There is a moment in the life of a literary man (or woman) when he suddenly finds himself writing and publishing a literary review.
How?
How is a critic born?
To paraphrase Yonatan Gefen, probably not like the laugh.
After all, why does all this matter to him?
The opening conditions of this job are quite difficult and sometimes resemble those of a football referee: he is on the field, but does not enjoy the glory of a player, but is prone to suspicious and skeptical attitude of the audience, not to mention cursing;
He carries a negative image of a latent or frustrated actor - therefore his craft is seemingly a reproduction of a miss - that is, a weak imitation;
It is considered his condemnation if he steals the show;
And finally, the clubs and the audience do not feel closeness and gratitude for his work.
After all, he seems to take a strange pleasure in judging.
Writing a review is not associated with a dream, nor with youth: a child does not dream of hanging on the wall a certified literary critic's certificate, but he may dream of a career as a writer;
Basic nature is to create - not to criticize
In analogy to the critic, his work also has a complex image: it is not a sexy craft associated with the glory of the work and its seemingly eternal status - but with a gray supervisory position, intellectual and alternative, sometimes troublesome, meticulous and authoritative;
The critical pretension invites a critical, demanding, suspicious and even conspiratorial reading on the part of the readership.
Just as a judge is allegedly suspected of selling a game, the literary critic is also suspected a priori of managing a book of benefits and accounts;
Many of the critics are poets and writers, so criticism of their pen is sometimes seen as a roundabout way of promoting their own work, not to mention compensation for the difficulties of acceptance - a consolation prize in the form of power and fear.
The readership usually does not see criticism as a work in itself, and in any case the critic is a creator for himself, but a supporting character in a plot that he is not a part of at all.
From the corridors of the academy
Nevertheless, the audit institution exists.
Hence there is probably a dark magic in criticism, which bewitches some literary people and captures them.
In view of the opening conditions described above, it can be estimated that by its very nature, writing a review stems from a movement against the current in general, and against the comfort zone of the literary person in particular.
This determined hatching originates from the fact that criticism is an occupation that is reached as a result of maturity, when a broad awareness of the field of literature develops, accompanied by a desire to express and formulate a literary position.
Unlike creating a poem or story, writing a review is fundamentally a practical act;
It is aimed at a specific medium, and the text refers to a work that already exists.
That is why writing a review is not associated with a dream, nor with youth: a child does not dream of hanging on the wall a certified literary critic's certificate, but he may dream of a career as a writer;
The basic nature of the child is to create - not to criticize.
That is, criticism is a second, supervised birth of a mature person, like Athena jumping from the head of Zeus (with a weapon in her hand).
Indeed, if I had to think of a profile of the literary critic, it would be Athena: the goddess of wisdom, art, justice and war - an ideal combination of qualities and fields for a literary critic.
She was never a girl, but always a woman;
An eternal virgin - she had no lover and was of barbarian origin.
Athena is foreign, outsider and unattainable - essential characteristics for the critic, who seeks aesthetic distance and objectivity.
At the beginning of his career, the Israeli literary critic had to be self-taught and come out as if whole, as if he had jumped from the head of God.
A major reason for this is the lack of permanent formal training frameworks for literary criticism, or a real tradition of criticism, here in Israel.
In fact, the Israeli criticism institution is fed by critics created through indirect support systems of the literature circles in the academy, where the future critic acquired skills of interpretive writing about the creation of literature.
Interpretation is a thinking that is close in spirit to the thinking of literary criticism, except that it is mainly research rather than journalistic and judgmental.
The reviews of the crowd - which in many cases are biased by advertising, marketing, public relations, and promote "keep me and keep you" mechanisms - shape the field of literature and distort literary and value judgment
And in general, one could say, the literature circles are quite disconnected from the study of contemporary literature, and this is one of the main reasons why they do not create training courses for written criticism (after all, criticism mainly deals with contemporary work).
And in a research reality threatened by the present, the message to students in general, and their potential critics in particular - is that contemporary literature, the relevant corpus for criticism, is not important.
Encrypted in this approach is a hidden conservative message, the sorcerer for elitist researchers and critics.
They use the disregard of the present literature as a justification to define it as unworthy, and any criticism of them will be fatal anyway.
And yet, most literary critics in Israel, regular or occasional, have received academic literary training, and they dictate the tone of criticism.
Voluntary audit
The new world brought with it three potential central platforms for criticism: the professional one, that of the printed newspaper or journal dedicated to literary criticism - intended for skilled critics;
the hybrid, of magazines and blogs for literature;
And the mass criticism, that of the posts and comments, which were written directly to the web.
And while the professional criticism and the hybrid one are familiar to us, a question arises regarding the criticism of the crowd.
The Internet and social networks are a habitat for critical experiences in general and amateur criticism in particular.
It is an infrastructure of enormous dimensions, which spreads alternative literary criticism that has never been experienced before - not in scope, eclecticism, personal diversity, availability, visibility and style.
It is worth saying that these days, even a short post or a line-long comment - are not much different from the greedy and economical minimalism of some of the literature reviews that are published from time to time in print as well.
Admittedly, post writers and commenters do not define themselves as critics, but they do write criticism, which cumulatively and over time becomes another factor in shaping the audience's taste.
That criticism, which can certainly be professional, is not bound by professional criteria by virtue of being an amateur, personal and free expression.
Therefore, among other things, it is a favorable breeding ground for peikritism that flourishes in the pseudo-democratic age of social networks.
Peikritism, as I call it - is criticism that does not respond to reasoning, substantiation and accuracy, and does not operate under the ethical code of the critic.
In other words, she has no expertise.
And because this is so, the effect of the discourse created in its aftermath is devastating, because it also permeates the institution of audit and the professional discourse of audit.
This discourse, which stems from the reviews of the crowd - which in many cases biases advertising, marketing, public relations, and promotes mechanisms of "keep me and keep you" - shapes the field of literature and distorts literary and value judgment.
Contemporary literary criticism has an essential historical role, and it is to perfect, develop and preserve culture and virtuosic skills in the worlds of literature, and also to develop the tradition of literary criticism in Israel, also so that it will seep back into social networks, influence mass criticism and reduce the harms of particularism.
In order for this to happen, the wage norms for auditing will have to change (today it is a semi-voluntary or completely voluntary job, whose main reward is creative, intellectual and spiritual), and it will also be necessary to establish training courses (for auditors and editors) and to develop professional, permanent, accessible and attractive platforms for auditing Digits.
Gilad Meiri is a poet, researcher and literary editor.
Co-director of a place for poetry and the School for the Arts of the Word and an editorial member of the literature review journal "Ma'ale"