Thoughts on the criticism of others

[RonPrice]

This is a long post but, given its importance, I think it worthy of a separate thread. For readers who find it too long---just stop reading.-Ron in Tasmania

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Preamble:

 

The first criticism of my writing, at least the criticism that I remember, was in 1951 when I was in grades one and two in the then small southern Ontario town of Burlington, a part of what is still called the Golden Horseshoe. It’s jammed right at the left-hand end of Lake Ontario. I’m sure I received criticism of my scribblings in the three years before that in my early childhood from my family members and playmates, perhaps as early as 1947 when I was three or four years old and colouring or printing my first words on paper. But I have no memories of that incoming criticism, no memories until, as I say, 1951. That was 60 years ago: 1951 to 2011.

 

Early in this new, this third, millennium, in 2004 to be precise, I began to receive written criticism of my prose and poetry on the internet. I had received criticism, mostly verbal, of my published writing from 1974 to 2004 during which time I was able to get some 150 essays published in newspapers and magazines in Australia. Writing had become, by the 1970s, a more central focus to my life, much more central than it had ever been, although it had always been central in one way or another at least, as I say above, since 1951. When one is a student receiving criticism of what one writes is part of the core of the educational process. Sometimes that criticism is fair and helpful; sometimes it is unkind the destructive.

 

Being on the receiving end of criticism on the internet has been, in some ways, just a continuation of the first half-century, 1951-2001, of comments on what I wrote. The internet is full of lumpen bully-boys who prowl the blogosphere. There are the hysterical secularists who proliferate among that immense commentariat. There are the dogmatic Islamists and Christian fundamentalists who try to impose their interpretation of the Quran or the Bible on the rest of the Muslim or Christian communities, respectively. My experience on the internet, as I say, was just a continuation of the decades of criticism I had already received. Writers, as F. Scott Fitzgerald says so succinctly over dinner in a film about the last years of his life entitled Last Call, must get used to criticism. It’s part of the air they breath if they are going to be out in the public domain.

 

Literary tyrants, people who are going to tell you where, when, why and how you have gone wrong in no uncertain terms, without mincing their words or pulling any punches, without what you might call an etiquette of expression and tact, have always come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. One must learn to deal with them in one way or another as their criticisms come your way in the daily round. There are many MOs, modus operandi, to use a term from the who-dun-its, in dealing with the harsh and not so harsh words of others. Of course, it is not only writers who have to deal with critical tongues and words in many forms. A vast literature now abounds on how to deal with this reality of life.

 

The reactions to criticism of their work of two famous writers are discussed below in this 3500 word essay because their reactions throw light onto my own way of dealing with this inevitable reality of existence if one is, as I am, a writer and author, a poet and publisher, an editor and journalist, a scholar and researcher, a man of words, a writer of belles-lettres, a belletrist. For many writers the term belles lettres is used in the sense to identify literary works that do not fall easily into the major categories such as fiction, poetry or drama. Much of my writing has become, in the last thirty years, 1981 to 2011, a hybrid that does not really fit comfortably into the major categories of writing.

 

And so it is that, after sixty years of having to deal with the phenomenon of critical feedback of my written work, I pause here to reflect on the incoming criticism of what I have written and what I now write drawing, as I say, on the experience of two other writers in the last century, writers of fame and much success.

 

LAURA RIDING

 

In 1936, right at the start of the Baha’i teaching Plan, a Plan in which I have been myself engaged in a host of ways for nearly sixty years, 1953 to 2011, the American poet Laura Riding(1901-1991) wrote to a correspondent: "I believe that misconceptions about oneself which one does not correct, but where it is possible to correct, act as a bad magic.” That bad magic has been at work on the reputation of Laura Riding for many years, for well over 70 years.

 

One of the criticisms levelled at her in her later life, and repeated recently by the renowned literary critic Dr. Helen Vendler, was that she "spent a great deal of time writing tenacious and extensive letters to anyone who, in her view, had misrepresented some aspect, no matter how minute, of her life or writing." Vendler found Riding, somewhat predictably, "more than a little monomaniacal,” in relation to criticism of her work. It is true that despite advanced age and failing health, Riding continued her vigorous and valiant, one might even say, fanatical attempt to halt the spread of misconceptions about herself and her writing to the very end of her life. But the "bad magic" was too powerful to be overcome. Incidentally, this view of criticism that Riding held, the view that it was “bad magic," was held by a woman who was also accused of being a witch and of exercising a literary witchcraft by some of her zealous critics.

 

Why was Riding so scrupulous in her attempts to correct misconceptions of her life and writing no matter how minute? It was, partly at least, because she recognized the importance of details to the understanding of human character. "The details of human nature are never a matter of infinitesimals," she wrote in an essay published in 1974. "Every last component of the human course of things is a true fraction of the personal world, reflecting a little its general character." She, like many other writers and non-writers it should be added, never welcome criticism. Some react to the slightest criticism like a cornered wildcat and others like a barking dog.

 

My approach to incoming criticism is more diverse than Riding’s, not as consistently intense and defensive, not as sensitive to infinitesimals, not like that wildcat or that barking dog. Sometimes I ignore the comment; sometimes I am tenacious and write an extensive response; sometimes I write something brief and to the point. Sometimes I deal with the comment with some attempt at humour, sarcasm and wit, if I can locate these clever sorts of written repartee in my intellectual and sensory emporium. Punitive rebuttals abound on the internet, often laced with the F and/or the C word from the younger generations who have grown up with these invectives filling the print and electronic media more than any previous generation at least in modern history. Sometimes taking umbrage at their use in cyberspace is appropriate and sometimes it is not. I certainly agree with Riding that our writing should not be judged by some infinitesimals, but it is difficult when one writes extensively in the public domain not to be judged by all sorts of things of which infinitesimals are but one of the many. The only way to avoid criticism and to totally safe is not to stick one’s head above the ground of cyberspace’s highly varied terrain.

 

THE INTERNET

 

After seven years, from 2004 to 2011, of keeping some of the written and critical feedback sent to me by readers on the internet, I must conclude that, thusfar, the negative feedback hardly amounts to much that is of any significance, at least to me. This is not to say that this criticism has not been useful. Most of the feedback has to do with my participation at various websites, participation that was negatively viewed. My posts were seen, when viewed in a negative light, as: too long, not appropriate, raising the hackles of some readers because they were seen as irrelevant, boring, inter alia. I thought this personal statement here, this brief overview, analysis and comment, would be a useful summary of both the incoming criticism I have received in the last six years and my views on that criticism.

 

Some people on the internet let you know, as I have already indicated above, in no uncertain terms what they think of your posts. Frankness, candour, invective, harsh criticism, indeed, criticism in virtually every conceivable form, can be found in the interstices of cyberspace, if one writes as much as I do at more than 6000 locations among the 260 million sites and 4.6 billion subjects, topics or items of information at last count, that are now in existence in that world of cyberspace. In the last six years I have been on the receiving end of everything imaginable that someone can say negatively about someone’s writing and someone. This negative feedback has been, as I say, useful and I have tried to respond in ways that improve readers’ opinions of my work and, sometimes, of me. Sometimes I am successful in these efforts of explanation, of self-justification, of defence, and sometimes I am not. Such are the perils of extensive writing and human interaction; indeed, such are the perils of living unless one is a hermit and does one’s own plumbing and electrical work, never goes shopping and relies only on the products of one’s garden for food.

 

ISAIAH BERLIN AND IVAN TURGENEV

 

To draw now on a second writer and how he dealt with criticism, I introduce Sir Isaiah Berlin(1909-1997). He was a leading political philosopher and historian of ideas. In a lecture he gave in 1970 on the Russian poet Ivan Turgenev, Berlin pointed out that this famous Russian writer altered, modified and tried to please everyone in some of his works. As a result, one of the characters in his books “suffered several transformations in successive drafts, up and down the moral scale as this or that friend or consultant reported their impressions.” Berlin went on to say in that same lecture that Turgenev was inflicted by intellectual wounds as a result of the criticism of his works by others, wounds that festered by varying degrees of intensity, depending of course on the nature of the criticism, for the rest of Turgenev’s life.

 

Turgenev was attacked by writers and critics of many persuasions on the Left and the Right of the political spectrum in those days when these terms left and right had more clear and understandable demarcations. This Russian writer possessed, Berlin noted, what some have called “a capacity for rendering the very multiplicity of inter-penetrating human perspectives that shade imperceptibly into each other, nuances of character and behaviour, motives and attitudes, undistorted by moral passion.” Turgenev, like Riding, could never bear the wounds he received from incoming criticism of his writing in silence. He shook and shivered under the ceaseless criticisms to which he exposed himself, so Berlin informs us.

 

THE PROCESS OF BAHÁ'Í REVIEW

 

After sixty years(1951-2011), then, of having my writing poured over by others; after nearly fifty years(1964-2011) of having my writing reviewed before its publication by Baha’i reviewing committees at national and local levels of Baha’i administration and its institutions and even by some individuals and groups at the Bahá'í World Centre in Haifa Israel; after trying to write in a way that would please various groups of people both within the Baha’i community and without by committees, colleagues, professors, tutors, students and teachers at a multitude of educational institutions---before my writing saw the light of day in some publication or school-handout, I came to enjoy writing on the internet.

 

The National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Australia Inc, the nationally elected body by the Bahá'í community in Australia does not require writers like myself to have their writing reviewed before it goes onto the internet. The Review Office of the NSA of the Baha’is of the USA has given me permission to post my works on the internet, although they have advised that further review is necessary if I want to place my writing in book form, in a hard or soft cover, for general and public consumption.

 

BACK TO THE INTERNET

 

Pleasing others, of course, is still important but, for me, there is a new found freedom of expression that the internet provides. Part of this freedom is due to the advantages and pleasures of age. Now in the early evening of my life, these middle years(65 to 75) of late adulthood as human development theorists refer to the period in the lifespan from 60 to 80, with jobs/employment positions far behind me, no one checks what I write before it goes into the light of cyberspace. My own editing pen is kept busy and I can edit as much or as little as I desire.

 

Editing has never been one of my favorite activities and I tend to rush this part of the writing job, at least initially. I then revise, alter, subtract, add, delete and edit in a multitude of ways as a result of incoming comments, both encomium and opprobrium. Sometimes I make no changes at all to my initial internet post.

 

After my writing gets onto the world-wide-web it is ignored, criticized, diagnosed, interpreted, subjected to hair-splittings and logic choppings by readers, posters, moderators and administrators at internet sites. I am on the receiving end of invective and negative appraisals, accusation and berating, blame and blasphemy, castigation and censure, condemnation and contumely, denunciation and diatribe, epithet and obloquy, philippic and reproach, revilement and sarcasm, scurrility and tirade, tongue-lashing and vilification. I am given more advice than I receive at home from those I love and who love me and more than I ever got as a student and teacher.

 

I am viewed as tactless, insensitive, awfully boring and told where to get off, where to go, where to go for further writing courses to help me in my literary vocation and avocation. Sometimes I am told why I should discontinue the practice of writing entirely. I am also told what a wonderful inspiration my writing is. Compliments, flattery and praise abound. These words of encomium and opprobrium that I receive, as I say, are really not much different than; indeed, are much the same as, the words many other writers get when their words are found between hard and soft covers. Even the writings of Shakespeare, the Bible and other major works in the western tradition get great buckets of criticism poured on them from the generations which have come on the scene since the post-world-war-2 years, those now 65 and under, to chose a convenient timeframe for most of the incoming criticism that I receive.

 

Most of those who have come to inhabit the parts of the WWW where I post are the Y-generation. They were born between the mid-1970s to the first years of the 2000s. These generation Y people are today's teens, 20s and 30s, the millennial generation, the net generation. Some say that generation X are those born between 1974 and 1980. The fine-tuning of these labels gets a bit complex. The first generation on the internet,say, the years 1991 to 2011, have a wide range of personality constructs which would need a separate statement to discuss in sufficient detail.

 

I could benefit from the assistance of one, Rob Cowley, affectionately known in publishing circles back in the seventies and early eighties as “the Boston slasher.” His editing was regarded in some circles as constructive and deeply sensitive. If he could amputate several dozen pages, several thousand words, of my explorations on the net with minimal agony to my emotional equipment I’m sure readers would be the beneficiaries. But alas, I think Bob is dead. I did find an editor, a copy- proofreader and friend who does not slash and burn but leaves one's soul quite intact as he wades through my labyrinthine passages, smooths it all out and excises undesirable elements. But this editor is in the late evening of his life and after editing several hundred pages of my writing he has tired of the exercise and so I am left on my own. Perhaps one day I may assume the role that Cowley exercised so well in life as the Boston Slasher. But in the meantime and without my editor friend, I advise readers not to hold their breath waiting for me to do what is a necessary edit. I often edit the writer of others, but it is not an exercise I enjoy after editing student work for more than three decades and my own for more than five.

 

DEALING WITH CRITICISM: AN ANSWERING THEOLOGY

 

Critical scholarly contributions or criticism raised in public or private discussions should not necessarily be equated with hostility. Questions are perfectly legitimate, indeed, necessary aspects of a person's search for an answer to an intellectual conundrum. Paul Tillich, that great Protestant theologian of the 20th century, once expressed the view that dealing with criticism, a process sometimes called apologetics, was an "answering theology."-Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, U. of Chicago, 1967, Vol.1, p6.

 

I have always been attracted to the founder of the Baha'i Faith's exhortations in discussion to "speak with words as mild as milk," with "the utmost lenience and forbearance." This form of dialogue, its obvious etiquette of expression and the acute exercise of judgement involved, is difficult for most people when their position is under attack from people who are more articulate, better read and better at arguing both their own position and the position of those engaged in the written criticism than they are. I am also aware that, in cases of rude or hostile attack, rebuttal with a harsher tone, the punitive rebuttal, may well be justified, although I prefer humour, irony and even gentle sarcasm rather than hostile written attack in any form. Still, it does not help an apologist to belong to those "watchmen" whom the prophet Isaiah calls "dumb dogs that cannot bark."(Isaiah, 56:10)

 

In its essence criticism is often just another form of confrontation, an act of revealing one's true colours, of hoisting the flag, of demonstrating the essential characteristics of one's faith, of one's thought, of one's emotional and intellectual stance in life. “Dialogue does not mean self-denial,” wrote Hans Kung, arguably the greatest of Catholic apologists. The standard of public discussion of controversial topics should be sensitive to what is said and how; it should be sensitive to manner, mode, style, tone and volume. Tact is also essential. Not everything that we know should always be disclosed; not everything that can be disclosed it timely or suited to the ears of the hearer. To put this another way, we don't want all our dirty laundry out on our front lawn for all to see or our secrets blasted over the radio and TV. Perhaps a moderate confessionalism is best here, if confession is required at all—and in today’s print and electronic media it seems unavoidable. Much of internet dialogue, though, is far, far, below standards of even a reasonable literacy as posters “f,” “c” and “s” their way through discussions with the briefest of phraseology, a succinctness that approaches sheer nothingness and an inarticulateness that has more in common with grunts and sighs as well as whimpers and whims and betrays a basic knowledge based on visual media and little reading.

 

Anyway, that's all for now. It's back to the winter winds of Tasmania, about 5 kms from the Bass Straight on the Tamar River. The geography of place is so much simpler than that of the literary, intellectual, philosophical and religious geography that some readers on the internet who engage in complex and not-so-complex discussions are concerned with. Even physical geography, though, has its complexities as those who take a serious interest in the topic of climate change are fast finding out. Whom the gods would destroy they first make simple and simpler and simpler. I look forward to a dialogue with someone, anyone who is inclined to respond to what I’m sure for some is this overly long post. Here in far-off Tasmania--the last stop before Antarctica, if one wants to get there by some other route than by air of off the end of South America--your response will be gratefully received.-Ron Price, Tasmania, Australia.

 

Ron Price

Updated On:

19 August 2011

Edited September 2, 2011 by RonPrice
to add some words

[Vox]

Ideas and thoughts having a battle by using words as weapons? Mind favoring minds, mind against minds, but should it be so serious, consider it as just mind games..?

 

You are not criticized but you thoughts are...?

Edited August 8, 2010 by Vox

[RonPrice]

To criticize a man's ideas, Vox, and not the man in the process is very difficult for many people to do; it's also very difficult for many not to feel themselves critized. Never to feel hurt and not to make others feel hurt requires great skill and wisdom.-Ron

Edited August 19, 2011 by RonPrice
to add some words

[Vox]

To criticize a man's ideas, Vox, and not the man in the process is very difficult for many people to do; it's also very difficult for many not to feel themselves critized. Never to feel hurt and not to make others feel hurt requires great skill and wisdom.-Ron

 

Who feels the hurt and who wants to "pay back"..who was it in the first place who wanted to say something special knowing that someone would oppose, you or your ego?

[RonPrice]

Who feels the hurt and who wants to "pay back"..who was it in the first place who wanted to say something special knowing that someone would oppose, you or your ego?

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Readers who come to this site from my website at the following URL: http://www.ronpriceepoch.com/ need to scroll-up to the top of this thread to read my original post and the ensuing responses.-Ron Price, Tasmania

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It has been more than a year since you wrote your post, Vox. Belated apologies for not getting back to you sooner, but I just saw your response for the first time today. Life is busy, even in retirement, in these years of late adulthood. I find your comment somewhat ambiguous, but I can make out the main lines of your comment or questions. One: who is hurt by criticism? and two: is it essentially the ego that is hurt? I would say that: (a) the person receiving the criticism is often hurt and (B) it is often the ego that is hurt. That is my short response to your questions that could have quite lengthy responses/answers had I the time and/or the inclination to reply in more detail. I wish you well from Australia.-Ron

Edited September 2, 2011 by RonPrice