#critic

Neither black/red/yellow nor woman but poet or writer. For many of us, the question of priorities remains a crucial issue. Being merely "a writer" without a doubt ensures one a status of far greater weight than being "a woman of color who writes" ever does. Imputing race or sex to the creative act has long been a means by which the literary establishment cheapens and discredits the achievements of non-mainstream women writers. She who "happens to be" a (non-white) Third World member, a woman, and a writer is bound to go through the ordeal of exposing her work to the abuse and praises and criticisms that either ignore, dispense with, or overemphasize her racial and sexual attributes. Yet the time has passed when she can confidently identify herself with a profession or artistic vocation without questioning and relating it to her color-woman condition. ↗

— Trinh T. Minh-ha

#literary-criticism

The artist usually sets out -- or used to -- to point a moral and adorn a tale. The tale, however, points the other way, as a rule. Two blankly opposing morals, the artist's and the tale's. Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper functions of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it. ↗

— D.H. Lawrence

#literary-criticism

Die Kunst des Rezensierens besteht nicht zuletzt darin, selbst über langweilige Bücher fesselnd zu schreiben. ↗

— Thomas Anz

#theory #literary-criticism

Critical thinking is a necessary and vital skill". ~R. Alan Woods [2012] ↗

— R. Alan Woods

#r-alan-woods #thinking #thinking-man #thinking-with-a-great-mind #r-alan-woods

...a fundamental rule of journalism, which is to tell a story and stick to it. The narratives of journalism (significantly called "stories"), like those of mythology and folklore, derive their power from their firm, undeviating sympathies and antipathies. Cinderella must remain good and the stepsisters bad. "Second stepsister not so bad after all" is not a good story. ↗

— Janet Malcolm

#literary-criticism

The way contemporary literature is emerging, soon we can expect "Item poetry" in novels. ↗

— Himmilicious

#literary-criticism #literature-quotes #literary-criticism

Here the phenomenologist has nothing in common with the literary critic who, as has frequently been noted, judges a work that he could not create and, if we are to believe certain facile condemnations, would not want to create. A literary critic is a reader who is necessarily severe. By turning inside out like a glove an overworked complex that has become debased to the point of being part of the vocabulary of statesmen, we might say that the literary critic and the professor of rhetoric, who know-all and judge-all, readily go in for a simplex of superiority. As for me, being an addict of felicitous reading, I only read and re-read what I like, with a bit of reader's pride mixed in with much enthusiasm. ↗

— Gaston Bachelard

#literary-criticism

Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#criticism #writing #writing-advice #writing-advice

For the most basic assumption that dictated my early attempts to respond to creative music commentary was the mistaken belief that western journalists had some fundamental understanding of black creativity—or even western creativity—but this assumption was seriously in error. ↗

— Anthony Braxton

#music #music-criticism #music

In the beginning God created man in His own image, and man has been trying to repay the favor ever since. ↗

— Voltaire

#religion #religion