In response to a recent Guest Post on this site by Andre Alexis, I  received the following submission from one Ismail Andersson. I am pleased to present it to you today.

In Defence of John Metcalf by Ismail Andersson

In light of André Alexis’ attack on John Metcalf, I’d like to offer a defence not so much of John Metcalf the man but of John Metcalf the literary provocateur. Alexis has got a number of things wrong. I’d like to point a few of them out.

                In a nutshell, here’s what Alexis says in a piece published by The Walrus last summer:

                - There’s been a decline in the quality of literary appreciation, in Canada

                - One of the reasons for this supposed decline is a falling off in the credibility of book reviewers – who now write about themselves and their suppositions (“a species of autobiography” is how Alexis puts it) rather than concentrating on the work before them.

                - The origin of this autobiographical turn is exemplified by John Metcalf’s approach to literary journalism.

                The first two propositions are half-truths. As others have pointed out, bad literary journalism has been with us forever. Two hundred years ago, now, the great poet Goethe pointed out that great critics are rarer than great poets. So, whether from critics or reviewers, this lack of cogent criticism is not new. Yes, it’s true that twenty or thirty years ago Frye, Kenner, Atwood, McLuhan were writing criticism. But in the years before them there wasn’t much going on in Canadian criticism, was there? So, Alexis is pointing to the existence of a kind of “golden generation” of Canadian critics and berating the current crop of reviewers for not being at that generation’s level. Pointing to a writer like Ryan Bigge and suggesting that he’s not as good as Northrop Frye is a little desperate, though, isn’t it? If Alexis were being fair, he would compare Bigge or Nathan Whitlock to literary reviewers from forty or fifty years ago. I realize that Alexis actually compares Bigge et al to Stan Persky and George Fetherling, but Persky and Fetherling have stuck in his mind more than they have in the minds of others. Neither of them represent the height of reviewing and I’m not – personally – convinced that they were significantly better than their current counterparts. I believe Alexis’ argument surreptitiously – dishonestly – relies on the stature of Frye, McLuhan et al.

                The second idea – that the current crop of reviewers are “navel gazers” – is perhaps true but it’s irrelevant. Reviewing, as opposed to literary criticism, has always been a matter of using the individual’s taste as an aesthetic barometer. Newspapers aren’t literary journals. They aren’t the place where literary concepts get worked out. They’re the place where a known sensibility confronts a recent example of an art form: a new collection of poems or short stories or essays, or a novel. The point, in this confrontation, is the report of pleasure or dislike or ambivalence, from the reviewer’s perspective. That some barometers work better than others is, inevitably, true. I’d rather read Michel Bassilière than Alex Good, any day.  But that doesn’t make Alex Good useless. What Alexis fails to consider is that a third rate sensibility can still be a first rate gauge. Knowing that “reviewer x” has a certain kind of sensibility, I can get a pretty good bead on any book he or she evaluates. Regular reviewers like Good, Whitlock or Alexis himself aren’t valuable because they tell the truth (whatever that might be, where the evaluation of a book is concerned) or because they’re particularly “deep” but, rather, they’re valuable because they broadcast from a known frequency. I know where they’re coming from. What would be confusing is if Alexis began writing like Seamus Heaney and then wrote like Philippe Sollers and, the following week, wrote like James Wood. I’m happy he writes like André Alexis because, to be truthful, it allows me to guiltlessly avoid most of the books he recommends.

                There’s another thing to consider, where reviewing is concerned. Newspapers or magazines also have sensibilities. The Star is not like The Globe which is not like The New Republic, and so on. So, when we read André Alexis’ reviews, we’re reading – at least in part – what The Globe and Mail has decided constitutes reviewing. Again, this is not a bad thing. I know in advance what kind of sensibilities will be hired by Martin Levin (book editor at the Globe) or Dan Smith (at The Star). So, as a reader, I know where these reviews are coming from. (Not to be cruel but Alexis, when he does his reviews, is really only as independent as the next organ grinder’s monkey.)

                I think we can admit that Alexis presents Metcalf’s case fairly well. In short, some two decades ago, John Metcalf wrote his version of “The Pleasure Principle”. The idea is that the critic’s personal pleasure in a book is far from negligible. In fact, the pleasure the critic takes in a work is what guides him or her towards certain works and away from others. To an extent, the critic’s pleasure is a subjective matter but, and this is a big but, the individual sensibility’s pleasure is not a worse starting point than academic theories or intellectual configurations.

                The objection Alexis makes to this idea is that the critic or literary journalist ends up solipsistically defending aspects of literature that appeal to him or her. In Metcalf’s case, the crucial thing is called “style”. Metcalf places books whose “style” he admires over here and those whose “style” he does not like over there, beyond the pale. To Alexis this is unfair because unsystematic. “Good” works are designated as such by Metcalf, but all Metcalf can actually do is point to sentences or paragraphs and say “there, this is “stylish” and valuable and work that is not like this is not “stylish” and not valuable”. So, Alexis is arguing that Metcalf’s system is arbitrary and too closely based on what Metcalf himself prefers as opposed to what is inherently valuable. (If there is such a thing as “inherent value” where art is concerned.)

                At first glance, that’s a good objection. But isn’t Metcalf doing what all criticism does, either implicitly or explicitly? Isn’t all criticism a justification of needs or pleasure? For instance, the academic criticism that Metcalf was writing against invented categories to fit its needs. Canadian academic critics who wanted to talk about “the Canadian gothic” fetishized certain works in exactly the way Metcalf fetishizes Evelyn Waugh or Kingsley Amis. Yes, the academic critic could point to a system outside of his or her own sensibility. They could point to supposedly “objective” principles and taxonomies but, in effect, they ended up valuing the work that served their taxonomic needs. All the academic critic can do is point to Wacousta and talk about its inherent value as an “originating text” or as an example of such and such a tendency in the Canadian novel. But whereas the work that Metcalf liked – work by Waugh, Naipaul, Amis, etc. – could actually be read with enjoyment by any number of people, a work like Wacousta or Master of the Mill could only really have value if you were a member of the academic congregation that had created the grounds on which a book like Wacousta could be called valuable. (This strikes me as just as “arbitrary” as Metcalf’s pleasure principle, but much less democratic.)

                This divorce of criticism from pleasure is pervasive in all the arts. By now, this is an almost banal fact. Academic criticism began to see itself less as evaluation than as classification. It is, now, a kind of cancerous taxonomy. And this is where Alexis is particularly dishonest. The problem of the withdrawal of academic criticism to its dark, crystal chambers is crucial to understanding why Metcalf’s criticism is so important and still relevant. Metcalf’s approach is, still, the only one that allows us to talk about works of literature with language and concepts that have meaning, as I suggested above, for a wide variety of people.

                In an ideal world, criticism would join in the discussions begun by reviewing and add to them. But …

                If he’d wanted to point to a deep problem in our critical culture, instead of blaming Metcalf’s approach Alexis might have mentioned the self-imposed segregation of academia.  To convey this last point, I’ll have to resort to anecdotal evidence. There are, of course, academics who still participate in popular culture, writing for newspapers and so on. However, I have a number of friends in academia who have complained that they’re not allowed to contribute to newspapers or more popular venes. Or rather that the consequences of their airing their views in “unmediated” venues are fairly serious. Mark Kingwell’s populist approach, for instance, will have done great damage to his reputation as a thinker. His contributions to The Globe or Harpers or even smaller venues, his use of non-professional language, his democratic approach to thinking and criticism are things that, in academe, count against him. His approach is taken as a mark against his seriousness. And Kingwell’s situation is not uncommon. In our time, the academic critic is forced to stay on “the grounds”, to write papers for other academics, to use the accepted jargon, to make major pleas for minor details. The systematic approach to criticism that Alexis wants is on offer, but it is not likely to help us find “shared standards”, since it’s exemplified by its crabbed language (think Judith Butler ), its specialist orientation, and its resolute turning away from the common reader.  In other words, it will not share.

                (Nor is the problem – as some have suggested – simply a matter of academic criticism turning away from evaluation and judgement, the things reviewers embrace. Rather, it’s a problem of “shamanism”. Academics see themselves as part of a brotherhood or sorority of the serious . Their withdrawal from popular culture follows from this, rather than from any particular approach.)

                What André Alexis has done – by turning the discussion towards an evaluation of John Metcalf – is obscure a sad but crucial point: criticism has abandoned the field to reviewing. As a culture, we are now left with reviewing alone. Thirty years ago, our culture had a massive advantage. Our reviewers were buttressed or contradicted or made more vital by Frye, McLuhan, et al. For a variety of reasons, we no longer have such critical perspectives to help us. Until we do, Metcalf’s approach is the only one that allows us to speak of important things (pleasure, style, diction, humour …) while waiting for a critical mind – for a perspective – that will help us make more acute or broader sense of literary matters.

ISMAIL ANDERSSON was born in Alexandria, Egypt. He came to Canada thirty years ago, when he was in his twenties. He has worked as a history researcher but now works for the government. He has been writing poetry for many years – since childhood,in fact – but has only recently decided to submit it for publication. Two of his poems were accepted by the magazine Contemporary Verse 2. He is a faithful reader of Constantin Cavafy.

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