Criticizing other writers

We just got back from a few days out of town, visiting some friends. The friends are writers, and they invited some friends over for dinner, and the friends' friends were writers too. And then we went out and bumped into some more writers.

It was all a lot of fun--I like meeting other writers. But it's easy to see how the literary world can come to seem awfully incestuous. I've resisted many times, on this blog, the notion that contemporary literature is nothing more than a big clique, and that all that matters is who you know--the notion is cynical and reductive. But knowing lots of other writers is nearly inevitable, especially if you study or teach at a college, and for the most part it's desirable, too.

It becomes problematic, though, when you wish to perform the geuinely useful act of substantively criticizing other people's work. What if you end up on a panel with that writer someday, or have to deliver a reading together? What if that writer reviews books, as well, and yours falls onto her desk?

The screenwriter and novelist Derek Haas left a comment to the last post, in response to the thumbs-down I had just given his thriller. As you can see (and as he further proved in a subsequent email exchange), he's a good sport with a thick skin. But not everyone's like that. Indeed, hardly anyone is, and that's too bad.

Writers should criticize one another, respectfully and carefully. To offer only praise for the things you like doesn't quite constitute a useful dialogue--if something bugs you about a peer's work, and you can support your views, you ought to be able to express them, calmly, without the fear of making an enemy--and you should have the humility to accept similar criticism yourself. Of course, this is a hopelessly idealistic approach: in one of my many rants about book reviewing, I have probably said that the only people who are really qualified to review books are other writers. But other writers have prejudices and allegiances that are hard to overcome, and the results often come off either as hopeless snarking or professional backscratching, delivered with a wink.

I was talking with some colleagues about book reviewing, and I said that I preferred getting an intelligent bad review than a positive puff piece. And one colleague turned to me and said, "Bullshit." Well--she's kind of right. I certainly would prefer a ditzy rave to a thorough intellectual thrashing. But most of the reviews I've gotten that flattered me the most are ones that, at least in part, took me to task for subtle weaknesses in my work. One memorable review, in praising a recent book of mine, took the time to dismiss my first two, and my main reaction was, "Whoa--they actually read the first two." What I meant, I suppose, is that I would rather be read carefully than praised thoughtlessly, and accept the possibility that I might be found lacking. I think most serious writers feel the same way. We want to be part of something alive, something rigorous, not merely players in yet another form of casual entertainment. We need to keep one another on our toes, to have the respect to give and receive criticism.

All of this is on my mind, as I have a new book coming out next week and am bracing myself for negative reactions, or, worse, no reactions at all. I hope I can learn something from the former, but if I can't, I fear I will end up on my knees, begging the world for faint praise.

Escapism

Robert Stone’s Prime Green wasn’t what I’d hoped for from the author of the marvelous novels Dog Soldiers and Children of Light, but I was surprised that he’d write a memoir of any kind. It was surprisingly light, and falteringly written. He begins the book with an account of the various ports of the southern hemisphere, and how the American sailors are received variously, with differing degrees of admiration and disdain, and yet it seems antique to Stone, and to me, that he didn’t suffer either extreme—neither greatly admired nor greatly disdained.

I don’t know what it means to be against the current war. Believing I am against it, I am able to go about enjoying the benefits of America with very little contemplation. When I counsel my graduating high school students about college, the military is never mentioned. We talk about other things. (Though two former students, that I know of, are in uniform.) On KCRW this morning, a commentator mentioned that the U.S. Army has raised the entry age from 32 to 43. Since I am merely 35, my direct participation in the war is voluntary, and will remain so eight more years. What conclusions am I to draw from this? Are my days spent as an alternative to participating in the war? Can I truly claim to be against the war? Would it not be more sensible to join the U.S. Army and then refuse to serve?

This is a reading-related chain of thoughts from this morning’s Los Angeles Times, which runs two obituaries back-to-back. French theorist Jean Baudrillard rubs his chin on B15, and on B16 Brian Freeman, an Army Reserve Captain (link to L.A. Times article is unavailable) from nearby Temecula, hugs his children. Baudrillard wrote about the ridiculousness of America, then died of cancer; Freeman was abducted from a base in Karbala and executed by Shiite insurgents disguised as (creating a simulacrum of) U.S. soldiers.

I dug Baudrillard when I was an undergraduate. Among the French theorists we were told to read, he alone interested me or seemed relevant. Because my focus as a reader and a writer has always been poetry, it was permitted for me to not understand current theory, to my relief. Looking at the poetry and fiction of my generation, at least that which I prefer, it’s hard to see much influence. However it’s also hard to see much critical observation worth their salt. Notable exceptions are in poetry, The Lichtenberg Figures and Angle of Yaw, by Ben Lerner; in fiction The Seas, by Samantha Hunt. And of course, Mailman, by J. Robert Lennon.

But mostly the writers I admire, the best writers of today, are sleepwalking.

I have found in my sleepwalk retreat books about mystery and, in the best sense of the word, wonder. In some earlier life I hope I was enthralled by alchemy. Too much science (which I also only lightly understand) exists now, or at least this afternoon, to be enthralled. It takes work, patience. Lawrence Weschler is a proponent of it: just finished Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder, about the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, which I’ve visited five times since moving to southern California. It made me pull from the shelf two books I treasure, A Long Desire and The White Lantern, by Evan S. Connell. The two books of essays were collected as the Aztec Treasure House in 2001. Another marvel on the topic is Escapism by the geographer Yi-Fu Tuan. All of these projects about wonder are forms of geography, trying to locate what is hard to pinpoint, what refuses to be witnessed fully.

Escape. That’s what many people I know have been looking for the last five years, in poems and stories, and elsewhere.