All the world's a critic...

So what’s a guy to do when his job is to be a critic? All day long, and, in all honesty, pretty much all night long, too, all I do is point out things that aren’t exactly right. It’s the downfall of being an editor (good or bad), a movie reviewer, an English professor, or anyone whose main existence revolves around pointing out deficiencies.

I have been writing for money since 1982 and over the years have developed an eye for writing that is not exactly correct. I would say that it bothers me, but it really doesn’t bother me much. In fact, all it really does is provide insight into the workings of the writer’s brain. That’s how it turns out good or bad.

I don’t really have any feelings, per se, when it comes to reviewing language and correcting an errant verb or adjective, or perhaps a comma slipping out of its appointed place. It’s just what you do. But it does make things tough at times.

When I was in college, one of my instructors told a tale about MFA student writers vs English Ph.D. candidates. The writers, who don’t like to adhere to such stilted guidelines as rules, called the Ph.D. candidates “Feds,” like Federales, or the FBI, or G men, but G men may be giving them way too much credit.

They were the writing police, the thought police, and the people who come to criticize a writer’s endeavor merely because they don’t like the construction or they spot a slipping modifier. Typically, they are accused of a lack of creativity (which is inherently true), as they lambaste someone’s creative work because a word is misspelled or due to some other unpardonable grammar sin. Such is the life of the sedentary grammatist, not grammarian.

When it comes to writing, or really any other subjective work of art, such as a painting, a play, a movie, there will always be the Siskel-and-Eberts of the world. Someone always wants to toss the first tomato or lettuce head or even just some kind of disparaging word.

The idea behind criticism is to lob your vindictive commentary not at the author, but rather at the work itself. So in essence, you can say that you are not particularly fond of the way Michelangelo created Judgment Day, the fresco that adorns the wall of the Sistine Chapel. You can say the colors are bad, or the imagery is off, or that it’s just out of balance or whatever. But can you really separate the works from the author? While we may be attempting to identify a fine line, there also may not be a line to identify.

My point is that a work of art, even at the lowest levels, is so intrinsically tied to the author that any disparagement of the work tends to land squarely on the head of the author. If the author’s vision of the world doesn’t in some way meet our vision of the world, why then we as critics don’t like it and tend to dismantle it.

It really doesn’t take much to prove that point. For instance, how much did it bother you when you were in grade school, and even to some extent college, when the teacher graded your papers with a red pen? Did you feel that the ink was in some way your own blood spilled on the paper? It’s ok, most people feel that way. It’s why, when I am forced to critique someone’s art (writing or other types of art), I veer from using red ink.

Ultimately, criticism, as applied to the world of art, is more about opinion. And opinion is about aesthetics and to some extent knowledge of the subject. In essence, it is the science of judgment and taste as it relates to that specific idiom, whether it is writing, painting, acting, film making, or any other endeavor that can be construed as art.

It really doesn’t matter what a person’s background is. Everyone develops their own sensibilities when it comes to taste, and they apply their taste to whatever they encounter in life and the result often amounts to “I like that” or “I don’t like that.” Only critics, however, take the time to try to express in words what it is they like or don’t like about a particular thing. So they go on record espousing their opinions about this or that or the other. And truly, it doesn’t make them right or wrong. An opinion cannot be nailed down like that. Opinions are personal perceptions of things in general. And for that, you can take them or leave them.

So too is criticism. It’s the opinion of someone who may or may not be an authority on a subject. You may find that the critic’s opinion is somewhat similar to your own and then you may find it is nothing like your own. Either way, you make a decision and go with that. Wait a second! If you make a decision then you yourself actually become a critic, at which point nothing we’ve been talking about really matters.

Never mind just ignore this treatise and have a nice day.