Who killed the literary critic?

Miller: I don't think there's a real causal connection between the blogosphere and the withering away of newspaper criticism, actually. It has more to do with the economics of newspaper publishing and management and editors feeling that criticism is disposable because it's not reporting, which they see as a newspaper's core product.

I think of blogs not as alternatives to reviews or essays, but as a forum for short items, news and remarks, as well as links and responses to longer pieces posted on the sites that commission them. I could be wrong, though, as I'm not really a reader of blogs. I have a hard enough time keeping up with the book review sections of the New York and Los Angeles Times, the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, Bookforum, the Atlantic, Harper's, TLS, the New Republic, etc., as well as the British newspapers like the Guardian and Independent, which I read online. Yet even in those publications I often find that the pieces I'm excited to be reading are the exception rather than the rule. I'm all for cultural gatekeepers because there's way more out there than I have time to read and it's not always easy to find the best of it.

As for qualifications, what qualifies Doris Lessing to be a celebrated novelist? Only the novels she's written. If you and I agree that it's good writing that makes a good critic, rather than simply the delivery of information and an opinion, then really good critics are as common as really good novelists -- that is, not very. Talent is neither equitably nor widely distributed.

Bayard: For sure, talent is inequitably distributed in all art forms. I actually believe great critics are even rarer than great novelists or poets, and I wonder if that's because criticism itself is held in such low esteem. (Brendan Behan once compared critics to harem eunuchs, which is relatively nice as the analogies go.) McDonald mentions that one of academia's last havens for evaluative criticism has been the creative-writing class, and he suggests that universities should offer more in the way of "creative criticism" classes, teaching the craft of interpreting other people's works. All the same, I'm skeptical this would reverse the current state of affairs. People will only value literary criticism to the extent they value literature. Unless we can arrest the decline of reading -- and even Harry Potter hasn't managed that wizard's trick -- then criticism will be swept away in the same mud slide.

Maybe McDonald's next book should be "The Death of the Reader"?

Miller: It may indeed be a vicious circle: The less critics are valued, the fewer talented and original people apply themselves to the profession and the more it starts to seem like a job that anyone can do. During this conversation, I've come around to McDonald's point about the need for academia to lend what's left of its credibility to criticism as a whole: "Creative criticism" is, after all, exactly what English professors were once chiefly known for.

One thing academics don't seem to grasp, however, is the overall decline in reading that you've cited. It hardly matters whether or not an English professor actually likes to read novels and poetry, does it? Books are the salt mine, and the academics are the miners. If anything, literary enthusiasm can be a detriment if your job is to prosecute books for their ideological crimes. When even English professors won't stand up for literature, is it any wonder it's failing? I hate to end on the same note we began on -- blaming cultural studies -- but unfortunately, McDonald is a bit stronger on diagnosis than cure, isn't he?

As far as the death of the reader goes, I hope that the critic (who is, after all, just as much a reader as a writer) really isn't the canary in the coal mine on this one, but I fear that you may be right about that.

Bayard: Well, it's been a while since I was in college, but I do remember professors who loved English literature every bit as much as I do, so I don't want to tar the whole profession out of hand. And I don't want to end on too sour a note. There are still -- there will always be -- people who love to read. Maybe we begin simply by celebrating and rewarding that wherever we find it, and then we do the same with good books. Life's too short to dwell on the dross.