THE STATE OF CRITICISM
197
DENIS DONOGHUE: I'd like to some extent to dissociate myself from the
universal conclusion that literary criticism today is in some kind of
appalling condition. It does not seem to me to be in such an ap–
palling condition.
It
seems, rather, that we have critics at least as
good as we deserve. As to Irving Howe's review of V.S. Naipaul's
novel, I very much admire it. But that is not the question. A far more
important question is: what process led to Irving Howe's being asked
to review a new novel by one of the most famous novelists of our
time, a book which doesn't need to be reviewed, because V.S.
Naipaul is already famous. The crucial question is how do we
discriminate, how do we say
to
readers, there are all of these novels or
books of poems and the good ones-that really merit attention-are
these. The process by which you render those judgments persuasive
belongs to what I would call the rhetoric of criticism, or criticism as
rhetoric, and of course Irving Howe does that better than anybody.
IRVING HOWE: Naipaul does not sell by the hundreds of thousands. He
has sold very poorly. That's a very interesting fact about contempo–
rary culture. I'm not giving away any trade secrets when I say that
The Times
asked me to review that book and arranged for an
interview by Elizabeth Hardwick because one of the editors has a
special passion for Naipaul's work.
If
you want
to
use our fantasy
language, he was making a discriminating judgment and he wanted
to do what he could to help that writer. There is a very complicated
cultural issue surrounding Naipaul as a writer today. Some people
feel that Naipaul is a son of a bitch who maligns the Third World,
the hopes of various peoples, etc., and others feel that he confirms
their crotchety prejudices. I don 't think either side is right. As to why
I
was asked to do the review, I suppose the editor felt that things I
had done in the past were more or less a preparation for it.
BARBARA ROSE: I'd like to say something about an effect of the mass
media: 'anything you write is positive. I learned this lesson from Leo
Castelli. He got a very bad review of some work by an artist he
represented. I said, "You must feel terrible about this ." He said,
"Terrible? I feel wonderful. " He took out a ruler and he measured
the review, and he said, "Six inches; it's fantastic! " We must
understand that the act of calling attention to something
is
the
critical act at this point. I refuse to review at least nine out of ten of
the books that are sent
to
me because they aren 't even worth negative
criticism .
MORRIS DICKSTEIN: I think that Denis Donoghue's question actually
responds to a point made by Mark Shechner that happens in fact to
