Answering the Outer Critic

Leaving the snarkily intellectual comfort of the role of critic is frightening as hell. If, like La Fitz herself, you happened to be have been academically gifted in the humanities, the written word combined with art, music or cinema has always been a safe pedestal for you to slither up on. Perhaps not privately - most people who love books, for instance, can tell you of a read that has shaken them - but publicly, your interaction with the humanities have always let you shine. At least that's how it was for me as a wee little Fitz and how it still is as a somewhat bigger Fitz. Get me on a sportsfield and I give malco-ordination a new poster child, try to get me to install something on a computer and new, previously unheard of technical disasters arise. But let me write or talk about books, about philosophy, or some other art form that also happened to be acceptable to The Academy and I recite the Ella-as-Critic ABC- arrogant, bright and controversial - to a reasonably receptive audience.


Going to the other side of the divide between critic and creative is terrifying - not JUST because it means baring a private part of yourself through your work (which in itself is so traumatising that I, who am pretty tough and independent, have had to start this blog as a means of getting up the nerve to show people my creative writing). But also because you're in a shaky role in an arena where you've always been comfortable. And, for anyone who's anything like me, your talents as a critic have been a significant part of building your intellectual self-confidence - if you want to shove in a bit of hyperbole for good measure, your identity.

I'm trying to let myself be on the unsafe side of that divide. And despite support from family and friends, I can't promise that I'll manage to ever produce anything worth reading, anything I'll ever admit to having written 'seriously'.

So I'm really humbled by the people I know who have actually gone out there and put their work on show. And people who know me know that I'm just about the least humble person ever, so that's a big deal. I'm not going to pretend that I'm in any way shape or form a good person, because of course I'm jealous as well - it used to really bubble up inside me. I'd be nastily and toxically thinking "Well, if I had the advantages that those people do, I would write something just as good. Or probably better. Because OBVIOUSLY I'm funnier/brighter/more original / just generally better than those people." But finally having the freedom to read and write what I need, I've found millions of other barriers to actually doing stuff. So for people I like who do well in the arts - power to you.

(If i don't like you, odds are that I've found other parts of your personality on which to pin my dislike - that's an area where i am thoroughly confident of my creativity...)

My friend Sarah is one of those humbling people - and she's generous enough to be really supportive to people like me who are, well, still getting there. A double-bill she wrote just opened in London, performed by young actors. I haven't seen it, so I have no idea of how good it is - but the unimaginative savaging she received by a critic was so lazy, fundamentally unconsidered and stinking of schadenfreude that it reminded me, again, why it's so much scarier to be a creative rather than a critic. And why I think putting your creative work out there is just so much more worthwhile, regardless, I guess, of what field it's in.

I guess there are a lot of ways of answering bullshit like that; reminding yourself about the different roles in the arts, sending a dead fish to the critic, calling down the wrath of God or you Facebook community on the misguided fool, slashing tires, getting riotously drunk, locking yourself in a room and swearing never to read a review again, or some combination of the above. But, even though I'm nowhere near the sort of place in my creative 'career' where I'm having to face outer critics, knowing that they're out there makes me angry -especially because I recognise so much of myself in the way they think and write.

I came across this in a book about Linnaeaus and you've got to respect the guy's classic dismissal of an ignorant critic:


'The dramatic metaphorical form in which Linnaeus published his system based on the 'loves of the plants' was better suited to the manners of the 18th and 19th century, though even in that robust period it did not escape criticism. ... In 1737 the St Petersburg academician Johann G. Siegesbeck attacked it on the basis that 'such loathsome harlotry' (scortationes quasi detestabiles) as several males to one female would never have been permitted in the vegetable kingdom by the Creator and asked how anyone could teach without offence 'so licentious a method' ( methodum talem lasciviam) to studious youth. He is remembered today only through the unpleasant small-flowered weed which Linnaeus named Sigesbeckia.'
(Linnaean Classification by William T. Stern, my bold)


I'm going to suggest to Sarah that she name an insignificant side character who is wrong about everything "Fiona Mountford" - that's what i'd do...