It is the unloved of influencers. The poor relation of opinion journalism, “a power of impotence” (Lamartine), even a “sympathetic failure”, as Robert Charlebois sings it.
Despite everything, thehomo criticus, this possibly endangered species, is the itch that sometimes keeps editors and writers from going around in circles.
One “ second heart of literature “, according to the journalist, writer and independent literary critic Arnaud Viviant, who devotes a short essay to him in the form of defense and illustration, Song of Criticism.
“The challenge of criticism is above all to distinguish. To distinguish between good and bad literature, between good and bad writers ”, recalls, from Paris, this former Inrocks and of Release, regular contributor to the show The mask and the feather on France Inter. We can also hear him for several years as a correspondent in Paris for The more the merrier, the more we read.
Criticism, says Arnaud Viviant in his work, that which is expressed day by day and without hindsight, “the head on the block”, was born two centuries ago with the appearance of newspapers, before being integrated to the edition at the beginning of the XXe century with the appearance of the very first reading committees – at Gallimard for the first time in France.
Writing for all
“But the striking phenomenon of this beginning of XXIe century, he adds, is what I call the democratization of writing. It is the fact that today everyone writes. It can also be seen in the proliferation of paid writing workshops all over France, including at the university. »After the democratization of reading, writing for all?
While Roland Barthes was worried, in a dialogue with the critic and publisher Maurice Nadeau in 1973, that “there are on the one hand a few writers, and on the other a large mass of readers” and that ” [ceux] who read do not write ”, a French editor, to justify the fact that her house no longer wanted to read manuscripts received by post, was alarmed to the contrary: today we see many people who write, but very few who read …
“In fifty years, points out Arnaud Viviant, who does not believe in the disappearance of criticism, the relationship has completely reversed. Suddenly, and this is what I’m trying to explain, the critic finds himself in a position to be the last great reader. “
Faced with publishers who sometimes seem to see criticism only as a transmission belt for their “cultural product”, it is good to ask the question: is the criticism intended to sell books or a newspaper? “Unlike his evil double, who is now the bookseller, the true critic does not sell a book to a reader, but a reader to a book,” argues Arnaud Viviant.
“I realized while writing this book,” he continues, “that people do not understand this critical function at all. In their minds, precisely, the critic is someone who seeks to sell books. While it is absolutely not its role, which is rather to ensure that literature remains a subject of conversation in the democratic and social space. “
The critic as an assassin
Speaking of critical vitality, the importance of negative criticism should not be overlooked. We know the words that Beaumarchais makes heard in Figaro’s wedding : “Without the freedom to blame, there is no flattering praise …” With Molière, Alceste was not left out, who believed that “it is to esteem nothing that to esteem everyone”.
In this sense, can one be both a bookseller and a critic? “By definition, a trader can not be a critic, he will not denigrate his own merchandise,” says Arnaud Viviant, who points out that neither booksellers nor academics really attack the books they list.
“Someone has to take charge of the negative, that is to say, make murderous criticisms. The critic must remain an assassin, ”he adds, a smile in his voice.
A spirit of independence and insubordination well defined by Albert Thibaudet, influential literary critic of the interwar period in France, to which Arnaud Viviant gives a great place in his book: “Criticism defends the human spirit against automatisms. “
“Criticism is the language of liberal democracies while propaganda is that of dictatorships”, believes Arnaud Viviant, for whom “Internet balkanizes criticism”. Blogs, online bookstore algorithms, sites like Goodreads or Babelio, where mostly anonymous readers go there for their comments and distribute their notes, dilute true critical speech.
Moreover, for the author of Song of Criticism, the cause is heard, “bloggers are not critics”. Because as is the case with psychoanalysis, he believes, criticism must be remunerated to “function”.
However, Arnaud Viviant insists, in this long “war of taste” (Sollers) which is at work, there is no reading truth, there can only be one judgment. A way of accounting for an aspect of the world – that is to say, literature – a critic’s reading is never definitive, it is “a proposition which cannot be sufficient in itself and which awaits others. “