I should point out that while Mendelsohn’s comment is, perhaps, flawed in its universality (his word choice implies that no one, anywhere, ever sees anyone reading anything “meaningful” on a train), he is partially correct. I can say that many people my age don’t read on subways, electing instead to fool around on their cell phones, or get a head start on (or wrap up) items that cropped up during the day during work. Some of them don’t read on or off public transit: I know a recent college graduate who only buys audiobooks. (Not because he’s always in a car, but because he simply doesn’t read. Period.) This may reflect a larger trend in the lives of young professionals, but it certainly doesn’t only encompass reading habits. Anyway, after ten or twelve hours spent in front of a computer screen, reading documents, or whatever else a person’s job entails, forty minutes of letting one’s mind wander is not unappealing. How, exactly, one accomplishes that doesn’t seem fodder for critical interpretation unless lit crits are also anthropologists.

I’m wondering how much one can tell from the reading habits of commuters in transit. I sometimes take my iPod to the gym; I listen to all sorts of things, but I can’t imagine playing Tannhäuser or Beethoven’s Ninth. If I’m on the subway I’m likelier to read the FT than, I don’t know, my OCT of Antigone. I can imagine reading DFW’s Oblivion on the subway, but Wyatt Mason found it difficult; it’s reasonable to suppose that quite a lot of people wouldn’t have found it a good choice for reading en route from A to B.

So, no, I don’t agree that print publishing is in trouble, just because Random House and Simon & Schuster are in trouble. Reading remains incredibly popular and widespread. And again … it’s a $30 billion/year business. That’s the kind of trouble a lot of industries would love to be in.

After a few months away from the blogosphere I cannot believe the Ed/Matt/Daniel arguments still rage. Jesus, guys, can’t you let up? I mean, take a look around. Rome is burning.

More importantly, if we can all take a half step back, bloggers and print devotees who love serious reading–or those of us who adore both–must admit that print publishing is in trouble. …so, um, shouldn’t book lovers band together? I realize I sound like Rodney King by way of Berkeley in 1967, but good writing can appear anywhere….as can really shitty writing. And passionate readers (and I am not talking Danielle Steel devotees) can tell the difference. Is good criticism enlightening? Sure. Are we all reduced to Terre Haute idiots without it? Nope. That said, I doubt Mr. Mendelsohn will be filing for unemployment any time soon. Nor, hopefully, will Ed.

Today I saw people reading Ian McEwan and Wally Lamb on the subway, not that it matters what they’re reading.

2. Ed: worry not, I’ll lay off. You’ve got your hands full with the Brothers Mendelsohn. Apropos of which: I sure miss the days when Gore Vidal was trolling William F. Buckley (and vice versa)… infinitely less civil.

“but I haven’t the patience to sit through any claims that there are (meaningful) objective evaluations possible in Art or Aesthetics.”

Well then go on your merry way, insulting learned critics, wasting time reading phone books and debating with those whose sole rejoinder is ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’, who refuse to accept that Robin Robertson’s poetry, for example, is more engaging than say, Rod McKuen’s; who refuse to entertain the possibility that one author, let’s go with Dostoevsky, has more to say, in more interesting, pleasing ways than another, say perhaps Nicholson Baker or Don Delillo.

A troll is someone who lurks on message boards and makes stupid and inflammatory remarks. I wouldn’t exactly call one comment about copyright trollish, even if it’s true that I might not have noticed without the larger post about Daniel.

And if defending my brother against your snarky remarks is something to be mocked, well, so be it. That’s what siblings do. Maybe you’re an only child, who knows.

Chris (above) left an honest comment and you still responded with a sarcastic response. It seem to be a knee-jerk reaction with you–you might have a doctor look into that.

“Criticism is either good or bad. Its quality is determined by the rigor of its argument. Of course there is no right or wrong, but, as I’ve said before, if you want useful dialogue you have to agree on some kind of common ground.”

The “useful dialogue” you pretend to want (when in fact, what you want is for everyone to accept your opinions on “good” and “bad” in Lit as higher truths) can be had by agreeing on the “common ground” of terms defined and limits recognized. People discuss religion and politics all the time without being able to agree on “good” or “bad”; the quality of the discussion depends on the ideas presented and the style of presentation, not on the possibility of a resolution (ie, X “good” and Y “bad).

Learn to face this reality in discussions of Art and it’ll represent a quantum leap in your ability to hold up your end of such a discussion. As it is, you can only “discuss” this issue with those with with whom you agree. The fact that you want absolutes in Art in order for *your* value judgments to be the Right Ones is not enough of an argument to make absolutes in Art possible.

Here’s how it goes:

There is no such thing as progress in the Arts. Any given contemporary audience of David Mamet’s or GBS’s or Harold Pinter’s cannot be said to have had a better experience of the playwright’s craft than an audience contemporary with Euripides had… despite the gap of a couple of millennia. The Arts change but they do not progress. Tastes change but they do not progress.

However, I can say with absolute certainty that Steven Hawking knows more about the universe than Isaac Newton did. That’s because science is more than well-argued opinion; science is a cumulative body of *knowledge*, built on a bulwark of measurable conditions/objective quantifications… there is the ongoing process of correction and counter-correction (zigs and zags and blind alleys in the path), but, still, we’ve come quite a distance since the days of Democritus, scientifically. Artistically, we haven’t come any distance, in real terms, from Shakespeare’s sonnets or Homer’s epics or the Mahabharata. None.

Art and Science are starkly distinct pursuits; you don’t seem to grasp that. You would affect to possess insights into Art without honoring it on its own terms. Any Art critic, underneath whatever baroque taxonomies or lambent cataracts of erudition, is merely discussing *feelings*: her/his feelings about an artifact; his/her guesses as to how the artifact works. The great Art critics can be Artists in their own right (ironically: by wandering so prodigally far from the work at hand that they cease being parasites and become Creators; James Wood is at his best when he’s furthest off the mark, in this respect) but they are not, in any proper sense of the word, adding to a body of knowledge. They are adding to the record of opinions. Taxonomy is not, by default, knowledge: anyone can name things, whether or not the things named exist, or relate in a way the names suggest.

This is a materialist age in which Art, in and of itself, is not seen as worthy; ergo your (reactionary) attempt to tart Art up in scientific drag and claim the glamour of scientific certainties. This is a sickness of the age.

The perception of Art is a matter of aesthetics and aesthetics are purely objective. I’d like to produce a definitive argument to the effect that *my* aesthetic is best (in objective terms) but it would be a fraudulent effort. Understanding this and moving on is a kind of wisdom. I don’t need to (and cannot) prove *your tastes* “wrong”, but I haven’t the patience to sit through any claims that there are (meaningful) objective evaluations possible in Art or Aesthetics.

James Wood (your apparent idol and master) argues his tastes beautifully; entertainingly, and so forth. It’s just too bad he has his heart so childishly set on being Right. At least he can take some consolation in the fact that he can’t be Wrong, either.

note: This is just a statement of fact, I’m not trying to incite any sort of fued, nor do I have any delusions that the loss of my traffic would in any way harm your life or your ability to live it happily. It’s simply reader feedback.

Thanks for swapping my pilfered photo for another stolen one. I’d say it might help sales of Les Disparus in France but, well, you know.

Best,

Matt

Though I’m sure you will turn this into a brother-defending-a-brother thing (which it is, no doubt), please remove the my photo of Daniel that is currently posted on the site. As a professional photographer for the last 23 years, I take my copyright quite seriously. You can’t just pull a photo off the web and use it without permission, no matter how small the audience.

Thanks much,

Matt Mendelsohn

This is stale meat. I have already outlined criteria I consider useful in the evaluation of relative merit. Given your repeated denigration of such criteria, I can only assume that the Berlin Telephone Book would hold the same charm for you as say War and Peace or The Man Without Qualities.

Criticism is either good or bad. Its quality is determined by the rigor of its argument. Of course there is no right or wrong, but, as I’ve said before, if you want useful dialogue you have to agree on some kind of common ground.

I measure quality by comparing works under review against those I consider ‘great.’

You simply repeat the same old hapless relativism

We can all agree that the (intellectually) revolutionary/liberating potential of bogging lies in its ability to imitate Habermas’ pure public shpere, where individuals can discuss whatever with other individuals as individuals (as opposed to representatives/subjects of certain private or public institutions). The historical example Habermas gives of this phenomenon is the coffee-shop and pamphlet culture of Enlightenment England, where there were, of course, certain gender/class/etc restrictions to participation. But the discourse that went on was the very basis of our traditions of independent journalism, lay criticism and popular literature. The Internet of the present offers all the free-discourse potential with almost none of the restrictions. Participation in blogging itself is enough to justify your very participation, and quality is determined by the consensus of other bloggers (measured in site traffic, links, comments, etc). BUT, this pure public sphere is so constructed as to invariably collapse into itself, since when access is unrestricted, there is no quality-control mechanism, and “quality” is perpetually defined downward, so perfect communication breaks down and there is no consensual basis on which to judge quality. Tribalism/authoritarianism/anarchy are again poised to govern communication. (I think this has happened to blogs–don’t too many book bloggers spend most of their energy gently congratulating each other and circling the wagons against dissidents?) This very process is what has happened to our print culture, as it has been slowly swallowed by a few corporations and grown less diverse, less courageous, and less intelligent. Book-blogging, meanwhile, has seemed to operate from the start on the premise that it must imitate printed bookchat, with review-essays, author interviews, and reports of publishing news, gossip and whatever else(you know, the “hype cycle”). The quality of the journalism naturally varies from blog to blog (I have my favorites, like anybody else), but what hasn’t happened is an effort to really engage in literary criticism; that is, the thinking through of the technical, practical, and (yes) theoretical aspects of literature itself, as well as its institutions. Most bloggers apparently have inherited print-publishing’s rivalry with academic criticism, which has no doubt withered in the last few decades, but no doubt partly because of the parallel decline in quality of mainstream public discourse. A real uninhibited public sphere would take advantage of expertise (rather than mock it) and actually employ the insights of such discussion (a responsibility academic criticism has abdicated). The purpose of criticism should be the defense/advancement/challenging of literature itself (or politics, or culture: these newspaper-section divisions are just conventional, are they not?).

Any thoughts?

Critics (to one degree or another) would certainly love to think so. Loving to think so and *proving* it so are dauntingly different things, of course. Unless you’ve got an objective value or method of calibration for the word “quality” up your sleeve. Have you? Of course you haven’t. It’s the first hurdle and you’ve yet to clear it. Where’s the rigor, man?

Clearly it should. And ‘authority’ resides in the quality of said criticism.

Most likely, Mendelsohn never checked if people read on trains, but simply fabricated his observation out of thin air.

I enjoyed James Wood’s participation in this panel, but Daniel Mendelsohn’s insults towards bloggers were very off-putting. As a blogger sitting in the audience, I felt like one of the cavemen in a Geico commercial. And his insults towards bloggers weren’t even fresh — it was the same stuff Critical Mass was publishing week after week in 2006.

Good panel, but Daniel Mendelsohn needs to refresh his cultural coordinates.