“The Value of Not Understanding Everything”
by
Grace Paley
The difference between writers and critics is that in order to function in their trade, writers must live in the world, and critics, to survive in the world, must live in literature.
That’s why writers in their own work need have nothing to do with criticism, no matter on what level.
In fact, since seminars and discussions move forward a lot more cheerily if a couple of bald statements are made, I’ll make one: You can lunge off into an interesting and true career as a writer even if you’ve read nothing but the Holy Bible and the New York Daily News, but that is an absolute minimum (read them slowly).
Literary criticism always ought to be of great interest to the historian, the moralist, the philosopher, which is sometimes me. Also to the reader—me again—the critic comes as a journalist. If it happens to be the right decade, he may even bring great news.
As a reader, I liked reading Wright Morris’s The Territory Ahead. But if I—the writer—should pay too much attention to him, I would have to think an awful lot about the Mississippi River. I’d have to get my mind off New York. I always think of New York. I often think of Chicago, San Francisco. Once in a while Atlanta. But I never think about the Mississippi, except to notice that its big, muddy foot is in New Orleans, from whence all New York singing comes. Documentaries aside, my notions of music came by plane.
As far as the artist is concerned, all the critic can ever do is make him or break him. He can slip him into new schools, waterlog him in old ones. He can discover him, ignore him, rediscover him … Continue reading ““The Value of Not Understanding Everything” — Grace Paley”
Biblioklept 