On Smarm
 

I would argue that "content-free piety" is the defining disease of our time, at least here in America. Your thoughts on On Smarm, especially as it relates to poetry reviews and the content of poetry?

Well, on a more micro level, the snark vs. smarm debate has smoldered here on Eratosphere, and burst into prodigious flame periodically, pretty much as long as there's been an Eratosphere.

Both snark and smarm are more about the critic ("See how clever I am" or "See how nice I am") than they are about the material under critique. They are both, therefore, inherently egotistical.

When I read a review of a book or movie, I'm not interested in admiring the critic's cleverness or niceness. I'm just trying to figure out whether I'm likely to enjoy that book or movie.

Yes, I know that these sorts of judgments are always subjective, so the critic's background and biases are relevant to some extent, but mainly I want the critic to get his or her ego out of the way and present as honest and fair an assessment as possible, please. Is that too much to ask?

in that case
 

in that case you'll like these lists of top ten movies in various genres by the guardian. i have plenty of quibbles: how is "silence of the lambs" not on the adaptation list? why is jerry maguire on the sports list (it's a romance disguised as a sports movie) and "brian's song" and "bang the drum slowly" not? where is "wall-e" on the animated list? and it's not fair, i think, that some movies are on multiple lists. still, very thought-provoking. i was surprised that i'd seen all of the movies on only two lists (sci-fi, comedy) and 9 of 10 on two others (family, horror). i guess i need to see more french and russian movies.


http://www.theguardian.com/film/series/top-10-films

But Julie, you can't get your ego out of the way. No criticism can be objective because there are no rules that we can all agree are rules. Politics is rather different. We should consider the snarky Jeremy Paxman's question. 'Why is this lying bastard lying to me?' But artists tell no lies because they tell no truth. I hate all conceptual art. I want to set fire to it and punch the artist. But that's just me. And you too, I hope. But it can only be a hope because we are in the realm of opinion.

Re films, we might consider films that have been made from bad books, like 'The Silence of the Lambs' or the Swedish 'Let the Right One In'. It is very much more difficult, I think, to make a good film of a good book.

On behalf of Snarks everywhere, I wish to protest at the disparaging remarks that have been made about us on this thread. We Snarks are actually very nice. Unless, of course, we're Boojums.

Perhaps I'm Doña Quixote, but I still think it's possible for critics to shine a spotlight on the strengths and weaknesses of the material they're critiquing, without letting their egos intrude into that spotlight overmuch.

Subjective opinions are, unavoidably, subjective, which is why it's important to know something about the background and biases of the critic. But I still say that if a critic goes out of his or her way to find either warm-and-fuzzy or cold-and-prickly things to say about reviewed material, then that review is more about the impression the critic wants to make than it is about the reviewed material.

If you insist that snark and smarm are the only two choices, then I'm absolutely pro-snark. Smarm is standard-lowering stuff that is insidiously harmful to the creative community as a whole. Unmerited praise is far more poisonous than unmerited invective.

Well, there was David Lean's "Great Expectations" ...

good films bad books
 

Setting aside that "Silence of the Lambs" is an amazing book that birthed a thousand imitators and a popular obsession with serial killers and FBI profilers that continues to this day, I'd open the list of good films from bad books with Blade Runner and The Godfather.

I'm not counting books that were fantastic reads, then the movie made them even better, such as Jurassic Park (whose movie makes the park developer sympathetic instead of a corporate baddie and leaves the pterodactyls for JP3).

a confession
 

A few years ago, to keep up with what two of my semi-literate nieces were reading (at least they were reading something at last!), I actually staggered through a couple of the Twilight novels. They were as dreadful as can be. One of the nieces insisted on "treating" me to one of the movies. I went in great dread, wondering what I could possibly truthfully say on the way home yet avoid hurting her feelings. Imagine my relief upon discovering that the film was better than the book--which should indicate how truly horrid the book was.

On a much higher plane, what she was reading in high school English, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, is an example of a good book that inspired a good movie.

Yes, Brian, you're right. It was good. But the book is better. But that will always be true of any Dickens adaptation so I'm being curmudgeonly. Bad films from the classics abound. Charlotte Bronte (George C Scott as Rochester), Emily Bronte, Jane Austen (the naked D'arcy is something we could all do without). There was a Russian adaptation of 'War and Peace' in about 24 chunks that wasn't bad. Bladerunner's based on something by Philip K Dick, is it not? Philip K Dick is the greatest American writer since I don't know when.

'The Big Sleep' is a good film from a good book. Or did I say that?

I remember an English Lit class from my old school days in which we were supposed to read Ordinary People. Then we watched the movie in class. The teacher's opinion was that the movie surpassed the book. I don't know, because I never actually read the book, as assigned. But the movie was very, very good.

A timely good example of what I like in a poetry review.

Maryann makes clear how her reactions to the material are influenced by her own background and biases...AND she also acknowledges that other readers' responses may be different. She provides enough quotations and neutral observations to give each reader a chance to decide for him/herself whether that book is likely to be appealing.

What makes a good review is the same thing that makes a good poem, really. I.e., the writer doesn't tell you what to think or feel, but presents enough data to let you have your own response...which may or may not be the same as the writer's.

Thanks for the good words, Julie. Having been sorta drawn into the discussion, I should try to add to it usefully, but my brain is pulled in several directions. As with poems, there may be matters of taste here.

I know of no fans of actual smarm. Should anybody present as a review a piece of writing that better fits the model of blurb? At first blush, I don't think so. But on reflection, I can recall (for example) a David Mason review of Bill Coyle (among other poets, and in Hudson Review) that was unreservedly positive--that made clear the reviewer's plain enjoyment of the book. I have trouble taking issue with that review, but that's a case in which I already trusted the reviewer and already shared the view that the book was excellent. So is smarm in the eye of the beholder? Maybe.

When it comes to snark, there absolutely are fans. Without question, readers love William Logan--or to be more accurate, love to hate him. If you praise what you admire in a poem, you risk sounding gushy, but if you flame-broil the features you hate (especially if you do it in clever language), you've got principles, dang it, and you'll gain a following. I think Michael Robbins may be gaining attention as a critic for just those reasons. And August Kleinzahler's takedown of Garrison Keillor was a thing of wonder, even though I disagreed.

There are lots of other topics one could tackle on a thread about reviewing--Whom can you safely review and who's too close? How much actual literary criticism, as contrasted with plain reader information, is appropriate?--but I'll leave it here and see if anybody else is interested in those topics.

and the discussion continues elsewhere....
 

Yet another article in the snark v. smarm debate, from the New Yorker. This one is anti-snark.

Being Nice Isn't Really So Awful.

Thank you, Mary Ann. I totally missed Kleinzahler's hatchet job of Keillor way, way back in 2005. It's belly laughter inducing! Snark indeed!

I believe it has to do, under field conditions, with stones and glass houses.

Or the sanctimonious self-regard in not throwing them. Smarm it is.

I've just acquired Alfred Corn's "The Metamorphoses of Metaphor". Allow me to quote from the preface.

Nietzsche addressed most of this throughout his writings. In Genealogy of Morals he wrote about the ascetics who lead the Herd, sheep leading sheep under the guise of non-selfish Priests of the Herd preaching non-selfishness.

From the article linked by Stephen: "A civilization that speaks in smarm is a civilization that has lost its ability to talk about purposes at all."

From Nietzsche's Genealogy:


Nietzsche even pointed up the fact that these ascetics are influenced by the will to power—the will to power permeates the herd, just as it permeates everything.

So when Scocca in the article "On Smarm" points out the fact that plutocrats, politicians, and writer-advocates of smarm are really self-interested priests of selflessness—claiming to be an antidote to the selfishness of purveyors of snark—and calls the smarmists hypocrites, he is correct. The turning-away from some issues and the turning-toward grandiose concepts like "tone" or "middle-class" and so forth is an effort to hide their own will to power.

And smarm works because of the audience's will to power. The Smarmists say to the audience, essentially, "Not through a will of my own do I do/say these things," and the audience sees that as an opportunity to have their wills expressed through these Vehicles. The Smarmists assume the role of Vehicle for the audience's will to power. To put that another way: The Smarmists appear unthreatening, to lack a selfish agenda; the audience itself can "act" in a non-selfish way—they act for the "good of the tone" or the "good of decency" or of "the middle-class"—via those Vehicles; and in this way selfishness itself can appear abolished. But woe to the Smarmist who is found out, because the audience's selfishness, the will to power in each member of the audience, will come raging forth.

The Snarkists at least do not appear to misdirect. They display their agendas up-front....but maybe not all of their agenda. Why did Scocca write that article, if not in service to a "higher ideal"? My opinion is that Smarmists and Snarkists are not very much different. "Content-free piety" is something of a misdirection, because content itself is an abstraction, and one could posit a "content-laden piety" used as a mask for the will to power. Scocca points up the way that Smarmists denigrate Snarkists*...by denigrating Smarmists. Smarmists, you see, are self-interested liars preaching a kind of let's-all-be-friends distraction from content; whereas Snarkists have content—let us all serve that content: i.e., look away from the Snarkist and toward the Snarkist's content.

I found the fact that Scocca mentioned performance interesting in the article. I think that both Smarmists and Snarkists use performative techniques in order to try to shape the world according to selfish goals—to remake the world either in their own image or, at the very least, in ways that will be beneficial to themselves. Such an impression may seem more distasteful to Smarmists, of course—but having selfish agendas, being self-serving, does not need to be viewed as an inherently evil disposition. It's natural, in my own opinion, and typically unavoidable.

*Edited because....clarity and weird unintended syntax.

Well, I read the article linked to, and I don't suppose I had the reaction I was supposed to have. In fact, I pretty much agree, though with some important caveats, with the quote by Eggers:

Do not be critics, you people, I beg you. I was a critic and I wish I could take it all back because it came from a smelly and ignorant place in me, and spoke with a voice that was all rage and envy. Do not dismiss a book until you have written one, and do not dismiss a movie until you have made one, and do not dismiss a person until you have met them.

Caveats: I think it's perfectly fine to "be a critic". Being a critic isn't a bad thing in and of itself. I admire Howard Bloom, just to name an example of a critic of poetry who is not also a known poet himself, more than I admire a great many known poets. I think he has done great things in the world of literary critique, and he obviously knows how to read poetry. I love his defense of Shelley, for example, against many famous poets who thought ill of him and claimd he had a "tin ear" - Auden, I think, and a few others. While I don't think Shelley had a great ear, it wasn't a tin ear. If you want to know a famous poet I think truly did have a tin ear, it was _ _. On second thought, nevermind. I always get into heaps of trouble when I mention this great poet. He was a contemporary of Shakespeare, and everyone seems to love him to death. I find many of his works very fine, but by and large I find him almost impossible to read at length. If anyone is curious about whom I'm referring to, my inbox is open.

Another caveat: I think you can dismiss a work of art without being able to create something in the same medium, but it should be something one does rarely, not as a matter of routine. I rudely dismissed a major motion picture in an Amazon review which I thought was not only garbage but evil garbage, but I made sure to point out the movie's technical cred first, and explaind that I thought the film was a waste of the talents of many people who workd hard on getting the film out. One shouldn't just wantonly dismiss works of art—particularly something like a film, which usually requires years of work and the concerted efforts of hundreds of skilled and talented individuals—without expecting someone at some point to call you on it and remind you to mind your manners.

Also, doesn't a "dismissal" of a work of art come with an implied agreement that while the dismiss-or has waved her hand and dismissed, it's granted that the work of the dismis-ee may, and no doubt does, have appeal to other people who do not agree with the opinions of the dismiss-or? The appreciation of art always has been, and alway will be, subjective. Even Ayn Rand, the fountainhead of Objectivism, admits to that, in her book The Romantic Manifesto. I think a great many people forget that simple fact in the haze of their anger & indignation while loading their slings & arrows.

I was also prompted to read this poet August Kleinzahler's "takedown of Garrison Keillor". I'd never heard of Mr. Kleinzahler before, since I spend my time discovering & reading the work of long dead poets and intentionally ignore the contemporary ones, on principle (except my brethren here on the Sphere, of course, and precious few others, like Richard Kenney, frinstance, whom I had never heard of until I saw his name mentiond by my friend Don Jones on a post hereabouts). Well, I didn't care much for Kleinzahler's 'takedown', though I was forced to agree with a lot of what he said, or at least the points made in what he said. I checkd out some of Kleinzahler's poems at the Poetry Foundation's website, and was very impressd with one poem in particular, which I found excellent. This one:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/182949

It actually excited me, which rarely happens anymore when I read contemporary poetry, particularly poetry in free verse. This poem reminded me of William Carlos Williams at his best, and many others in that modern American vein. The vocabulary, the lists (I have an inordinate fondness for lists in poems), the older language: oaks, poplars, timber, Ford chassis, rock salt., contrasted with a newer, techy language: formaldehyde from the coffee plant,/ dyes, unimaginable solvents—/ a soup of polymers, oxides,... , which brought to mind various late C20 American poets, chiefly Hugh Seidman. His fast, streetwise style is sort of similar, at least in this poem, to the cyberpunk novelist William Gibson. That being said, let me reach for my prophet's hat (*dons prophet's hat*) and predict that the bulk of Kleinzahler's work will not have the same endurance & survivability as many of the poems he so confidently dismisses; or, more correctly: the kind of poems he seems to disdain, and which Keillor favors. I may be wrong, and probably am. But that's my prediction.

I'm very interested in reading Keillor's response to Kleinzahler's rant, if he did respond, if I can find it. I hope he mentiond that the edgy, gritty, & somewhat mouthy Kleinzahler seemd to have forgotten that poetry is not some sort of elitist enterprise, but is for Everyman. I dislike saccharine, preachy, overtly sentimental poetry as much as the next guy; but I know that there are many readers of poetry who like that sort of thing. Hence the Edgar Guests, James Kavanaughs, Rod McKuens, and [insert your favorite homespun and/or "popular" poet here]s of the world. Furthermore, skilled poets who write in that vein can, and often do, make things which are quite beautiful and lasting, and which are more than entitled to a place in the canon. Whether Mr. Kleinzahler likes it or not.

What I really want to say is that I believe the world is, frankly, choked and brimming o'er with poets, good & bad. And of these poets—

and I'm not the least bit interested in the "what is poetry" debate. There's no controversy. If a person makes a pile of words in a certain fashion that the greater majority of intelligent readers will recognize as poetry, and particularly if said person calls her work a 'poem', then it's a poem. The thing worth discussing is whether or not the pile of words, the poem, is worth reading, remembering, and being passed on

—far too many of them seem to be far more concernd with having others read their work than they are about reading the work of others, past and present. My opinion is that we need to slow down, look around, slow down some more, look around some more, and keep slowing down. We need to sit back and begin to appreciate the gigantic mountain of work our ancestors have made for us to enjoy (or not). I spend hours going through various archives: Gutenberg, Google Books, the Internet Archive, Amazon's Kindle, the Luminarium, and many other sites around the Net, and I'm finding poets and authors whom I've never heard of, literally on a daily basis. Granted, many of these people have left work which has been understandably and deservedly swept into the shadowy corners of neglect; but there are an equal number, or so it seems, of people whose work I enjoy very much. I'm especially happy to have not died without having read the longer or lesser known poems of Joel Barlow, Gavin Douglas, Archibald Lampman, Charles Harpur, Richard Watson Dixon, George Darley, Henry Kirke White, Mary Cavendish, Henry Kendall, Jeanne Robert Foster, John Dyer, Edward Rowland Sill, Henry Timrod, James Beattie, Trumbull Stickney, William Collins, William Cowper, Isaac Watts, James Thomson, Felicia Hemans, George Eliot, Robert Southey, Thomas Lovell Beddoes, W.M. Praed, E.B. Browning, Sir David Lyndsay, Leigh Hunt, John Hamilton Reynolds, Abraham Cowley, Robert Bloomfield, Thomas Traherne, and, last but certainly not least, the American poet Albery A. Whitman, who pennd a fair, and occasionally brilliant, epic poem in Spenserian stanza called The Rape of Florida.

I don't worry about publishing my poems (although I do occasionally submit), because I think it's more incumbent on me to pay tribute to our ancestors than it is to spend too much energy, time, and money on making a name for myself, which, I am almost certain, wouldn't be all that big of a name. I really don't care much about formal publication, whether in print or online. I think I may have a few years left in which to at sometime pursue that interest. At present, I have a son who is on the cusp of adulthood who will be in charge of my stuff should something happen to me. I told him point blank: if you don't wish to do anything with it, then so be it. That will be your decision. If you decide to try and see how my work fares in the big world, take your time, do it when the feeling strikes you, if it strikes, and don't worry about it. He's a wicked smaht (Bostonian accent) boy and has a bit of an interest in poetry himself (he tells me he favors trochaic meter to iambic: he's 16), and he loves me a great deal. So all is well.

Just my tuppence.

Shakespeare's great contemporary with a tin ear/Fascinating.Can't br Marlowe or Spenser. Or Ben Jnson surely.Must be Donne. You are not alone, Williamb. 'Donne's muse on dromedary trots' says Colerdidge. And he was out of favour till the 20th century. Nobody HAS to like anyone. Tolstoy couldn't get along with Shakespeare, as I say far too often. W.S. Gilbert didn't think much of him either. Keep on coming up with them, Willamb. Your posts are always worth reading.

You get the cigar, John. Yes, though I say it with respect, I can't read Donne at any great length without becoming irritated. I'm willing to blame myself. Maybe I'm just reading him wrong, but if that's the case, why don't I have the same problem with Marlowe, Jonson, Shakespeare, Drayton, the tricksy Spenser, or even Gavin Douglas?

At another board, many years ago, I was accused of having the tin ear because I dared to write a satirical poem about Donne and my inability to read him comfortably. Everybody and their uncle slammed me. If I can locate said poem, maybe I'll PM it to you. I can't find it in any of my papers or files, so I may have lost it. That other board keeps archives of even very old threads, so there's a chance I may be able to dredge it up over there.

Thank you, sir, I enjoy your posts as well.

Hi Williamb!
I'd like to read that poem too... if you do find it, can you also PM it to me?
Thanks.

William B.,
Maybe your son would enjoy Davenport's Version by John Gery, a book length poem (epic?) set in New Orleans during the Civil War. It's in trochaic pentameter, a bold experiment.

http://www.portalspress.com/Author_Bk/Davenport.html

See separate thread, "Hidden Treasure."

Graham, sorry to say I have failed to find that poem of mine, though there's a chance it is still in the archives at PFFA, where I posted it, probably more than ten years ago. My username there was Urizen.

Bill, thanks for the mention of my blog and for the link to the Gery work. My son will probably be interested. It was he who alerted me to the horrors that occurred at the Andersonville prison camp, of which I was ignorant.

Bill

A crit on a poetry forum is fundamentally different from all other types of crit, except those before net forums where poets may have met in a society or informal group. Poems on a forum are by defintion appearing for the first time, they may or may not be 'finished' in the poet's eyes but in terms of the forum they are a work-in-progress, crits presuppose this and offer suggestions , even edit the poem or rewrite it.
Critics who review finished works like films, novels etc are telling people whether they should or should'nt see/read the product. Even textbooks of criticism are writing about finished published products, usually to help students evaluate the work. Whether such reviews employ techniques of literary analysis is not the point, the work is not going to be rewritten, reworked.
I often think comments on poetry forums mix up these two different purposes of critique. Of course many comments simply give an opinion and then the poet has to decide if that opinion is valid. The most useful critique from the author's point of view is, I think, literary analysis, giving reasoned judgements with close attention to the text. This is hard work, it is essentially teaching.