Some encouragement from William Pritchard - a provocation to speak out, sometimes doubtless recklessly

William Pritchard is, I think, my favorite living critic.* I can't guess why he's not better known, except that one of his specialties is modern poetry (not such a big audience), and another is John Updike (a fading audience). Pritchard, a longtime English professor at Amherst College, made the deliberate decision early in his career to write for a larger audience, an audience that includes me.

His newest collections of book reviews and essays is titled On Poets & Poetry (2009). I've read some of it already - appreciations of John Dryden and of Johnson's Lives of the Poets - and most of the rest concerns moderns and Modernists. Pound, Eliot, Frost through Bishop, Lowell, Larkin. Someday, I will, inshallah, read those poets more seriously, and then I'll return to this book. For now, I actually just want it for a couple of pieces on Tennyson.

I wanted to mention a couple of lines from the book's preface, one today, one tomorrow.

Pritchard mentions the example of T. S. Eliot, who wrote hundreds of book reviews "most of which have never been available in book form":

"At the peril of inviting comparison with Eliot, it appears to me that, unlike the scholarly essay which must justify itself by bringing out a new aspect of a writer's work or correcting the inadequate interpretation of earlier critics, reviews are bound by no such rules. The reviewer is not only free but expected to take the book at hand as a chance to direct attention to central issues. As a critic he may speak to large matters of a poet's achievement, comparing the writer with contemporaries and predecessors in an effort to capture his or her distinctness. Under the confines of a thousand-word limit - or in more spacious situations double or treble that length** - he can embrace limits as a provocation to speak out, sometimes doubtless recklessly, in order to elicit something essential about his subject." (p. x)

He follows with a famous bit of Randall Jarrell, from "The Age of Criticism," in which Jarrell writes that the responsibility of the critic is "taking the chance of making a complete fool of himself."

Now that last part, I have that covered. Chance, taken; fool, made. That reckless freedom is a great part of why I keep writing here. When something does not work, I can try something else, with no costs at all. I guess I could damage my ability to "Monetize" Wuthering Expectations. Ha ha ha ha ha!

Prof. Myers expresses disappointment that so few bloggers are "committed to argument" (although he clearly understands why they are not). My Appreciationist temperament is all wrong for that task (mostly). But I think Pritchard is absolutely right. There are different kinds of provocation, different breeds of recklessness. Anyone who writes about books should discover the kind that works for him and cultivate it. If Pritchard, writing for professional publication, is free, think of the liberty possessed by we book bloggers.

I didn't set out to write anything related to Book Blogger Appreciation Week, but I obviously just did. And there's a bit more tomorrow.
* Along with Joseph Epstein. And Christopher Benfey. Ruth Franklin's good. Frank Kermode. Ingrid Rowland could hardly be better. Enough of this.

** Gotta say, any blogger going over three thousand words maybe ought to consider if anyone will read that much. I am being very generous allowing three thousand words.