Compassion for the Critic

Our journeys are all marked by solitude. When the knights sought the grail they became lost if they followed the footsteps of any of another knight that went before them. So too is it with us all. Always when we set off, it is away from others - whether we like it or not, we are ineluctably unique. This can be a source of both great pride and anxiety, neither of which are any use.

The critic has taken as his job the role of publicly defining his taste. Yet everyone has taste. We cannot help it. We are forever expressing who we are by deciding what we are not. "I just don't care for jazz." "I could live without reality television." Not everyone is paid to express it. The critics are paid because we sometimes find the job of deciding for ourselves exhausting, intimidating, or lonely. And so along comes the critic, and if we have not made up our mind, and he is convincing enough, we will have found ourselves an opinion - his; if we already agreed with him, then we rejoice, both because it is nice to have the company, and because it is satisfying to have our opinions validated authoritatively; and if we disagree with him, then we can rail against him, and in so doing are given a great gift - the opportunity to clarify for ourselves why we believe what we believe.

But for the critic, it cannot be easy to be asked again and again for an opinion. It cannot be easy to resist the temptation to believe your opinion is more valuable than another's; it cannot be easy, given this power, to slip into scolding or mocking. How tempting, given the illusionary power of the critic, to attempt to silence the voices he finds aesthetically displeasing.

And how frightening, perhaps, to wonder if your entire body of work could be disregarded in one simple sentence:

"Well, that's your opinion."