A Rigorous Critic Faces Rigorous Criticism

It is all too easy to dismiss critics of the rigorous critic as a reflexive reactionary spasm of anti-intellectualism in American life, and to consider their critique of the rigorous critic as a fairly vacuous and obvious attempt to defend the bruised part of the ego which was not the target of the criticism in the first place; the criticism in fact is usually directed towards a certain want of ego-involvement in the substantive process of cultural production, the creative act often made absent-mindedly, while the defense of a half-starved child of the mind can be as vigorous as Sherman sightseeing in Atlanta, so outraged is

A Rigorous Critic (Artist's Conception)

the ego at the suggestion that image of the tears of a unicorn at the refinery explosion downloaded from a children's cable station website and sent as a get-well card for what turns out to have been a botched abortion is not the very height and refinement of the expressive act.

Nonetheless, it must be allowed that there is sometimes a spice of substance in the stew of asinine stupidity. What does, after all, the critic "mean by that?" What, does he or she "think he's being funny?" Might he or she not indeed be faulted for "yakking all the time but doing fuck-all?"

Should he or she "step out from behind that fucking half-caf vanilla mocha latte" and prepare to defend this "fucking fuck-dumpster of fuck" he or she calls rigorous criticism?

A resolute proposition, certainly. We can postulate that criticism is at least as destructive as constructive, but whose intent should always be as acid on the etching plate, to reveal the greater art by a process of severe, crippling chemical burns.

But there is a profound flaw. Let us hypothesize that a malemute puppy licks the face of Walter Benjamin. He naturally responds with a rigorous critique
based on his own essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. The puppy responds by nibbling on his finger with sharp puppy teeth, and then, tail oscillating, gazing up at Walter Benjamin, expecting a pat of the head.

No critic cannot be reduced to mooshing over the boogey-woogey-wuggums with scuffy-scuffies. No vitriolic rejection of historicism - no matter how well grounded not only in historical materialism but even when adopting a rejection of Marxism's fatalistic trappings - can negate the melancholic yet redemptive fuzziness of the fully-activated ooshy-booshy face and his adorable little furry tosey-wosies.

Does then Puddles McGrew raise class consciousness? Hardly. The very attempt to deconstruct him eviscerates the body of criticism.

It is not enough to suggest that the critic has somehow failed in the face of a simple challenge. There is no challenge that the ostensibly wholly-unarmed antagonist - in this case Puddles McGrew- can acknowledge enough to even engage the products of criticism. It is a battleship versus an upper Nile frog. The battleship may roar for days with 20 inch guns, while the frog remains not only oblivious but wholly content, aware only of the deliciousness of flies.

The only truth, it must be admitted, is that the rigorous critic cannot succeed in his or her task. The rigorous critic may count hatred, failure, irrelevance and futility as loyal companions, and the only reward is the dry snort of a publisher's assistant mailing the rejection letter.