[NetBehaviour] Bad review[s]

[Paul Hertz]

Rob, you hit the nail on the head. Aside from my having led a sheltered
life and having to learn (all over again) how to ignore the vagaries of
critics, the sort of criticism that offers a tidy judgement of value has
always been foreign to the way I write, back when I wrote criticism. The
critic should help the reader to understand the work and make her own
judgement. I know I did this because on at least one occasion I got a
message from a reader practically insisting that I state whether I thought
the work was good or bad—a question I would not answer and probably could
not answer.

Thanks, Alan. One learns to roll.

If your colleague expresses her opinion directly to you and goes so far as
to explain the basis of her opinion, Patrick, it's probably a sign of
respect.

Yawl have my simple, uninflected critical approval at this very moment.

// Paul




On Tue, Sep 15, 2015 at 8:42 PM, Rob Myers <rob at robmyers.org> wrote:

> On 15/09/15 09:43 AM, Paul Hertz wrote:
> >
> > Nevertheless, I am astounded that the moldy fig style of journalism
> > still persists, where the critic's opinion is the subject matter of the
> > critique. I suppose it's more entertaining than opening the work up to
> > the reader's judgement.
>
> I made a deal with myself very early on in my Furtherfield reviewing
> career to never write a negative review*. This came about as a result of
> an experience in a gallery where a video projection piece I'd dismissed
> and was about to walk away from entertained some young children who ran
> up to it so much that I gave it another try and got much more from it.
>
> It can be more work to stick with art (or writing) until you find
> *something* in it. But a lazy critic is not a good critic, and their
> criticism is not good criticism.
>
> Grab a Counterparty address and I'll send you some critical approval ;-) -
>
> http://robmyers.org/critical-coins/
>
> * - This means that in theory I would have to turn down or not write
> some reviews, but I cannot remember that every actually happening. It's
> also why no-one should ever ask me to write a review of "Infinite Jest".
>
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