Some may not care for my frank manner of criticism; literature (and literary criticism especially) is for them a Stepfordian happy place from which we must Febreze away all malodorous discontent. We must clap politely for bad poets and humbly mistake the minimal for the substantial, while heaven forbid we ever allow ourselves the liberty of Pope and Marston and modern rappers by engaging in some trash talk. All the same, there’s a widespread manner in amateur literary criticism which I’ve noticed and decided to mockingly call “abstraction poetry.” I think it’s when all of your sentences sound like thesis statements instead of the normal effusions of a thinking, feeling human being.

For those not clear about what I’m talking about, here’s a sentence of abstraction poetry I jokingly inserted into my review of Eka Kurniawan’s Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash:

Eka Kurniawan’s second novel, Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash, is a poignant meditation on precarious masculinity in post-Suharto Indonesia.

What does the novel do? It meditates (what!?) on masculinity (the threatened kind) across a vast geo-historical tableaux that only sorta kinda in-one-small-corner sort of way has anything to do with the story. Meanwhile, in the pages of the actual book, the protagonist is beating people up and trying to get a hard-on. You can over-intellectualize the appeal of such things.

I can somewhat understand where the impulse to write like this comes from, beyond just academic training: emotions feel like soft soil to unintrospective people, whereas abstractions seem sure to prove the hardness and rigor of your penis (whoops, I mean thought!); we all know only simpletons come right out and say what they mean. Impressions are for the weak, synthesized conclusions are for the strong–there is something rather hypermasculine and overcompensating in this mindset, even though male writers are hardly the only ones forming sentences on this plan.

Furthermore, this critical vernacular jumps directly to the intentionality behind the text—things don’t happen, they are meditated!—rather than speaking of the text itself, and this seems like a flimsy attempt at flattery—analogous to the court rituals described in that classic manual of Castiglione—flattery both of the author of the text, as well as the critic (superficially) analyzing it. Because intentionality is the coin of the realm, the critic-courtier wishes to flatter both self and author by divining some higher purpose behind the text—because certainly the text itself cannot be a basis for judgment! That would reduce both the courtier and the courted to a sub-celestial plane wherein their words may be judged sufficiently or insufficiently suited to the task at hand.

Okay, Abe, now you’ve talked some smack. What do you think would be better?

I like Hazlitt’s manner of criticism. I feel he very picturesquely carries us through the progression of thoughts and feelings that lead him to his conclusions. He recreates experience. I think if he were writing today, he would incorporate theory into his writing, but he wouldn’t chain himself to it or feel unable to say anything that has the force of truth without its aid. He would be of the opinion that you should first notice things, then try to explain them; you should not be a living explanation in search of its proofs.