Quality Control
27/02/10
12:14
Caroline Miller writes
on Zadie Smith’s new collection of
miscellaneous pieces, Changing My Mind, in
this week’s TLS and questions the liberal
humanist values implied by Smith’s commendable
advocation of the power and pleasure of reading, and
her assertion of particular works being
‘good’:
“Value judgement and tolerance can be awkward fellow pilgrims: Smith often praises writing she believes to be “right” or knows to be “beautiful”. As a corrective to academic dryness this is refreshing. But, as a wider credo, it has little except its superior eloquence to recommend it – and no principle from which to recommend superior eloquence. If we each decide whom to worship, then there can be no arbiter on beauty and truth other than the mass market. If the dreams of our fathers – Forster’s “dream of mass connection”, or Obama’s or Shakespeare’s – are to be realized in literature, then we need a critical vision to make the case for its value. Does it matter if Changing My Mind’s tolerant defence of individual preference and its inspiring and well-informed enaction of reading as a private pleasure reflect the broad pop cultural norms that are marginalizing the “literary” novel? It certainly doesn’t diminish the pleasure and erudition on offer here. Yet, in an era of choose-your-own worship, ghostwritten celebrity autobiographies are at the top the books charts and liberal arts lovers struggle to defend the “truth” and “beauty” that these essays so perceptively reveal.”
Miller’s argument is there is no ideological or critical rubric by which to judge Smith’s own value judgements. Yet, I can’t help but feeling that in adopting a ‘show your working’ approach to literary studies, we are levelling the playing field in a counter-productive way. Just because an English first year student can justify their love of The Shawshank Redemption through recourse to psychoanalytic critical theory, it doesn’t mean that their opinion is automatically more valuable than Zadie Smith’s friendly, but ill-defined, recommendation of George Eliot. Writers, academics, critics - these people know what they are talking about. There is little more delightful than having a reliable literary companion who has read more and who knows more than you, and whose assertions of quality you can take on trust, without requiring the ideological rubric. Some people, whether we like it or not, are more qualified to make these value judgements, even as we are free to ignore them. That is the corrective to mass market thinking which Miller fails to identify.
You can read Caroline Miller’s full piece here.
“Value judgement and tolerance can be awkward fellow pilgrims: Smith often praises writing she believes to be “right” or knows to be “beautiful”. As a corrective to academic dryness this is refreshing. But, as a wider credo, it has little except its superior eloquence to recommend it – and no principle from which to recommend superior eloquence. If we each decide whom to worship, then there can be no arbiter on beauty and truth other than the mass market. If the dreams of our fathers – Forster’s “dream of mass connection”, or Obama’s or Shakespeare’s – are to be realized in literature, then we need a critical vision to make the case for its value. Does it matter if Changing My Mind’s tolerant defence of individual preference and its inspiring and well-informed enaction of reading as a private pleasure reflect the broad pop cultural norms that are marginalizing the “literary” novel? It certainly doesn’t diminish the pleasure and erudition on offer here. Yet, in an era of choose-your-own worship, ghostwritten celebrity autobiographies are at the top the books charts and liberal arts lovers struggle to defend the “truth” and “beauty” that these essays so perceptively reveal.”
Miller’s argument is there is no ideological or critical rubric by which to judge Smith’s own value judgements. Yet, I can’t help but feeling that in adopting a ‘show your working’ approach to literary studies, we are levelling the playing field in a counter-productive way. Just because an English first year student can justify their love of The Shawshank Redemption through recourse to psychoanalytic critical theory, it doesn’t mean that their opinion is automatically more valuable than Zadie Smith’s friendly, but ill-defined, recommendation of George Eliot. Writers, academics, critics - these people know what they are talking about. There is little more delightful than having a reliable literary companion who has read more and who knows more than you, and whose assertions of quality you can take on trust, without requiring the ideological rubric. Some people, whether we like it or not, are more qualified to make these value judgements, even as we are free to ignore them. That is the corrective to mass market thinking which Miller fails to identify.
You can read Caroline Miller’s full piece here.