"it’s like telling a doctor that he can’t diagnose a disease because he’s never had it"
Notes to Self are longer journal entries from Seven Yrs Ago. I was 21 mid-2014.
Criticism (according to David Mendelsohn, The New Yorker):
Knowledge + Taste = Meaningful Judgement
“People who want to go to lots of parties without provoking awkward literary encounters should be caterers, not critics.”
“Do not dismiss a book until you have written one, and do not dismiss a movie until you have made one.” —Dave Eggers
“This superficially appealing notion is one you often encounter when people disagree with professional critics—as if expertise, authority and taste were available only to practitioners of a given genre. But to tell a critic he has no right to review a novel because he’s never written one is a dangerous notion; it strikes at the heart of the idea of expertise (and scholarship, and judgement) itself—it’s like telling a doctor that he can’t diagnose a disease because he’s never had it or a judge that he can’t hand down a sentence b/c he’s never murdered anyone himself. The fact is that criticism is its own genre, a legitimate and (yes) creative enterprise for which, in fact, very few people are suited—because very few people have the rare combination of qualities that make a good critic, just as very few people have the combination of qualities that make a good novelist or poet.”
For commentary seven years later, go here.