I dislike literary jargon and never use it. Criticism has only one function and that is to help readers read and understand literature. It is not a science, it is an aid to art.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Literary theory has become a parody of science, generating its own arcane jargon. In the process, tragically, it discourages love of literature for its own sake.
If people aren't creating literature, there would be nothing for people to criticize.
All good criticism should be judged the way art is. You shouldn't read it the way you read history or science.
Criticism is, for me, like essay writing, a wonderful way of relaxation; it doesn't require a heightened and mediated voice, like prose fiction, but rather a calm, rational, even conversational voice.
People say jargon is a bad thing, but it's really a shortcut vocabulary professionals use to understand one another.
I wouldn't call myself a 'literary critic,' just a book reviewer.
Criticism is part of being in the marketplace. If you can't take a bit of criticism, you shouldn't bother publishing a book.
I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.
Sometimes literary critics review the book they wanted you to write, not the book you wrote, and that's very irksome.
I personally read criticism - at least by writers I enjoy - to stimulate a conversation in my own mind, and I like to think that's the function I serve for others.
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