Critic Watch

Most critics are aware that they work within the endlessly relative landscape of literary history. Once a writer’s place in the landscape is secured, it is not easy to budge and this shapes future literary judgements.

‘The first question to ask of the Craven phenomenon is not “why?” but “how?”‘ Critic Watch on performative criticism.

No one believes that most Australian poetry volumes are a couple of edits or a tempered excess away from being a perfect version of themselves, but this is what, en masse, the reviews tell us. A biddable reader will have the impression that all debutants are ones to watch; that, three volumes in, all poets have consolidated their style; and that after five or more volumes they are accomplished and take their place in the nation’s poetic story. The quantum of praise does not add up.

How do we understand the critical response to Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites? In order to distinguish authentic aesthetic judgements amongst the reviews it will help to consider the way the advance for Burial Rites fits into the logic of trade book publishing.

How do you review the ‘experimental novel’? Critic Watch turns its gaze to the reviews of Anthony Macris’ Great Western Highway: A Love Story (Capital, Volume One, Part Two). With a response from Jeffrey Poacher.

Hobbyist doggerel and Booty Calls: Ben Etherington on Quadrant, government subsidies, and the Books of the Year. Plus a response from Jennifer Maiden.

Is there an ‘epidemic of niceness’ in book reviewing? Ben Etherington examines the critical responses to Anna Funder’s All That I Am.