Um manifesto

Vale a pena ler este manifesto a favor da crítica e dos críticos. Ficam aqui os meus sublinhados:

The serious critic cannot be a monomaniacal controversialist.

Particularly in a culture that is awash in hype and promotion [...], a vital function of the critic is to peel away the swoony publisher’s hype, the self-congratulation of an author’s Twitter feed, and to reorient the conversation to where it belongs: the work and its merits and flaws, as judged against genuine knowledge and disinterested taste. 

 

There is usually something to like in even the weakest work—just as there is nearly always some weakness in the strongest work; most reviews, if anything, should be somewhat mixed. 

 

When you write criticism about literature or any other subject, you’re writing for literature or that subject [...].

 

The role of the critic, I repeat, is to mediate intelligently and stylishly between a work and its audience; to educate and edify in an engaging and, preferably, entertaining way. (Critics, more than any other kind of writer, should have a sense of humor.)

The fact is that criticism is its own genre, a legitimate and (yes) creative enterprise for which, in fact, very few people are suited—because very few people have the rare combination of qualities that make a good critic, just as very few people have the combination of qualities that make a good novelist or poet.