Thanks a lot for your considered review of my book. As you’ll be aware, the
book has been widely presented on internet forums as an assault on blogging
- and has sometimes elicited some strong responses for that reason. But
actually not that much of it is on the internet or blogging at all, and
those bits that are are by and large positive. I write on p. 5 – "You can
find very bad writing and sloppy impressionism in literary blogs, but also
incisive, fresh, thoughtful criticism from voices unencumbered by the
politics of Grub St". I would put your blog as in the latter category,
which is why I’m responding here.

I agree with you that the literary critical blogosphere brings huge
benefits and I do not, contrary to what your review suggests about my book,
blame the Internet for killing the professional critic.

I do, however, think that contemporary media often flaunts an insubstantial
rhetoric of democracy (perhaps more the rhetoric than the real thing) in
its obsession with interactive forums – ‘Speak Your Mind’, ‘You Decide’ or,
as The Sun newspaper puts it cynically, ‘Txt Yr Views’. This rhetoric of
‘people power’ often finds a home in discussion about the internet. Its
bogeyman is ‘elitism’ of all kinds and it is often shored up by the idea
that ‘one opinion is as good as an other’. But one opinion, in politics,
art, literature or football, is not always as good as another. Some are
more informed, more thoughtful, more eloquent and so on.

It seems to me the internet is about much more than allowing everyone to
speak their mind, as if everyone’s view was of equal weight or interest.
Rather the blogosphere provides an opportunity for fresh voices and
perspectives to emerge. My fear is that those voices might get drowned out
by the mediocre, the banal, the ad hominem and the bilious. But, I stress,
the problem is not the Internet per se. My book argues that criticism
thrives best not in a democracy, but in a meritocracy. In so far as the
internet breaks up cosy cabals and vested interests, it can richly serve
that meritocratic goal. Nothing in my book (which is by and large about the
eschewal of evaluation amongst academic critics) suggests otherwise.

With best wishes,

Rónán