April comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers

More good manga criticism. (See the previous post on Pluto.)


The Hooded Utilitarian, which I have recently begun reading, and have come to love, has been having a roundtable discussion by its contributors on Hitoshi Ashishano's Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou (Record of a Yokohama Shopping Trip) (aka YKK), a lovely, peaceful, pastoral manga about a coffee-house owner named Alpha who rides around on her motorcycle taking pictures of the gorgeous rural landscape, occasionally serves coffee to the odd visitor, and who, because this is manga, which is still heavily shaped by Tezuka, happens to be a robot. The setting is a future Japan, altered by, we think, global warming; the populace is thinning, but no one really seems all that stressed. The mood and the method are understated. It's a fan-favorite in my circle of the manga-reading interwebs, we who don't necessarily worry too hard about scanlations (YKK has never been licensed, and, sadly, probably never will be), and have excellent taste, and who read and love good stuff like Usamaru Furuya manga, and Ai Yazawa manga, and of course, Naruto.

Bill Randall, bless his heart, likes YKK, but calls it "reactionary" (he makes a coherent argument for that, but it cracks me up, if only for the pure shock value. This is why I love reading good criticism: only there will you see concepts like "pastoral" and "reactionary" discussed together and in a way that makes sense). Dirk Deppey, who, at present, authors The Comics Journal's blog, Journalista, and is a vocal fan of YKK, takes exception to the "reactionary" thing, which prompts more discussion on The Hooded Utilitarian, and Deppey saunters over at some point to weigh in some more. I realize this sounds like I'm dryly describing a wankfest, but all of these people appear to like and respect each other, and the entire discussion is polite, despite the fact that Deppey happens to be at political odds with I think the entire Utilitarian crew. It's a great sequence of critical exchanges, sort of what I think criticism is when it's working right and no one is ego-tripping. Informative, insightful, and yes, important. Gorgeous.

In sequence:
I: The Hooded Utilitarian: Warm Apocalypse
II: The Hooded Utilitarian: The Past Will Drown the Future
III: The Hooded Utilitarian: Quiet Inn Late in Day (A)
IV: The Hooded Utilitarian: Quiet Inn Late in Day (B)
V: The Hooded Utilitarian: Desire is Suffering
VI: Dirk Deppey at Journalista suggests chilling out to better get it (scroll down)
VII: The Hooded Utilitarian: YKK Fight! (1)
VIII: The Hooded Utilitarian: YKK Fight! (2)
IX: The Hooded Utilitarian: Reaction

My absolute, hands-down favorite in this whole thing, is when Berlatsky links to Deppey's initial commentary thusly: "[Dirk] thunders his fist down upon our placid roundtable and accuses us all of being insufficiently mellow."

If you don't feel like reading them all (none are terribly long), pick a Utilitarian column at random and read it; each is strong on its own merits.

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.