On a Critic’s Responsibility to Inflict Deep Damage

From a discussion between The New Republic’s art critic and author of New Art City, Jed Perl, and the magazine’s literary editor, Leon Wieseltier, conducted earlier this year at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. An edited transcript appeared in Columbia magazine.

Leon Wieseltier: I think that if a critic discovers a book or a show that he finds pernicious, it is his solemn responsibility to try to do as much damage to the fortunes of that as he possibly can.

Jed Perl: Totally. But the damage needs to be deep damage. It has to be damage that has an intellectual complexity to it. It’s not the kind of damage necessarily that knocks a book or a show out that day. It’s the kind of damage that even people who totally disagree are worrying about six months or six years later.

LW: I’ve always found that the really valuable attacks by critics only look like attacks. In fact, they’re defenses of things the critic believes have been attacked. They are responses to attacks.

JP: One of the things people forget or simply don’t understand is that the hardest thing a critic can do is write an extended attack on something you really and truly don’t like. It is awful to do. It’s hard. Very, very difficult. You have to think about he people you don’t agree with and what they think. You have to get into their minds. You have to develop arguments that are compelling. It’s much more fun to celebrate.

LW: I think that’s true, but there’s a lot of very empty praise out there—to the point where there are very few critics of any art form that I would trust about buying a book or going to see a ballet. Too many people are nice to too many people.

JP: That’s completely true, which means that it’s all the more important, when one wants to praise something, to praise it in a complex, substantial way. I’m not against attacks. I’ve done my share.

But one of the central obligations of the critic is to develop, over a period of time, a kind of verbal authenticity. I’m talking about a critical voice that tells the reader who this human being, who this critic, really is, who has lived all these things and experienced them and looked and felt. Then even readers who are hesitant to accept what you’re saying can begin to get involved.

LW: I think that’s right. I think the important point is for the reader to recognize that when an attack is made, it’s not simply an attack for the sheer delight of it or to damage the reputation, but that there’s an idea at stake. [Bolded for discussion purposes – Ed.] Whenever there’s an idea at stake, then a philosophical issue is being joined. Then it is no longer an attack on something but a continuation of a philosophical discussion about something, something real.

JP: One of the things that makes me happiest is when I praise something or attack something and somebody who does not agree with me says, “I don’t agree, but I thought the argument was sound, and I went the distance with it.” Again, it can sound a little Pollyannish to say we need a conversation, but I’m talking about a conversation that’s about real feelings and real qualities and real standards.

PREVIOUSLY: LW suggests that either you suck at jazz or you don’t; LW attempts the deep-damage approach to Munich; LW gears himself up to hate certain facts; LW admits, finally, that he’s useless

IMAGE: Knockout by Maya Kulenovic (oil on canvas, 2005)