I completely agree with Steven Shaviro and the Reading Experience to”only write about books [and films etc…] I like, letting the ones I don’t be passed over in silence.”
One of the earliest people to defend this was André Bazin:
André Bazin is known as a proponent of appreciative criticism, wherein only critics who like a film can write a review of it, thus encouraging constructive criticism.
I have a lot of respect for this approach, but there was a time when I found negative criticism very helpful. For years my favorite films were “One Thumb Up,” specifically Roger Ebert’s thumb. When he and Siskel agreed I learned nothing, but films that Ebert picked and Siskel panned I almost always liked.
I know this feeling, when you get to know a certain critic, he pans a product, you seek it out because you think you’re on to something. One of the more famous examples is the book Romantic Agony (1930) by Mario Praz in which he ‘pans’ the whole of decadent literature but proves to be a good guide to discovering decadent literature in the process.
However, one of the advantages of writing about culture on the web, is that you can leave aside what you do not like and concentrate on what you do like, thus giving a biased account of culture. This of course means that you spend a lot of time in the past, writing about culture on the web also means that you do not have to focus on currency: the past is a much bigger place than the present.
What a fantastic example! It reminds me, when we were catholic-school kids, we routinely consulted the Catholc Star-Herald’s list of condemned films in search of recommendations. Now I’ll go looking for Praz. We “comment-leavers” follow a similar principle, don’t you think? We save our comments for posts that have a value we want to commend. Yes, the past is bigger, deeper too, I guess, but the present has such breadth. Thank you for helping us mine them both for gems.
You started me thinking there Dave, one more addition.
The case of censors showing the way to important and valuable art:
The Catholic Index Librorum Prohibitorum and the German pre-war phenomenon of degenerate art are two other perfect examples censors showing the way to interesting art. In general, anything that’s forbidden is a sign of interestingness.
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