ouch.
Over the years, we at the Hippo have had a few good laughs at the expense of professional critics. We've counted their affectations (many), and searched for their overall benefits as a species (few).
But we're rank amateurs. Jonathan Swift was the pro. In his Tale of a Tub, Swift devotes a whole chapter to giving critics the definitive skewering. I think it's pretty much the last word on the topic. Have a look at the following, in which he recounts Pausanias' opinion of the origin of criticism. The emphases are his own:
"He says, they were a race of men who delighted to nibble at the superfluities and excrescencies of books; which the learned at length observing, took warning of their own accord, to lop the luxuriant, the rotten, the dead, the sapless, and the overgrown branches from their works. But now, all this he cunningly shades under the following allegory; that the Nauplians in Argia learned the art of pruning their vines by observing, then when an ASS had browsed upon one of them, it thrived the better and bore better fruit..."
Apparently, these "asses" are not good for anything--not even beaing eaten:
"I think nothing can be plainer, that in the western part of Libya, there were ASSES with HORNS...whereas all other ASSES wanted a gall, these horned ones were so redundant in that part of their flesh was not to be eaten because of its extreme bitterness."
* joshua, 8/17/2004 10:17:39 PM
