Critiquing Criticism

My eldest daughter, Isolde, called me from St Petersburg in a rage. She is a top-ranked violinist, and had just read a scathing review of her work in some state-owned press organ.

"Mum, the reviewer thought I was playing Brahms. It was a Bartok concerto, for God's sake! You'd think the clown would have at least read the program!"

How did the audience receive it?"

"I...er...got a standing ovation", she stated in a more subdued voice.

"Then that's your critical review. Now stop whining and move on."

She did so, but I was curious. Russians can be incompetent at many things -- legal transparency comes to mind, along with throwing female rockers into prison for praying to the Virgin Mary -- but they do know their music. What was this all about? After a few strategic phone calls to some friends in St Petersburg I had met over the years, the picture became clear. Apparently a crony of Putin, who previously had managed an extensive pig farm, was getting on in years. A sinecure was found for him at a St. Petersburg state-owned paper, and it seemed the only position vacant was one of music critic. Enough said.

Still, the whole incident got me thinking about critics and criticism, and evolving one iron clad rule: KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT. Northrup Frye, in his Anatomy of Criticism, makes this point well when he writes: "When a critic meets St. George the Redcross Knight in Spenser, bearing a red cross on a white ground, he has some idea what to do with this figure. When he meets a female in Henry James' The Other House called Rose Arminger with a white dress and a red parasol, he is, in the current slang, clueless."

Now I have a background in English Literature, and Frye's comment is spot on. The reverse of the medal would be me criticizing an economic proposal to deal with stabilizing the European bond market. My take on economics is a simple one: always ensure there's more money coming in than is going out. Yet things are a great deal more complicated than that, what with collateralized debt options, derivatives, swaps, and the complexity of futures trading. To say nothing of the LIBOR mess. For this area, I turn to my financial advisor, WDM, who does know what he's talking about. It's something I (and my sugar beets) have never regretted.

Now I well realize that there is a key difference between formal criticism and the expressing of an opinion. Just imagine a dinner party under the conversational stricture of knowing what you are talking about. The silence would be deafening. It is for this reason that the weather is such a popular topic. No one really understands it, and meteorologists have been known to throw up their hands when a hurricane unexpectedly veers into an area where no one thought it would go, or a normal little rainfall turns into a raging flood, with people screaming, "Why weren't we told!" To this end, weather predictors turn for help to a Latino and a Latina ocean current,  El Nino and El Nina respectively. As Marshall McLuhan well knew, naming is numbing, and everyone feels better. Mind you, this bringing forth of figures that ease one's mind doesn't always help, as the writings of Joseph Smith and a semi-insane Arab merchant well attest. But I digress.

It is, of course, not easy being a critic. But if you know your stuff, you can elucidate and even illuminate the piece being criticized so that greater understanding emerges. In film, for example, critics such as Pauline Kael, Jason Alexander and Roger Ebert do their job well, and in literature, well, it's hard to top old Northrop. Of course, few accolades are ever tossed a critic's way, and I conclude with these words from the composer Jean Sibelius: "Always remember, there is no city in the world which has created a statue to a critic."