But real lit crit is incredibly useful and fascinating. Many canon authors wrote in a cultural shorthand which is now more or less extinct, and it's important to peel away pretention and the knowledge it's good (Everybody says so! It must be!) in order to find out why a text is actually, well, good.
That, my friend, is part of my problem. Literary criticism that I've had the misfortune to encounter hasn't been about de-mystifying a text or revealing something new we didn't know about it. It's been all about showing off the writer's prowess to be spectacularly wanky, boring, and long winded about an aspect of a text, rather than the whole.
It is also unbelieveably inaccessible to the people it might be helpful to. Literary criticism is usually read, reviewed, and written by people who've spent years and years reading the same books and go to classes which teach them how to see the book and what to think about it.
Anyone who is struggling just to understand Austen is going to be completely lost in the world of cricitism concerning Austen. Thus, criticism defeats itself.
I love your summation of a cover letter! And yes, I figure agents and editors deserve more pity than scorn... especially after reading submissions to Miss Snark.
I'm always happy to amuse. Having been a beta reader for years, I can safely say that I understand where agents and editors are coming from.
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Date: 2007-01-17 08:49 pm (UTC)That, my friend, is part of my problem. Literary criticism that I've had the misfortune to encounter hasn't been about de-mystifying a text or revealing something new we didn't know about it. It's been all about showing off the writer's prowess to be spectacularly wanky, boring, and long winded about an aspect of a text, rather than the whole.
It is also unbelieveably inaccessible to the people it might be helpful to. Literary criticism is usually read, reviewed, and written by people who've spent years and years reading the same books and go to classes which teach them how to see the book and what to think about it.
Anyone who is struggling just to understand Austen is going to be completely lost in the world of cricitism concerning Austen. Thus, criticism defeats itself.
I love your summation of a cover letter! And yes, I figure agents and editors deserve more pity than scorn... especially after reading submissions to Miss Snark.
I'm always happy to amuse. Having been a beta reader for years, I can safely say that I understand where agents and editors are coming from.