A Different Reviewer’s Life
Whose critiques are we reading?
Somebody I follow on social media recently shared a piece titled “A Reviewer’s Life” by writer Christine Smallwood in The Yale Review. The subheading, “The material constraints of writing criticism today,” promised a much-needed conversation on the privilege of doing criticism. It turned out to be an empty promise. This brief piece, of course, could not have surveyed extensively the material constraints of criticism, but an attempt would have been welcome. Instead, the author offers some light remarks on her own longing for money and success as a critic, of being above people working in the natural sciences, and of critics as precarious laborers not unlike many occupations today. These self-indulgent meditations, as valid as they might be, are not particularly interesting. The fact that they have been published in The Yale Review, on the other hand, does allow for a conversation around the material constraints of criticism.
Smallwood opens by saying she has been a critic for two decades and has thus become used to receiving books in the mailbox often despite not even asking for them. With such a long trajectory, one — and I am unsure who this one would be, certainly not the readers of this outlet — may think she has money or influence. Not so fast, she tells us. Nowadays critics do this labor out of love and passion; full-time freelance criticism does not pay the rent for a Manhattan apartment. This observation could have been followed by something more substantial than mere self-indulgence: the critic, she says, gifts us with their autobiography while engaging with an object. As each of us is different, there are no absolutes in criticism. Had she wanted those, she would have entered the mechanical natural sciences, she implies.
It is unfortunate that the neoliberal organization of academia has completely taken over the mind of brilliant people who defend their standing in either the humanities or the STEM camp. In reality, though the humanities are certainly vulnerable to vocal attacks by conservatives over their lack of career prospects and their radical politics, the natural sciences often find themselves in a similar situation. Certain kinds of scientific work, such as advances in medicine for marginalized populations, must navigate regulations by ill-informed conservative lawmakers. The STEM disciplines across campuses are not protected by their catchy acronym either. Yesterday, the University of North Carolina at Asheville announced the likely closure of programs such as philosophy, Ancient Mediterranean civilizations, religious studies, and physics. Despite its firm location within STEM, physics frequently stands next to other unpopular disciplines that allegedly drain the budget of state schools. The lack of respect for knowledge transmission and production from government officials and the general public does not respect the artificial disciplinary border between STEM and the humanities. This is especially true for public institutions serving low-income and minority populations: it is far more likely for chemistry and physics to be discontinued in such a campus than it is for Sanskrit and Ancient Greek to be discontinued by Harvard. As somebody with a Ph.D. from Columbia University, it would have been powerful for Smallwood to acknowledge this material constraint of writing criticism.
Even if we concede that criticism requires a way of thinking that is different from a scientific study in a laboratory, it remains unsatisfactory to think of these two activities as opposites. When a critic reads a text, they often need to consult scientific studies to contextualize them. Can one offer a brilliant critique of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein without knowing about science in the early nineteenth century? Does Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket truly shine without taking into account geography and physics? There are also new branches of literary criticism that engage more seriously with the sciences: calculating the usage of nouns and adjectives in poetry, surveying the texts are included in literary anthologies, or gathering poll data on the reception of bestsellers — these all provide interesting information about literature. While I do not suggest that these methods should displace or even share the spotlight with closed reading, I think literary criticism has room for them.
This symbiotic relation goes both ways. The humanities help nourish the natural sciences. The classic example is that science tells us how to clone dinosaurs, but the humanities — in the form of Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park — advise us not to. Ethics certainly have at times saved humanity from employing the scientific method for evil. The humanities, nonetheless, are more than the natural sciences’s strict nanny. Art and its interpretation push people to think outside the box. Cyrano de Bergerac, somewhat in jest, imagined that humans would go to space in the Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon. Centuries later, they did.
Let’s leave Smallwood’s unnecessary and out-of-touch dismissal of the natural sciences for a moment. I am interested in Smallwood’s claim that in the popular imagination the critic is “evil, sneering, vicious” but in reality critics tend to be disinterested, passionate people. I agree that critics love what they do. This does not mean that everybody experiences the labor of criticism in the same way. Some critics — few, admittedly — do manage to become celebrities, at least in the cultural sphere. Like Smallwood, they publish books and easily share blog posts in The Yale Review. While they might not possess the same level of fame and financial success as top-ranked musicians and athletes, they can supplement their criticism with other white-collar jobs. It is much harder for early-career scholars and for minorities to enjoy anything like that as critics. Public institutions, as I mentioned earlier, tend to present the most obvious material constraints for critics: precarious wages, excessive teaching assignments, and a mood of insecurity that prevents thinking of criticism as a disinterested pastime. Some critics might not be in graduate school at all. For such critics, criticism is not an act of vanity. It is the act of finding a voice and using it to make room for people who historically have been excluded from the institution of Culture. There is power in criticism, but not the kind that Smallwood imagines — flashing cameras, a mansion, and a six-figure job — but rather the power of speaking out against injustices.
Careers in the humanities, including literary criticism, are certainly not known for leading to wealth and fame. Yet they still find themselves in the same circuits of power as other institutions — some fare much better than others. Acknowledging this interior inequity is a much better use of our resources than petty fights with other disciplines, which are often dealing with similar problems. Ironically, Smallwood’s piece does teach us a lot about the material constraints of writing criticism today. Some get to superficially consider these constraints in The Yale Review while others are still working in finding outlets for thoughts they’ve had for a long time.
