Just this morning, we were having a discussion on the Metaphysical
poets, on how one bad review by Ben Jonson could kill Donne’s entire literary
reputation during his own lifetime! And more so when Ben happens to be the first poet laureate of England, his voice does have a way
and a sway over the unsuspecting masses, ain’t it? Soon, Donne and his ilk
slowly faded into oblivion when Dryden too, decades later, in like manner, took
up cudgels against Donne!
Well, Elizabeth
Hardwick (1916 to 2007) was one of the first women writers who stood tall and bold
against these so-called critics who passed value judgments on budding poets and
writers in such a bigoted manner!
 |
| with Robert Lowell |
In a hard-hitting critique
of such reviewers who 'infested' American journals and periodicals of her time,
she lashes out at such bigoted minds, who, according to her, were main reasons
for the steep decline in the standards of book reviewing.
In her article titled,
“The Decline of Book Reviewing”, published in the October 1959 Issue of Harper’s Magazine, (the entire article
can be accessed here at Harper’s), oooh boyyy, how she gives them all such a
literal and literary lashing of sorts, with such fine acumen and prowess! Please just
sit back over a cuppa and read through these excerpts that real help us all to
empathise much with her highly justified sighs and groans!
Read on!
“The Decline of Book
Reviewing”
Elizabeth Hardwick
There used to be the
notion that Keats was killed by a bad review, that in despair and hopelessness
he turned his back to the wall and gave up the struggle against tuberculosis.
Later evidence has shown that Keats took his hostile reviews with a
considerably more manly calm than we were taught in school, and yet the image
of the young, rare talent cut down by venomous reviewers remains firmly fixed
in the public mind.
The reviewer and
critic are still thought of as persons of dangerous acerbity, fickle demons, cruel
to youth and blind to new work, bent upon turning the literate public away from
freshness and importance out of jealousy, mean conservatism, or whatever.
Poor Keats were he
living today might suffer a literary death, but it would not be from attack; instead
he might choke on what Emerson called a “mush of concession.” In America, now,
oblivion, literary failure, obscurity, neglect — all the great moments of
artistic tragedy and misunderstanding — still occur, but the natural conditions
for the occurrence are in a curious state of camouflage, like those decorating
ideas in which wood is painted to look like paper and paper to look like wood.
A genius may indeed go
to his grave unread, but he will hardly have gone to it unpraised. Sweet, bland
commendations fall everywhere upon the scene; a universal, if somewhat
lobotomized, accommodation reigns.
A book is born into a
puddle of treacle; the brine of hostile criticism is only a memory. Everyone is
found to have “filled a need,” and is to be “thanked” for something and to be
excused for “minor faults in an otherwise excellent work.” “A thoroughly mature
artist” appears many times a week and often daily; many are the bringers of
those “messages the Free World will ignore at its peril.”
A Sunday morning with the
book reviews is often a dismal experience. It is best to be in a state of
distracted tolerance when one takes up, particularly, the Herald Tribune Book
Review. This publication is not just somewhat mediocre; it has also a strange,
perplexing inadequacy as it dimly comes forth week after week.
For the world of
books, for readers and writers, the torpor of the New York Times Book Review is more affecting. There come to mind
all those high-school English teachers, those faithful librarians and
booksellers, those trusting suburbanites, those bright young men and women in
the provinces, all those who believe in the judgment of the Times and who need
its direction. The worst result of its decline is that it acts as a sort of
hidden dissuader, gently, blandly, respectfully denying whatever vivacious
interest there might be in books or in literary matters generally.
The editors of the
reviewing publications no longer seem to be engaged in literature. Books pile
up, out they go, and in comes the review.
Recently a small
magazine called the Fifties published an interview with the editor-in-chief of
the New York Times Book Review, Mr.
Francis Brown. Mr. Brown appears in this exchange as a man with considerable
editorial experience in general and very little “feel” for the particular work
to which he has been appointed, that is editor of the powerfully important
weekly Book Review. He, sadly,
nowhere in the interview shows a vivid interest or even a sophistication about
literary matters, the world of books and writers — the very least necessary for
his position. His approach is modest, naïve, and curiously spiritless. In
college, he tells us in the interview, he majored in history and subsequently
became general editor of Current History.
Later he went to Time, where he had “nothing to do with books,” and at last he
was chosen to “take a crack at the Book Review.”
When asked to compare
our Times Book Review with the Times Literary Supplement in London,
Brown opined, “They have a narrow audience and we have a wide one. I think in
fiction they are doing the worst of any reputable publication.”
In short, to Elizabeth
Hardwick, book reviewers in her time wrote, ‘light, little lobotomized article[s]’
filled with passionless praise and denounced as ‘blandly, respectfully denying
whatever vivacious interest there might be in books or in literary matters
generally.’
One reason why,
Elizabeth Hardwick went boldly ahead to found the highly renowned New York Review of Books in all
earnestness - with like-minded literary souls - a bi-monthly magazine with features
on literature, culture, etc. The magazine was inspired by the very idea that
the discussion of important books is an indispensable literary activity. Soon, the
magazine also founded the London Review
of Books.
The Washington Post gave a glorious
tribute to the Review calling it, ‘a
journal of ideas that has helped define intellectual discourse in the
English-speaking world for the past four decades. ... By publishing long,
thoughtful articles on politics, books and culture, the editors defied trends
toward glibness, superficiality and the cult of celebrity.’
Elizabeth Hardwick thus
seems to have filled up a yawning crevasse! A yawning gap that was waiting to be filled up for long!
In short, something that was long delayed! Yet was often very badly expected!
In the words of Dolly
Parton, then, Hardwick, ‘Refused to just wither in place,’ as she was under the
strong impression that, ‘Wildflowers don't care where they grow’!
And that, folks, has
made the difference!
And how!
To be continued…
image: castinehistoricalsoceitydotorg, azquotesdotcom
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