How to Respond to Critics
Or, how to fashion slings and arrows from your own misfortune, like a Brontë
Any writer faces critics, and any life led in public, even to a small public, faces the same.
As much of my work has concerned the far right and neo-Nazis, often the nature of that criticism is quite wild, rooted in deep misogyny and antisemitism. I have, for example, been compared to an early hominid, had my face superimposed into an oven, called a “tiresome Jewess,” had sinister jewelry mailed to my house, and had such an array of slurs hurled at me I could scarcely duck them all. There have also been passionate if largely bad-faith political counterarguments to my lefty screeds, in various conservative journals; most notably Alan Dershowitz once called me a “mendacious McCarthyist,” an appellation I treasure. For the most part, these evidences of enmity—of achieving the enmity of those whose enmity I have earned by bile—are prized by me as the barbs of combat, no matter how vicious they become.
In the face of these, I double down—viz., after having been outright libeled in an affair regarding far-right symbols, I took on writing about the far-right full time, and wrote a book on the subject. And then another book, on an ancillary but interconnected subject—two books’ worth of rejoinder! The more I am called a tiresome Jewess the more Jewish I become, and the more tiresome (prolix and persistent graphomaniac that I am). It’s not that I enjoy the crossing of swords with people who call me hideous names; it’s that attracting the notice of my enemies means the work has discomfited them in some way. Which is my aim. So I take their many calumnies and even outright threats in a furious stride, and redouble my efforts, even to the point of exhaustion and ill health.
But there is another species of criticism—the good-faith criticism—this book was poorly edited and repetitive; I found myself frustrated with it; this is too florid; I couldn’t understand your argument; this was missing, that was missing, this is inaccurate in this regard, I simply did not care for this—that haunts me far more. Every flood of positive or even heartfelt recognition evaporates instantly in the presence of a single drop of earned vitriol. I wither in the face of it completely and give myself over to self-doubt.
Although ours is a solitary occupation, nearly every writer is inordinately receptive to public sentiment: we put our hearts on the page, each clause comes from some synapse that fires with emotion, and our work, being partly ourselves, becomes precious to us.
Confidence is the first requisite of the writer—we must regard our work as the very cloth of heaven, and array it out with according self-regard, quieting the timorous self that would hide away our work, or condemn its worth. I make the comparison to Yeats’ poem, which is the address of a lover to his beloved, because to write is to express the desire to be loved. Self-doubt and critique that engenders it—in short, rejection of the proffered ardor—can do mortal injury to the ability of the writer. Hence the egoism and the mental trouble that so often accompanies this profession. It is one of both isolation and terrible vulnerability, something that, despite all the many changes to this profession over the centuries, has little changed with the years.
There is, however, a way to rebuff critique with style, and readers, the Brontës did it. (I know this is my third Brontë-related post in a week; give me some slack here, I’ve been a-wandering the moors as a form of escape from a harrowing wind within and without.) If you’ve been stymied about how to respond to critique, I now present you with Charlotte and Anne’s rebuttals to their own critics. (Emily seems to have not felt compelled to issue any similar rejoinder, despite Wuthering Heights’s many scathing reviews by male critics; perhaps she was the wisest of the three sisters in this sense, although I love the fire of these repulsions.) These words were penned in the respective prefixes to the second editions of Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (which I am now reading and loving). They are stylish, florid, and perfect.
Here’s Charlotte:
Having thus acknowledged what I owe those who have aided and approved me, I turn to another class; a small one, so far as I know, but not, therefore, to be overlooked. I mean the timorous or carping few who doubt the tendency of such books as "Jane Eyre:" in whose eyes whatever is unusual is wrong; whose ears detect in each protest against bigotry—that parent of crime—an insult to piety, that regent of God on earth. I would suggest to such doubters certain obvious distinctions; I would remind them of certain simple truths.
Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.
These things and deeds are diametrically opposed: they are as distinct as is vice from virtue. Men too often confound them: they should not be confounded: appearance should not be mistaken for truth; narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ. There is—I repeat it—a difference; and it is a good, and not a bad action to mark broadly and clearly the line of separation between them.
The world may not like to see these ideas dissevered, for it has been accustomed to blend them; finding it convenient to make external show pass for sterling worth—to let white-washed walls vouch for clean shrines. It may hate him who dares to scrutinise and expose—to rase the gilding, and show base metal under it—to penetrate the sepulchre, and reveal charnel relics: but hate as it will, it is indebted to him.
Ahab did not like Micaiah, because he never prophesied good concerning him, but evil; probably he liked the sycophant son of Chenaannah better; yet might Ahab have escaped a bloody death, had he but stopped his ears to flattery, and opened them to faithful counsel.
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And here’s Anne:
WHILE I acknowledge the success of the present work to have been greater than I anticipated, and the praises it has elicited from a few kind critics to have been greater than it deserved, I must also admit that from some other quarters it has been censured with an asperity which I was as little prepared to expect, and which my judgement as well as my feelings, assures me is more bitter than just. It is scarcely the province of an author to refute the arguments of his censors and vindicate his own productions, but I may be allowed to make here a few observations with which I would have prefaced the first edition, had I foreseen the necessity of such precautions against the misapprehensions of those who would read it with a prejudiced mind or be content to judge it by a hasty glance.
My object in writing the following pages was not simply to amuse the Reader, neither was it to gratify my own taste, nor yet to ingratiate myself with the Press and the Public: I wished to tell the truth, for truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it. But as the priceless treasure too frequently hides at the bottom of a well, it needs some courage to dive for it, especially as he that does so will be likely to incur more scorn and obloquy for the mud and water into which he has ventured to plunge, than thanks for the jewel he procures; as, in like manner, she who undertakes the cleansing of a careless bachelor’s apartment will be liable to more abuse for the dust she raises than commendation for the clearance she effects. Let it not be imagined, however, that I consider myself competent to reform the errors and abuses of society, but only that I would fain contribute my humble quota towards so good an aim, and if I can gain the public ear at all, I would rather whisper a few wholesome truths therein than much soft nonsense.
As the story of ‘Agnes Grey’ was accused of extravagant over-colouring in those very parts that were carefully copied from the life, with a most scrupulous avoidance of all exaggeration, so, in the present work, I find myself censured for depicting con amore, with ‘a morbid love of the coarse, if not of the brutal,’ those scenes which, I will venture to say, have not been more painful for the most fastidious of my critics to read than they were for me to describe. I may have gone too far; in which case I shall be careful not to trouble myself or my readers in the same way again; but when we have to do with vice and vicious characters, I maintain it is better to depict them as they really are than as they would wish to appear. To represent a bad thing in its least offensive light is, doubtless, the most agreeable course for a writer of fiction to pursue; but is it the most honest, or the safest? Is it better to reveal the snares and pitfalls of life to the young and thoughtless traveller, or to cover them with branches and flowers? O Reader! if there were less of this delicate concealment of facts this whispering, ‘Peace, peace’ when there is no peace, there would be less of sin and misery to the young of both sexes who are left to wring their bitter knowledge from experience.
I would not be understood to suppose that the proceedings of the unhappy scapegrace, with his few profligate companions I have here introduced, are a specimen of the common practices of society the case is an extreme one, as I trusted none would fail to perceive; but I know that such characters do exist, and if I have warned one rash youth from following in their steps, or prevented one thoughtless girl from falling into the very natural error of my heroine, the book has not been written in vain. But, at the same time, if any honest reader shall have derived more pain than pleasure from its perusal, and have closed the last volume with a disagreeable impression on his mind, I humbly crave his pardon, for such was far from my intention; and I will endeavour to do better another time, for I love to give innocent pleasure. Yet, be it understood, I shall not limit my ambition to this or even to producing a perfect work of art: time and talents so spent, I should consider wasted and misapplied. Such humble talents as God has given me I will endeavour to put to their greatest use; if I am able to amuse, I will try to benefit too; and when I feel it my duty to speak an unpalatable truth, with the help of God, I will speak it, though it be to the prejudice of my name and to the detriment of my reader’s immediate pleasure as well as my own.
And there you have it! From the well of truth we’ve emerged mucky but enriched. Nothing can resolve the solitude of writing; no work can be universally loved, much as we desire it. What is evinced above is a special kind of freedom, however: the freedom of self-belief, and still more, belief in the value of one’s work. That a hundred and a half years later both gadfly readers like myself as well as assiduous scholars pore over their books and letters and prefaces is proof, too, that they were right in that belief—as fragile as it must have been sometimes, against the lonely nights. I wish it for myself, and for you, and that the cloths of heaven daily ravelled for your pleasure may inspire you to tread softly, softly on another’s dreams.
