On the Sad State of Literary Critique

This ties into my experiences with the community of editors while searching for support to edit my novel, together with the critiques from literary community regarding my short stories. This ties together with conversations I have with WOC encountering strange responses to cultural themes in their writing that echo attitudes in both the literary and publishing worlds.

While there is already disparity in literature programs in academia, the kinds of things literary journals are drawn to, and what kinds of writing publishing wants to invest in, I feel the culture surrounding the career paths individuals take share some common elements, which as writers we seem to have negative and universal experiences.

I think of what these people were probably like as children, and I probably knew some of my peers who shared similar personality types. For whatever reason, they decide they want to pursue some area related to writing when they are young. They enter academic programs as an undergraduate or graduate in literature or creative writing, and then, particularly at the graduate level, they spend all of their energy trying to prove they belong or are an expert. Their ideas about literature are probably particular to the faculty in their program, whatever angle or requirements they are forced to take for their dissertation is also subjective having to fit into being "adequate" enough to meet the satisfaction of a subjective board of faculty to approve their degree. I know because I purposely avoided all of this and studied literature independently without pursuing a degree, so I could just focus on understanding it, without any politics or agenda influencing my study.

What does it mean as writers and how does this manifest when we encounter this culture and these people in either sector - academic literary, or publishing? This is really the important question that applies, the impact it has on the overall experience, and downfalls these drawbacks have in their implications for development of writers and quality of both literary and published writing.

What I am seeing and experiencing is that the individuals caught up in this culture or career path can frequently come across as deeply insecure because they are constantly trying to compete and prove that they belong, to earn respect or be seen by either area in academic literary or publishing communities. I notice the use of jargon like throwing around the word "craft" without any meaning, because if they use that word enough it will be a signal that they belong? "Craft" is a single most overused word that I completely check out observing individuals in these groups use it to not-explain ANYTHING, particularly when they apply it to my writing.

I am also seeing the consequences of very narrow understanding of writing and literary merits they are coming out of these paths that they chose. Whether this applies to writing very emotionally honest stories about how women experience the world, and having men superimpose their expectation of what those experiences are actually like, or stories about different cultural experiences, which carry some similar clash with the expectations of the individual or individuals with these literary backgrounds bring.

I call this a very sad state of understanding that is being produced by all of this community, because it fails at the single task of actually critiquing writing based on what needs to happen in that piece of writing or story that actually connects with the content. Let me use a recent example of my writing. My first published short story is about sports medicine abuses, contains content about sexual assault. I have written a blog post about how the entire story is about one woman's experience not able to have her entire world focus solely on the emotions surrounding that experience, but the entire story being about her environment and the impact that event has on her. However, because of the limitations of members of the writing community to separate their expectations from the writing, it renders any critique that centres around "make this writing about my expectations of this experience" useless. There is literally no part of that content that I can understand contain any constructive element how to improve my writing of the actual story about the actual emotional experience I have written. As I've said, I come with educational abilities and connections where I do have fewer obstacles in my path toward pursuing writing than many other individuals might. What it means for someone with more hurdles is that the failings in the training of people who are supposedly learning literary critique is that they do not get the feedback they need for their writing to shine, if the quality of literary critique is so abysmal.

This is certainly something these academic programs can become more aware that they are producing such incompetence in the people who pursue their degrees, and start improving the quality of their course of instruction to help produce members of the community who can actually apply literary and writing principles with more skill to writing that is not required to fall in a very narrow band of experience. If I am thinking of people I might have encountered in my life who fit this kind of personality, who spent their whole lives in a very narrow group of academics and writers, I do not particularly think they are very qualified in the areas of having broad life experiences. Their narrow expectation of experiences would certainly limit any writing from people who actually have stories to tell, who actually have a broad life experience and are able to bring that to their writing.

I am sure we would all much rather be able to communicate with members of the community in productive and helpful ways, and these trends appear to be an obstacle toward that goal. Like other areas of life, frequently the members who avoid these pitfalls are more confident or established, or open minded with more life experience. However, some tiers of the path or journey to put one's writing out into the world for public exposure, you cannot tell the difference. Sending out blind submissions, or hiring someone for a critique, feels like looking blindly for a needle in a haystack. It would improve the collective experience if something can be done to address those trained in this system having better abilities to separate out literary understanding in their responses and feedback.