Lee Siegel reflects on how becoming an author made him a more generous appraiser of others’ work:
Having become an author of books myself, I now find that the shoe is most definitely on the other foot. I once dismissed as maudlin the protest that one shouldn’t harshly disparage a book because the author poured the deepest part of herself into it. What, I replied, has that got to do with defending civilization against bad art and sloppy thinking? Nowadays the abstractions of aesthetic and intellectual criteria matter much less to me than people’s efforts to console themselves, to free themselves, to escape from themselves, by sitting down and making something. In my present way of thinking, mortality seems a greater enemy than mediocrity. You can ignore mediocrity. But attention must be paid to the countless ways people cope with their mortality. In the large and varied scheme of things, in the face of experiences before which even the most poetic words fail and fall mute, writing even an inferior book might well be a superior way of living.
Isaac Chotiner shakes his head:
Siegel should take a deep breath, re-read this paragraph, and ask himself if he really wants to live in a world without negative cultural criticism. He should also explain whether he is willing to review books at all, since accepting a book reviewing assignment should entail a willingness to be honest about the book. I am happy for Siegel that he has started writing books himself, and thus, according to his logic, begun wrestling with mortality. But people write books for all sorts of reasons, not all of them so wince-makingly self-serious. And since no one can read every book, it’s worth having critics around to be honest about which ones are worth our time, and to help explain their larger importance, even if doing so makes those critics occasionally sound mean.
The Dish 