Dumb, hairy bloggers

Here's another one of those blogger-as-ignoramus pieces. It's by Richard Schickel - film critic and book reviewer - and although, towards the end of his article, he broad-mindedly allows 'I don't think it's impossible for bloggers to write intelligent reviews', the whole cast of his argument is such as to set up a distinction between the professional reviewer as knowledgeable, competent to inform of, situate, and 'initiate intelligent dialogue' about what he or she is reviewing, and the blogger, who tends towards mere opinion-mongering, towards giving the thumbs up or the thumbs down. The following passage sets the tone. Schickel is reacting to a New York Times report on 'the shrinkage of book reviewing' and the possibility that bloggers will take up the slack. He writes:

"Some publishers and literary bloggers," the article said, viewed this development contentedly, "as an inevitable transition toward a new, more democratic literary landscape where anyone can comment on books."

Anyone? Did I read that right?

Let me put this bluntly, in language even a busy blogger can understand: Criticism - and its humble cousin, reviewing - is not a democratic activity. It is, or should be, an elite enterprise, ideally undertaken by individuals who bring something to the party beyond their hasty, instinctive opinions of a book (or any other cultural object). It is work that requires disciplined taste, historical and theoretical knowledge and a fairly deep sense of the author's (or filmmaker's or painter's) entire body of work, among other qualities.

It is clear that commending the virtues of knowledge and disciplined taste won't always save a person from errors of logic. To welcome a democratic literary landscape in which anyone is free to comment on books doesn't commit you to denying that criticism and reviewing as professional or specialized activities make their own demands, or to denying that like many other activities they benefit from being based on some relevant knowledge. At the same time, here as elsewhere 'bringing something to the party' doesn't have to involve being a member of some certified elite. The authors of pieces like this one of Schickel's often write as if bloggers constitute a uniform race of galumphing thickos, with heavy features and too much body hair. But here's a plea: bloggers are just people. They know, variously, what they know, some more, others less, and all of them different.

They're allowed to write, and if you don't like what they write, you don't have to read it. And if, heaven forbid, some lowly blogger with an undisciplined taste should happen to want to share with her readers why it is that she enjoyed a movie she saw the night before - even without having a thorough familiarity with the entire oeuvre of the director who made it, to say nothing of all the influences upon him - why, some people might even get something more out of this than from the elucubrations (such as I know too well) of a professional critic devoting long column inches to how the same movie is to be placed on a semiological map replete with filmic references of the most arcane kind. (Via Clive.)