Opinion TheReview Wednesday, January 23,1991 — A12 Stabbing back at the critic Literary critics, thank God, usually confine themselves to words. There have been a few immoderate exceptions, such as Jacques Vache, the Dadaist who jumped on the stage of a Paris theatre, brandished a revolver and threatened to shoot anyone who applauded a play he didn’t like — and in more recent times the maniacal Khomeni. - But words can wound. “In my capacity as critic I never stab anybody, for I know how life-denying it is to be stabbed,” writes the novelist Anthony Burgess. It is very often writers themselves, though, who make the harshest critics. As Saul Bellow notes wiiters seldom wish each other well. “It is not enough that I succeed,” says Gore Vidal, ““every- one else must fail.’ Ever since Aristophanes called Euripides.“a cliche anthologist,” writers have been tearing one another apart in print. Voltaire wrote, “Shakespeare is a drunken savage with some imagination whose plays can please only in London and Canada.” “Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal,” said Tolstoy. “Tf great wuiters can be wrong about other great wiiters,” says Anthony Brandt in his introduction to Rotten Reviews, A Literary Companion, how do mere reviewers summon the nerve to pass judgments?” It takes a certain courage on their part, he adds, to be willing to be wrong. In fact, the risks of reviewing are considerable. Reviewers learn little respect from readers who demand entertainment and look on praise as a bland commodity. Critics lose their sleep and their friends — they get wine tossed in their face at literary functions. : “All are regularly subject to long letters impugning their intelligence, their integrity, their humanity, which letters appear in the very publications that employ them,” Brandt contin- ues. “And for what? Reviewing will never make one rich. The enemies one makes writing reviews will almost inevitably seek revenge if one should be so foolish as to publish one’s own books. There’s no evidence to suggest bad reviews affect book sales, but they do affect literary reputations, and sometimes careers. Melville stopped writing for 40 years because of the vitriol leveled against him by critics who called Moby Dick “‘a huge dose of hyperbolical slang, maudlin sentimentalism and tragic-comic bubble and squeak”” — and worse. One periodical predicted Charles Dickens would have an “ephemeral popularity followed by oblivion.” Ultimately, though, the reviewers names are forgotten; it’s the writers who endure. But this doesn’t stop criticism from occupying the lowest place in the literary hierarchy, accord- ing to Flaubert, and critics from being generally despised. They have been called everything from Envious Prigs (Rabelais), and eunuchs of lan- guage (Robert Burns), to “blasted jelly-boned swines, slimy, belly-wriggling invertebrates, a snivelling, driveling, palsied, pulseless lot” (D.H. Lawrence). When my selected poems were published I decided it was time to start regarding criticism as Thomas Mann did — the healthy way. “No matter how stupid the abuse is,” he says, “as an expression of hostility it occupies us far more deeply and lastingly than does praise. Which is very foolish, since enemies are, of course, the necessary concomitant of any robust life, the very proof of its strength.” Yes, I was going to rise above my critics. Then I got a bad review. Plainly the reviewer had been impelled by private rancors (his last book had been rejected by my publisher) but this did not forgive him for calling my life’s work “dangerous in the extreme.” But when he concluded, “It’s pointless to criticize Musgrave for being Musgrave,” he was right. Rhetorical drone may break my bones but no Envious Prig, no eunuch, no blasted jelly- boned swine of a slimy belly-wriggling snivelling, dribbling, dithering, palsied, pulseless book reviewer was going to hurt me. On the other hand ... pointless to criticize a critic for being critical. And, in the fairness of time, my detractor was foolish enough to publish his own book. I got my hands on a review copy. I hesitated to read the book before reviewing it (I didn’t want to be prejudiced) but decided to rise above my prejudices and write a balanced (“You set Out to write some blank verses and you have succeeded’’), intelligent (“Your haiku are sharp, but there are some dull stretches”’) fair (“the kind of book that gives failure a bad name’’) review. If he ever published another book, I’d do my best to ignore it. In my capacity as critic I was never going to stab anybody. More than once. Note: Starting in last week’s issue, Susan Musgrave took up Echo Eburne’s job as book critic for Tanner’s Books in Sidney. Last chance for Chamber’s lotiery ticket draw The Saanich Peninsula Chamber of Commerce is hoping a last- minute boost in ticket sales will allow its Out of the Blue lottery ticket fundraiser to at least break even. With most of the proceeds pledged to the Saanich Peninsula Hospital Foundation, the lottery is for a very worthy cause, fundraiser coordinator Ron Gurney said Fri- day. But only 600 hundred of the 3,000 tickets had been sold as of Friday, which leaves the Chamber of Commerce facing a shortfall of $8,000, he said. Though the price tag on the ticket is steep at $20 each, the Chamber of Commerce made $1,500 on the venture last year, he said. “We felt they would also sell very well this. year, particularly since the hospital foundation is the beneficiary. But I’m at a loss to explain why sales are down,” he said. For information on where tickets can be purchases call, the Saanica Peninsula Chamber of Commerce office at 656-3616 or Gurney at his office, at 656-2411. me JOANN SUSIE QUALITY IN SO MANY WAYS CHARLENE ZN HAIR os. ADIC SKINCARE BY KRISTINE BRENTWOOD VILLAGE SQUARE CENTRALLY LOCATED TO SERVE THE ENTIRE PENINSULA PLUS G.S.T. KRISTINE CAROL-JO 652-1222 652-1242 PAMPER YOURSELF! Haircuts Facials Manicures $10 my PLACE *15 your HOME CALL 656-0124 TRICIA DAWN | MEL COUVELIER MLA | WATCH MLA’s REPORT ON CABLE 11 Tuesday, Jan. 22nd 7:00 p.m. Further information at 656-6232 BB Agriculture’ eansea” NOTICE of Canada PUBLIC MEETING CONTROL OF THE GYPSY MOTH We are holding a meeting to discuss the Gypsy Moth — it’s potential threat and approaches for control AT McTavish Elementary School 1720 McTavish, Sidney B.C. 7:00 PM., Thursday January 31, 1991 All residents of North Saanich, Sidney and any other concerned people are welcomme to attend For more information contact PLANT HEALTH DIVISION 363-3421 MUSGRAVE ON BOOKS By Susan Musgrave | Age of Iron by J.M. Coetzee Secker & Warburg. Hardcover. 181 pages. $24.95 = Living, said Marcus Aurelius, calls for the art of the wrestler, not the dancer. Staying on your feet is all; there is no need for pretty steps. In these two lines one of ancient Rome's emminent stoic philosphers goes to the nerve-centre of J.M. Coetzee’s most haunting novel to date. Age of fron is an agonizing valediction by an old woman — white, South African, and dying of cancer — in the form of a letter to her daughter who is comfortably exiled in America. The day her doctor delivers her death sentence, Mrs. Curren returns home only to find a poor-white vagrant sleeping in her yard. She is too weak to turn him away. Before long her black housekeeper’s son, Bheki, a young resistance fighter, has moved in, also. Bheki Is eventually murdered by Security Forces and one of the more horrifying descriptions is of Mrs. Curren’s search through a township inferno for his corpse. So sickened is she by the barbarism she vows to immolate herself in public. The vagrant, named Verceuil, who has become her companion and confessor and “angel of death”, hands her the kerosene, but ultimately she cannot. do it. The novel is short, but, like another of Coetzee’s books (Waiting for the Barbariansis one of the finest novels I’ve read) word-perfect. And while Coetzee’s words have the precision of poetry, his language is simple and direct. He's a rare writer with the ability to tackle all the big issues with great subtlety, at the same time striking a wonderful balance between human story, metaphor and political context. Age of Ironis quite simple — in all its vitality and scope — great literature. It's a purgatory of a story, a shocking testament to the life-denying nature of South African reality. BEST SELLERS FICTION NON FICTION 1 (1) Plains of Passage Auel 1 (1) Webster! 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