After reading our reaction to his NBCC victory speech, in which he expressed joy at gaining recognition from “people who know what they’re talking about” in a world where “everyone who owns a Dell laptop is a published critic,” and we basically said “to heck with you,” Daniel Mendelsohn dropped us a line to clear the air. (Which is as good a time as any to observe that the umbrage taken at his remarks in no way reduces our admiration for his win, or our enthusiasm to eventually work our way down our to-read stack to The Lost.)
“Hold on thar! It would be wrong to read my remark (as some have already done: apparently I’ve just been denounced as an “elitist fogie“) as some kind of wholesale condemnation of any Internet-based book commentary and/or criticism. The obvious meaning of my comment, made in the context of accepting an award from my fellow professional book critics, was that it is an honor to have the high esteem of one’s fellow professionals—writers whose published opinions of books, unlike those of random online commentators, are necessarily subject to many stages of vetting, editing, proofing, and above all editorial evaluation by people knowledgeable in the field of literature, and which are therefore more likely, broadly speaking, to be “expert”: which is,
as far as I’m concerned, the kind of opinion that is meaningful. Because, by contrast, anyone who owns a Dell laptop need have no qualifications whatsoever, other than the ability to type, to publish his or her opinions of books (or indeed anything) on the web, it seems self-evident that the opinions of professionals are more meaningful, on average.”
“But I would never say (and did not say, incidentally) that all online book commentary/criticism is bad, evil, wrongheaded—or indeed that I wouldn’t want the good opinion of an intelleigent blogger (or Amazon reviewer, or whatever). Certainly not: Nor, I should add, would I ever claim that all commentary/criticism that is published in the traditional fashion necessarily wonderful, valid, meaningful, or right. The Internet (as I have often said in its defense) is, like the printing press, merely a medium: What appears on it is merely as intelligent or stupid or worthy or worthless as the people who publish on it. I am fully aware that there are lively, intelligent, meaningful blogs about books by people of high intelligence and discrimination; just as I am fully aware that there are a number of traditionally-published critics who are rotten. But precisely because the Internet is more “democratic” than the world of professional journalism, I do not think it’s unfair to say that professional opinions (in any field) are, on the whole, more likely to be informed, serious, judicious, and educated than the undifferentiated mass of opinion that appears in the ether. It is that fact to which I was referring in my remarks on accepting the NBCC on Thursday night. But to read this as necessarily condemning all Internet commentary—which seems to have been the reaction in some quarters—is both inaccurate and wrong-headed.”
Well, heck, that sounds a lot more agreeable, doesn’t it? Of course, the tension between pros and amateurs is a recurring theme at this blog, and it’s not likely to drop off our radar any time soon. We see Mendelsohn’s also on the shortlist for the LA Times biography prize; maybe while he’s in Los Angeles, I can persuade him to drop by the panel on blogging and literature and contribute to the undoubtedly lively conversation…