April comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers

W.H. Auden, "The More Loving One"


Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

In my daily reading, I ran across someone quoting W.H. Auden's list of the functions of a critic, which I think is brilliant, and the list that anybody who writes critically ought to be checking themself against:

"What is the function of a critic?

So far as I am concerned, he can do me one or more of the following services:

1. Introduce me to authors or works of which I was hitherto unaware.

2. Convince me that I have undervalued an author or a work because I had not read them carefully enough.

3. 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.

4. Give a “reading” of a work which increases my understanding of it.

5. Throw light upon the process of artistic “making.”

6. Throw light upon the relation of art to life, to science, economics, ethics, religion, etc."


The tortured relationship between creators and critics has been on my mind lately, such as in the idiotic whining of Scott Kurtz about an overall favorable review of one of his books by Johanna Draper Carlson--Kurtz is apparently under the impression that the function of a critic is to Help the Artist Improve, which he's much too manly to need, and thus critics are unnecessary and should just shut the fuck up--or in the snarky, but tolerantly amused comparison Carla Speed McNeil makes of a critic's perception of "deep structures" within a creator's work to fanfiction, since after all, if the creater didn't mean to put it there, it obviously can't be there, right? By which logic--creator's intention is the ultimate arbiter of what a work contains, or how well it succeeds in doing what it's meant to do--there's no sexist crap at all in Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End, because Clarke didn't mean to put it in. And I don't give a shit what your preferred stripe of literary theory is, that just ain't so. Entertaining, but stupid.

On a slight side note, nothing cracks me up so much as creators who think that the creative process is a sacred mystery only professional creators can experience or divine. Because obviously no person who is not a published creator could possibly have ever created anything in their life. It's just, wow, how arrogant are you? Like teenagers who think they invented sex.

But, um, anyway. The functions of a critic, that's a wonderful list that really hits the good stuff. To my mind, someone's not a good critic unless they regularly hit several points on the list; they're not even a real critic to me unless they are able to at least occasionally achieve more than one point on the list, certainly not worth my time unless they do. But that is what critics are for, what they contribute to culture, why criticism is fascinating and valuable. It's the thoughtful reaction, the observations made not to the creator who has completed the work, but to the audiences who will be looking at the work, to scholars, to creators who will create in the future. It's the context, the outside perspective, the intellectual analysis of creative work and its place in culture.