Letters to the Editor
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Who killed the powerful, well-paid, self-appointed, self-hyping gatekeepers?
Isn't this more a case of tastemakers and criticism not appearing in traditional places nor being able to command as much dough?
I find it insulting how this discussion omits any mention of Bookslut or The Millions or any of the blogs now respected and considered vital to the process, as well as insightful and well written.
The only decline I see is traditional critics being able to get paid as easily within a system which is complex and changing anyway.
I really wonder which magical age it was when literary critics had much power beyond what was given by wealthy professionals of academia and publishing.
Plus within this group they still have power when they control grants and access and when the book business uses them to help make marketing decisions.
Providing hints as to what book was worth bribing the bookseller to put on a display table has long been the main value of critics.
The actual criticism has always been secondary to it's ability to confer marketable status: the prize, the must read list and the celebrity endorsement.
This discussion overlooks how critics with clout worked the celebrity system in mass media as well. When the New York Review of books was a well hyped status object in popular culture, it had influence.
Even then the connection between critical and actual success was far more tenuous than the critics themselves pretended. Many works in the canon are there not due to any critic, but because they were notorious or famous due to some powerful person or event. Other works are their due to the tireless and canny appeal of the author.
Consider Mark Twain, known as much for himself as his books. Yet even his legendary takedown of Cooper failed to remove Last of The Mohicans from the American canon. This was in part because Cooper was essentially a celebrity genre writer himself.
It's also worth noting that Twain's piece was hardly an act of civility, nor has much of the history of criticism. Nor has it always been a well paid endeavor. In fact, the history of powerful criticism has as much in common with the Amazon comment section as it does with the lamented book column.
This has been so since the invention of the printing press, and since then the elite have felt threatened when they can't control what the masses read or think.