Is Cheerleading a Bad Form of Criticism?

Books I’m reading now—will any of them stand the test of time?

When I started this blog, I thought a lot about the “duty” of a critic. One thing I tried to avoid was being a cheerleader—a critic who only praises artworks. It is sometimes fun to write a bad review, especially a devastating take-down. But there are few artworks that deserve to be critically destroyed. Most of the bad art in the world provokes boredom at best—and boring art makes for boring criticism, It bores me as a writer to write critical reviews of art that bores me, and as a consequence, most of my reviews are positive. It’s more fun to write about art that I like. On balance, my writing life has been as a “cheerleader.” Have I failed in my critical duty? Maybe, but the effect of being a cheerleader-style critic is not so bad. A critic may feel like she has a duty to warn her public about bad art they may encounter. But the fact is that bad art gets quickly forgotten.

That is the subject of of a substack post by Ted Gioia, a critic specializing in music and literature. The post, entitled “All Bad Music Will Eventually Disappear”, posits that there isn’t much use to trash “The Spaniard That Blighted My Life”, a 1913 megahit by Al Jolson. because the world quickly forgot this song.

If you look at a bestseller list from pretty much anytime in the past, you will see a list of literary works that have justifiably been forgotten. Ditto with the Billboard charts of pop music. But not just sales charts—look at the winners of Pulitzer and Nobel prizes in years past and you will find a surprising number of works that are now forgotten.

Gioia recognizes that sometimes great art from the past that has been forgotten will get rediscovered. The revival of Bach by Felix Mendelssohn, 79 years after Bach’s death, is a famous example of history briefly forgetting the wrong art. Indeed it has always seemed like a special victory for a critic or art historian to discover an antique artist who has unjustly been forgotten. Indeed there are enough critics doing this all the time that they vacuum up the art that deserves to be remembered. Good art has a knack for being remembered.

Gioia’s post is a riff on a quote from critic George Steiner (1929-2020), who wrote, “No stupid literature, art or music lasts.” I guess that makes this post a second-degree riff.

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