Not Everyone's a Critic, but Everyone Should Have an Opportunity to Try Out for the Job

Sorry, but I just don’t buy Richard Schickel’s notion that “not everybody’s a critic,” and that bloggers will never be able to fill in the gaps of professional critics. He paints the whole thing as a false dichotomy between enthusiastic know-nothing bloggers and elite aesthetes with eyes and minds of steel. And his intimation that, because most reviewing is just hackwork, and therefore the business is too open and democratic already, is either bizarre or nakedly self-serving. He envisions a world in which the only critics are the super-elites, the George Orwells and Edmund Wilsons, and other critics are marginalized or gone entirely. Well, that’s fine, I suppose, if you already have a gig at Time, but what he’s asking for—whether he knows it or not—is for there to be less criticism, less writing and response and discussion about books, movies, and other popular arts. He’s making the classic argument of the entrenched powers—that they and only they deserve to be at the top, and the bottom not only isn’t worthy, it shouldn’t be bothered with—maybe even shouldn’t exist—at all. Now, lord knows I’m all for qualifications and historical knowledge and carefully refined aesthetic judgments, but I don’t see how any honest lover of the popular arts (or of criticism, for that matter) could really want to limit the discussion to a few high-profile gigs held by the entrenched elite. More discussion is better, and out of the masses, voices worth listening to will arise. Schickel thinks the open critical landscape will turn criticism into a standards-less din; what it will really do is open up the application process for our critics, giving more voices a chance to be heard and read, making it even more—not less—likely that the best, the most knowledgeable, the most readable and entertaining, will come out at the top of the heap.