MOLESKINE ® LITERARIO

La guapa Molly Flatt escribe en el blog de The Guardian sobre por qué es más fácil hacer una crítica cruel y destructiva, aunque ingeniosa ('funny negative' ) antes que una crítica constructiva. En su texto, comenta así la actitud impaciente de la crítica :

Literary criticism is famously red in tooth and claw. Terry Eagleton, Mary McCarthy and Dale Peck are just a few reviewers who have made their names with funny and often frankly showy cruelty. With the book market more crowded than ever before, a bracing and briny critique can be just the thing to cut through the prettily packaged chaff. As Eaves pointed out, critics are brokers, advising readers where to invest their time and money with a duty to the often less-than-lenient truth - an image that is especially appealing to bloggers, avowedly fearless mouthpieces for the common man. Moreover, in his article this week on the notoriously prickly VS Naipaul's new work of criticism, A Writer's People, Radhakrishan Nayar reminds us that a clever tongue-lash can be a defining symptom of uncompromising and idiosyncratic literary brilliance. "Great writers can be impatient, quirky, rudely iconoclastic literary critics," he says. "It is almost a professional deformity. They achieve greatness through a stern commitment to sharply individual visions of the world."

La crítica literaria en los blogs, por otra parte, ha contribuido poco en mejorar la sitaución. Desde el mundo del blog -y ya ni se diga lo que ocasiona el anonimato- las reglas de convivencia se pierden y se favorecen los insultos gratuitos, sin responsabilidad académica, digamos, para el reseñista:

Of course, if you're not an acknowledged Great Writer, "sharply individual vision" can appear more like selective blindness for the sake of a soundbite. Especially on the net, funny negatives are much more likely to go viral than gracious accolades, and bloggers seem particularly keen to avoid the smear of gentle amateurism by showcasing a rigorous vitriol. Eaves' rule of thumb is to publish only what he would be willing to say to an author's face; an effective restraint if you're an editor at the TLS, likely to meet said wounded author over a glass of warm white wine at a literary do; less so if you're an isolated scribbler on the fringes of the reviewing world trying to stand out from the crowd.

¿No es genial eso de la "regla de oro" de no decir en la reseña lo que no se atrevería a decirle al autor en su propia cara? ¿Qué dirían los bloggers basura ante eso? Pero ¿tan difícil resulta escribir una alabanza? Sí, sostiene Molly Flatt, es muy difícil. Primero porque nos compromete como personas, mientras que las reseñas negativas logran un distanciamiento. Y segundo, por el vocabulario: los adjetivos negativos son centenares y divertidos todos, los favorables son pocos y superficiales, por lo que deparan mayor esfuerzo.

Maybe the problem is that the texts that really touch us engage our emotions and our passions, so that in describing them we must also reveal something of ourselves, whereas a clever slating distances us through self-consciously crafted irony and wit. And the language of praise is more difficult to wield; bile flows more easily than the milk of kindness. Admiring adjectives often seem too gushing, too pretentious or too fey; difficult to deploy without sounding like an Amazon spammer or a school book report. The vocabulary of cruelty is, on the other hand, deliciously diverse.

Dos ideas finales en este texto provocador y lúcido. Primero, que los reseñistas han dejado de escribir para los potenciales lectores y empiezan a escribir para lectores de reseñas. Y segundo, que lo que está detrás de esos "funny negative" muchas veces son la pereza, el egoísmo y el atractivo comercial.

Etiquetas: blogs, inglaterra, molly flatt, NOTICIA, RESEÑA