Roles and Functions of Criticism? Closing Remarks (and Eternal Questions) // Annick MacAskill
Guest editor Annick MacAskill contextualizes this month's look at review culture against the backdrop of a global crisis, and introduces further themes and questions to continue a dialogue on literary criticism and reviewing.
Crisis has a way of throwing things into relief.
The COVID-19 pandemic started to inhale our country around the time that the first guest posts in this series were published. I was committed to promoting all the contributors’ essays on social media, but I started to feel conspicuous doing so.
Writers and literary critics are often forced to confront a paradox about the work they undertake: books and literature are at once not taken seriously enough to be essential, and widely consumed. During the COVID-19 crisis, writers and other artists have taken to social media to juxtapose the general indifference to (or casual derision for) public funding for the arts with the observation that, in times of struggle, many of us turn to books, films, and music for entertainment and comfort.
Admittedly, there were days when I felt awkward, or even guilty, drawing attention to a series on literary criticism. It helped that I was amplifying the voices of other writers (a motivation similar to the one that initially propelled me to review), particularly when I was so impressed with the quality of the essays submitted. Nevertheless, it sometimes seemed frivolous to focus on literary criticism when my Twitter feed was swelling with headlines and infographics on the outbreak. On other days, I was relieved to have a distraction, and invigorated by the discussion. Judging by the attention the essays received, I wasn’t alone.
I also, of course, don’t think that art and pandemics have nothing to do with one another. As a reader, I’ve found solace this month in the poems of Sadiqa de Meijer, whose latest collection, The Outer Wards, articulates a different kind of quotidian and banal, but very real, anxiety. Similarly, I’ve encountered unnerving wisdom in Ling Ma’s prescient apocalyptic novel Severance, and recognized myself in the speaker of Mary Karr’s Tropic of Squalor, a collection that exposes our sense of uselessness in the presence of pain and suffering. These books, like so many others, serve to reassure, enlighten, and provoke.
Fundamentally, I believe books should be reviewed, and I feel compelled to review because I think books are interesting and important. Literature is the art form that has most fascinated me since childhood, the one I wish to spend the most time with, despite (or because of) whatever might be going on around me. As I write this, I’m counting down the hours (49) until I can go into my front entrance and retrieve the books that were delivered yesterday by my local independent bookstore. By then, they are less likely to bear traces of the coronavirus. The pandemic won’t be over, but I’ll have something to read.
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Due to time constraints, I didn’t post an open call for this series. Instead, I solicited essays from reviewers in my networks, some of whom I had met before, and some I knew only from publishing or social media. While this obviously limited the perspectives I included, I found variety in the contributors’ arguments and approaches.
Of course, some commonalities were immediately apparent: concerns for the material contexts in which reviewers work; a desire for more openness and discussion in our review culture; a fierce love of literature and other artistic genres; and a commitment to literary community. At least a couple essays pushed back against the framework of “roles and functions” I had imposed. None of the pieces limited themselves to the dichotomous language of “positive” and “negative” reviews. Subjectivity in criticism was taken as a given, often quite explicitly. And all the essays were by writers who are not just reviewers, but authors, too—of their own poetry, creative non-fiction, and fiction. Some of us have already experienced the other side of criticism when we’ve had our books reviewed, and those who haven’t yet likely will soon.
I was fortunate to have seven writer-critics take me up on my pitch, which meant I had only an introduction and this conclusion to write. If there had been fewer willing contributors, I would have written a separate piece or two on different aspects of our review culture, like the frustrating assertion that Canlit criticism is by and large too “positive,” and the assumption that this supposedly overenthusiastic criticism necessarily indicates a lack of guts or rigour (as if this country didn’t also have its fair share of sloppy, vitriolic take-downs).
But I would have especially liked to discuss the limited resources for reviewers. While most writers seem to agree that they’d like to see more reviews (of their own books), and some care enough to want to see more reviews generally, and some even care enough to contribute their own time and energy to reviewing, it’s not often that I hear writers consider what practical measures could be taken to increase the number of reviews, interviews, or long-form literary essays we see in our newspapers and magazines.
Realizing that it doesn’t make sense to expect more or better criticism without offering substantial support to critics, some writers go beyond complaining, or even reviewing. Authors and devoted readers advocate for better book coverage in our newspapers. CWILA created a critic-in-residence position, with an annual stipend provided to a writer to dedicate time to promoting and discussing the literary contributions of women, nonbinary people, and trans men. In 2003, Arc Poetry Magazine created the Critic’s Desk Award, a prize awarded annually to the best feature review and the best brief review published in the journal’s previous year. I’ve heard of arts councils awarding grants to writers for literary criticism, though this seems quite rare.
In fact, while editing this series, I reached out to an arts council about the possibility of applying for a grant to support writing reviews, interviews, and longer-form criticism. I was told that these activities had never been funded by the council, which apparently draws a distinction between an artist and a “curator/presenter/communicator/researcher/academic/etc.” I understand this distinction on a practical level, though it is at best limited, as many curators, presenters, communicators, researchers, academics, and etceteras maintain their own artistic practices.
The assumption that underpins this distinction (that researchers, curators, and critics have other sources of income readily available to them) also leaves out reviewers. Any literary critic without a permanent position in academia or their name on a masthead operates more like a freelance poet, fiction writer, or essayist, as they, too, put out work by submitting and undergoing an editorial process, and they, too, are by-and-large paid in small, piecemeal honoraria, if anything. Unlike those with secure, full-time positions in academia or journalism, freelance critics do not have salaries, nor are they eligible for funding from research councils. Given this, it’s hard to understand why reviewers don’t have access to arts funding.
I wonder what our review culture would look like with more support for our critics—grants, certainly, but also more critic-in-residence positions, more annual litmag prizes, and more robust honoraria. In addition, I can imagine new mentorship programs for early-career critics, like Toronto’s Emerging Arts Critics program, but with a focus on literary reviews, interviews, and essays instead of dance and music.
If I can draw one conclusion from the posts in this series, it’s that reviewers are committed to the work they do and that many are relatively undeterred by less than ideal circumstances (though I know of other fine author-critics who have given up on reviewing precisely because of these circumstances). In this, reviewers resemble our country’s poets, essayists, and fiction writers, who persist despite significant material challenges. Yet these writers know the value of their work, and they know to fight for better conditions, even in times of crisis. What would happen if criticism were considered in this advocacy, not only for the ways it serves to promote other writing, but also for its own creative and artistic merit?
Annick MacAskill is a poet and critic whose writing has appeared in literary journals and anthologies across Canada and abroad. Her debut collection, No Meeting Without Body (Gaspereau Press, 2018), was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and shortlisted for the J.M. Abraham Award. Her second collection, Murmurations, will be published by Gaspereau Press this spring. She lives in Halifax.
