In her review of Lauren Oyler's No Judgment, Becca Rothfeld takes Oyler to task for including too little judgment, asserting that "her book's title is more accurate than she thinks." Although Oyler intends in her essays to defend judgment in criticism, few of them contain much of it, defined as specific analysis of the artistic works she discusses. Instead she merely displays attitude (an "edgy personality") to convey the superiority of the underlying judgments she leaves undeveloped. "Judgment," Rothfeld more than implies, is a requisite feature of criticism, and her review emphasizes the surprising lack of it in a book written by a critic who is otherwise well-known for her strong judgments (often negative) in many of the reviews she has written.
We can of course distinguish between "judgment" as assessment of quality and as cogency of insight or interpretation. Rothfeld seems to be faulting Oyler for including too little of the latter, but No Judgement is conspicuously a collection of essays (all of them written for inclusion in this book), not a selection of Oyler's reviews, in which the judgments are indeed usually expressed through relatively close attention to the work's manifest features, although among her critical writings are a number of essays less interested in appraisal of particular works than in examining a broader practice the critic has identified or a cultural phenomenon that is really the subject of the essay. The essays in No Judgement don't seem radically different from these other essays not categorizable simply as reviews, except that they are, for the most part, more directly personal, focused on Oyler's own life and circumstances.
The essays included in Rothfeld's own recent collection of essays, All Things are Too Small, are, in fact, just as personal and discursive, although in her role as a regular staff reviewer for a major American newspaper, Rothfeld in most of her reviews both readily passes judgments (as her review of Oyler's book itself shows) and endeavors to support them through evidence of careful reading. Finally both Rothfeld and Oyler understand criticism as the rendering of judgment, although of the two Rothfeld seems more committed to its execution in a rigorous version than Oyler. And indeed this orientation to criticism is shared by almost all general-interest reviewers (of all forms, both popular and "high" art), prompting the most widespread impression of the "critic" among most consumers of reviews as a kind of referee--a figure who pays close attention to the art activity in question to note if it has been carried out according to the rules and to signal us if there is a violation.
This is the most benign view of the critic, as an intrusive if necessary personage who is granted a certain degree of authority on artistic matters by possessing the right credentials or through force of personality and track record (which doesn't mean we can't argue vociferously if we believe the call is wrong). Some spectators, however, regard the critic with more disdain, as a purely unwelcome presence who rudely interposes him/herself between us and the objects of our admiration when the critic pronounces a negative judgment. In their willingness to express negative judgments, both Oyler and Rothfeld might certainly be vulnerable to this hostility toward the efforts of critics, but in the present critical culture both of them are rather unusual in their propensity for such judgments. Oyler in particular, as a novelist as well as a critic, should be credited for ignoring the implicit restriction on negative reviews that is generally observed by current reviewers of fiction. The blandly affirmative reviews that dominate most review spaces only reinforce the marginalization of critics by not merely trivializing the act of judgment but precluding the need for it altogether.
In both No Judgment and All Things are Too Small, negative and positive judgments are expressed as part of larger arguments or surveys of broader phenomena, not as the goal of any individual piece--these are not collections of reviews, and few of the essays contain much extended specific analysis of a particular work or aesthetic object. (Rothfeld's "Our Entertainment was Arguing," mostly about Norman Rush's novel, Mating, with some additional discussion of His Girl Friday, is an exception.) Rothfeld's book makes an impassioned, if somewhat discontinuous argument on behalf of maximalism, in both art and life. In doing so, she criticizes minimalism in fiction, art and design, as well as the retreat from bodily pleasures represented by appeals to "mindfulness" and a resurgence of what seems like puritanism is sexual attitudes and practices. Oyler's concerns are a little more amorphous, but much of the book is taken up with critique of social media,both good and bad, including lengthy examinations of the machinations that go on at Goodreads, as well as a spirited defense of autofiction (in which category Oyler's own novel, Fake Accounts, is often counted).
Each of these authors explicate the works they do discuss amply enough for their purposes, but in both cases the essays are developed primarily through personal experience and a kind of cultural observation that bespeaks intimate familiarity with the products of popular culture (Oyler in particular through participation in social media, while Rothfeld seems less "online," more attuned to books and movies). Neither book shies away from personal revelation. Oyler wants us to know why she moved to Berlin, why she likes gossip, and where her sometimes debilitating anxiety comes from. Rothfeld freely discusses her own sexual desires and her impatience with expectations of feminine restraint, although her use of her own circumstances and experiences is more more integral as reinforcement of her book's rhetorical intentions, actually making it less purely confessional than in No Judgments, despite, for example, the provocative description of her lustful feelings about her future husband she provides in one of the essays.
But it would not really be accurate to call either No Judgment or All Things are Too Small examples of personal writing above all. Both books belong to what is now called cultural criticism, by self-identification and by a fair accounting of the subjects they address. This classification seems to fit because of the wide range of cultural objects covered (most of the essays could not properly be called "literary criticism" since works of literature are only occasionally their focus) and because ultimately each of these critics is most concerned with understanding the cultural significance of the subjects they examine, not their value as aesthetic expressions. This at first seems paradoxical given both writers' penchant for making and valorizing judgments, but the essays included in Rothfeld's book are pretty consistent with her approach elsewhere, and even Oyler's most infamous negative reviews often wander away from pure aesthetic analysis, while in other essays she is as likely to consider trends and tendencies as closely assess individual works.
It seems to me that a preference for cultural criticism, in which books, both fiction and nonfiction, are enlisted in a superseding critique of culture, is shared by many of the most prominent American book reviewers, and not a small number of readers as well, especially readers not looking to reviews simply for recommendations or straightforward value judgments. Although such critics might explicitly identify themselves as cultural critics, as both Oyler and Rothfeld do in these two books, they are just as likely to be considered as "literary" critics taking a broader approach to analysis and interpretation than is allotted to aesthetic evaluation alone. Perhaps insisting on a distinction between these terms might be perceived as overly punctilious, a purist's attempt to maintain clear lines of demarcation between text-based literary analysis and an approach that sues the literary work as a means of tracking cultural tendencies, but I do believe these are different activities requiring a different orientation to both literature and to methods of criticism. Being clear about the substance of these differences can help in appreciating the relevance of a piece of criticism to the sort of interest one has in literary works as opposed to cultural observation, but also tells us something about the status of the literary in American culture--or at least about how that term is understood, especially among those who might be expected to uphold its ostensible value.
American culture has never exactly been regarded as especially literary. The U.S. has produced its share of important writers, but any survey of American literary history that accurately measures such writers against their prominence in culture at large would have to note that many of them were, for lengthy sketches of their careers (in some cases all of their careers), mostly unknown to their contemporaneous publics, either under-recognized or completely ignored (Melville, Dickinson, early Faulkner).The work of many of these writers challenged existing practices in both poetry and fiction, and it is questionable that it would have ever gained more attention if later critics had not made efforts to reckon with it and begin bringing it to wider readership. Many of their efforts were carried out through the auspices of the burgeoning field of academic literary study, which certainly included critics preoccupied with historical and cultural inquiry, but which eventually was dominated by those who were devoted to the explication, interpretation, and analysis of literary works as literature, seen as a subject valuable for its own sake.
The establishment of literary study in the university also effectively created an American literary culture (and did much to endow the very term "literature" with its overtones of elevated significance), even if it was to some extent confined to those associated with or influenced by the university. The consolidation of academic authority to shape our conceptions of literature and the literary was only enhanced by the introduction of creative writing programs. Now not only was the study of "literature" and the practice of literary criticism confined almost exclusively to the academy--or at least most prominent critics came to have some connection with it--but the university would become the primary site for the production of literature as well, eventually all but excluding anyone but their graduates not only from being taken seriously as writers, but even from being published at all. In this context, "literary culture" became simply an outgrowth of the campus, an extension of academic life.
Creative writing still exercises its dominion over the direction of current poetry and literary fiction, but academic criticism has long ceased to concern itself with delineating the literary qualities of literature or accumulating knowledge about literature that isn't also or primarily knowledge about other subjects or about the nature of academic inquiry itself. At one time ti was not unusual to see some academically-employed critics doubling as general-interest critics as well, writing reviews of new books that signaled their active engagement with literature but avoided heavy-handed academic discourse. Very few such critics exist today. While it is true that some current popular reviewers have university experience, most of them abandoned academic literary study (voluntarily or involuntarily, due to the collapse of the job marked in literary study) in exchange for the chance to write about the intellectual and literary developments of the present. Becca Rothfeld is reflective of this reality: although she continues to be a candidate for a Ph.D (in philosophy), she has clearly enough opted to pursue a career in writing and editing, and her prose in All Things are Too Small shows little preoccupation with current academic discourse and its jargon.
Academic critics have virtually no influence on the reception of new work by American writers, and few readers would turn to them as the putative experts on the current state of American fiction. Yet at the same time, even though new fiction continues to be widely reviewed (as widely as the declining number of outlets for reviews allows), the kind of reviews that are available don't often rise above the formula of synopsis-summative judgment, unless it is to incorporate memoir-ish anecdotes and excursions into cultural generalization. (Not unlike what we find in No Judgment and All Things are Too Small, although both Oyler and Rothfeld do it better than most.)
The majority of such reviews are written not by critics per se, but by other writers of fiction and poetry, who in the current critical culture have been deemed especially qualified to pass judgment on a practice they share and on which they are presumed to be experts. The consequence has been not a critical culture of deeply applied knowledge or candid assessment (although some writers indeed have and do these), but mostly of bland conformity with the predominant judgments rendered in most reviews--a kind of reflexive praise, either expressed in empty superlatives or a more reticent approval that seems calculated to preclude ruffling many feathers. Reviewers do not seem interested in contributing to a critical practice based on defensible standards and that encourages lively debate, but seem most concerned to maintain a critical establishment dedicated most of all to avoid giving offense.
In their reviewing, both Oyler and Rothfeld provide admirable exceptions to this unproductive state of affairs. On the other hand, in the two essay collections, they mostly choose not to include or expand on such reviews, or to offer essays that extend the sort of analysis used in the reviews to engage in further consideration of current literary practices, or the practice of criticism itself. Instead we have the exercises into autobiographical and cultural criticism comprising these books, which, however interesting in their own right they may be, reinforce the impression that critics and "criticism" in literary journalism have followed the lead of academic critics in forswearing the "literary" in literary criticism in favor of more socially "relevant" issues. In academic criticism these issues are like to be explicitly political, whereas in cultural criticism as practiced by Oyler and Rothfeld (and numerous others), they are broadly cultural: critics should use their powers of discernment and interpretation to "read" the landscape of popular culture. Works of art play a purely symptomatic role in this criticism, as the manifestation of cultural expressions the critic hopes to elucidate.
Literary works are just one such symptom that might be considered, and, since works of fiction and poetry are not as transparent to this kind of inquiry as other popular forms, they are arguably less useful to the cultural critic as objects of analysis. There are literary critics covering primarily fiction and poetry who take this approach--some of them among the most recognized reviewers and critics--but the works they examine are generally those most likely to mirror the visible currents in popular culture by adhering to recognizable conventions of realism or participating in particular fashions that have caught on among writers themselves. The kind of writing that is neglected in this dispensation, putting aside poetry, which unfortunately goes neglected in the popular press almost as a matter of course, is the very most "literary" writing, that is to say, fiction that is unconventional and experimental, that concerns itself not merely with making fictional representations of reality but exploring different possible ways of creating such representations through form and style--through questioning how writing becomes literary in the first place.
I am not suggesting that literary criticism must focus exclusively on formally adventurous fiction to be genuinely literary. But even fiction that might be only modestly experimental in its manner isn't likely to get very close attention in the most-read review outlets unless it also is perceived as culturally relevant in its matter (its "content"). Neither do I believe that cultural criticism inherently has less value than the direct examination of literary texts (even if I do myself have more interest in the latter). The development of digital and electronic technologies has certainly brought us to a point where popular culture has become more widely dispersed and more insistent. It would obviously be shortsighted to ignore it. Yet there is an important difference between attending to a phenomenon because it has clear and measurable (and often adverse) effects and doing so because that phenomenon has been deemed more worthwhile than all others. Serious writers are more worthy of consideration than lifestyle gurus, and serious criticism should reflect that.
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