winds of editorial policy and advertisers' wills. Critic on scholar: heavy, heavy, heavy; no range of mind; devoted to procedural propriety and canons of accuracy rather than driven by intellectual power. Reviewer on scholar: rigid player of private in-house games in his fraternity. Reviewer on critic: self-indulgent wanderer all over the water-front, often with illusions of philosophic grandeur. I don't know whether it has happened yet, but it is likely to in a day when certain wits like to needle their peers with shocking plugs of the not usually plugged: some devotee of mass-cult phenomena will glorify the daily reviewer as the true voice of a basic and undervalued humanity, a voice that has alone glommed on to truth and reality—the huckster as unknown hero. But aside from such headline-grabbing escapades, the mutual disparagements by different cadres are little more than understandable ploys of self-esteem. Not that they don't make some points. But they deflect attention from the common grounds shared by the The Missouri Review · 263 various cadres as they go through their exercises. All mediators between books and their potential publics share a sense of audience, a sense of role and function, a sense of a relationship with the book-writer, and an uncertain medley of weaknesses and strengths, of ego-fattening display and ascetic submission to an impersonal task. Three major attitudes to audience appear...