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In the October 14 issue of TNR <\/em> , Leon Wieseltier gives a curmudgeonly defense of publishing negative reviews, specifically of the negative review of Jonathan Franzen\u2019s Freedom <\/em> published in the same issue. <\/p>\n It\u2019s bracing: \u201cA shabby treatment of a consequential subject or a significant form is a corruption, and it is the mark of a reviewer\u2019s depth of conviction, and of her knowledge, to treat it as such, to fight it. \u00a0An opinion about a book is an opinion about the world. \u00a0Anger at the false and the fake \u2013 as long as the labor of persuasion is done: a curse is not an act of criticism \u2013 is an admirable anger, because it is the heat of a cause, and our causes are the spurs of our culture. \u00a0No culture, no literature, ever advanced by niceness.\u201d <\/p>\n Literature is \u201ca proposal, or an infinity of proposals, for an emendation, or a transformation, of consciousness. \u00a0It commends ideals of thinking, and even ideals of living; and no such instructions should be exempt from strenuous and unsentimental judgment, from the foul tempers of thoughtful people, or else nothing will weigh anything and we will be only compilations of the trends of our times.\u201d <\/p>\n He is not complimentary to contemporary literary culture: <\/p>\n Readers today receive guidance from \u201ca literary and literary-critical world that is amiable, bland, clubby, pious, careerist, relentlessly cheerful, desperate for numbers, suavely relativizing, and awash in worthless praise. \u00a0A universe of invitations and congratulations, of pals and candidate-pals appreciating and mythologizing each other. \u00a0Books are generally assessed only internally, for what \u2018works\u2019 and what does not \u2018work,\u2019 with synopsis usurping analysis, politely against the background of the author\u2019s literary or personal history, and almost never for the sake of a larger concept, a transcending idea, to which the review, if not the book, should owe its life. \u00a0Reviews without inner necessity extol books without inner necessity . . . . It is not the responsibility of the critic to lift the spirits of the writer or publisher.\u201d <\/p>\n Bracing as this is, I\u2019m put in mind of Ken Myers\u2019 recent review of Steven D. Smith\u2019s work on law. \u00a0Smith argues (as I have summarized in a recent post) that our bland public discourse is not accidental, but precisely what our Rawlsian liberal polity called for. \u00a0Weightlessness is what we want, what our politics and culture are designed to produce. \u00a0Wieseltier is right to be upset at the thinness of literature and criticism; he should examine what role the magazine that employs him has played in creating what he condemns. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the October 14 issue of TNR , Leon Wieseltier gives a curmudgeonly defense of publishing negative reviews, specifically of the negative review of Jonathan Franzen\u2019s Freedom published in the same issue. It\u2019s bracing: \u201cA shabby treatment of a consequential subject or a significant form is a corruption, and it is the mark of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature"],"yoast_head":"\n