Whither the literary critic?

Another post on the subject of lit crit, though in this case we are speaking of the literary critic/reviewer. On Salon, Louis Bayard and Laura Miller discuss Ronan McDonald's new book, The Death of the Critic.  This strikes me as a title unlikely to be in danger of becoming a runaway best-seller, but I found the discussion on Salon interesting.

Miller made this comment (kids, avert your eyes on the last line):

The idea that to be worthy of serious attention, a literary work has to tear down or revolutionize the forms of the past -- well, that makes literature exciting and criticism galvanizing and oh so Important for a while, but at a certain point there's nothing left to dismantle. And meanwhile, the readers wandered off to read Stephen King or watch TV. Having gotten the "fuck you" message loud and clear they just stop listening to intellectuals.

I would agree that I find the attempt to be "novel" by radically playing with the conventions of literature like plot and character and narrative structure and so forth often results in work that is tiresome, and if it engages at all, it's only as a sort of intellectual exercise.  I guess I'm rather an old-fashioned reader, but I like to be interested in the characters and care about where the plot goes and to arrive at some narrative resolution that's more than ephemeral psychic epiphany.  Call me shallow, darn it, but I like a happy ending, even.  Yes, narrative thrives on conflict, but when I pick up--not that I do very often, for the reasons that follow--one of those "acclaimed" contemporary novels where all the characters are each more contemptible than the last and everyone wallows about in misery and adultery and mid-life crises--well, if I'm supposed to be deriving some meaningful  perspective on The Human Condition, I'll just skip it thank you very much, because if I want an unrelieved panorama of despair I can go read the newspaper.

In the Salon piece, Miller says, "Despite what the critics who championed modernism claimed about the obsolescence of the traditional novel, that's more or less still what people want to write and read..."  and I would agree.  James Joyce's Ulysses may be a tour-de-force of modernism, but who ever reads it besides academics, (occasional) English majors, and the vanishingly small number of the hyperliterate?  Whereas, for example, Austen's works continue to offer rich ground for critical analysis but also are the kinds of books that are very accessible and enjoyable for all kinds of readers.

If you set up the standard that "real" literature should be difficult and demanding and a kind of intellectual equivalent of conquering Mt. Everest, then why be surprised to find that people are opting out of reading it?

Comments

[Todd]

I think academic critics working solely within academia, rarely making their critical work public through general periodicals, are killing criticism.

And critics really do seem to champion modernism and postmodernism over traditional novels, or for that matter literary nonfiction, which is a shame, because I think that alienates readers --- do you have to be an academic or an English major to understand or enjoy a book? Do I lack intelligence, if for the life me, I can't get beyond 90 pages of William Gaddis's The Recognitions, after two tries?