McDonald surveys the rise of blogs and readers’ reviews, of television and newspaper polls and reading groups, under the heading “We Are All Critics Nowâ€. He argues that the demise of critical expertise brings not a liberating democracy of taste, but conservatism and repetition. “The death of the critic†leads not to the sometimes vaunted “empowerment†of the reader, but to “a dearth of choiceâ€. It is hardly a surprise to find him taking issue with John Carey’s anti-elitist What Good Are the Arts? (2005), with its argument that one person’s aesthetic judgement cannot be better or worse than another’s, making taste an entirely individual matter. McDonald proposes that cultural value judgements, while not objective, are shared, communal, consensual and therefore open to agreement as well as dispute. But the critics who could help us to reach shared evaluations have opted out. The distance between Ivory Tower and Grub Street has never been greater. While other academic disciplines have seen the rise of the professional popularizer of art, music and film, literary expertise has sealed itself off in the academy. McDonald believes that the main reason for the gulf between academic and non-academic criticism is “the turn from evaluative and aesthetic concerns in the university humanities’ departmentsâ€. He does not bemoan the influence of the Richard and Judy Book Club or the internet; he blames his fellow academics. ^
As literature and journalism get obsessed with competing with Peoplemedia, which is the word I’m going to use for user-generated content (UGC) in the sense of Wikipedia and IMDB, they have tried too hard to be everybody’s friend and inoffensive to everyone, and the result is books that are like weak tea. You can see right through them, there’s a hint of taste, and you’re v. v. glad when the cup is over.
The greatest secret of humanity is that, just like in grade school, what most of the people around you are saying is unadulterated horsepoppy. They just don’t the answers to the questions they pretend to answer. No one means badly in telling a rumor, or in passing on an urban legend, but urban legends and rumors are just as much B.S. as what these same people tell you about science, politics, and art.
Now that we’ve opened up the floodgates, too much of this B.S. has come into literature, and as a result, most authors are afraid to take a stand for risk of not competing. It’s good to see the tide turn.