For C

Well, we're not exactly going to be able to conduct my experiment. Although I did indeed go to bed last night at 9:04 (posted here at 9:03), the stars did not align, meaning that the, ahem, smaller members of the household did not feel like sleeping continuously or much past 5 in the morning, so it is 10 p.m. now, and although there is still the second half of the Celtics playoff game to come, which I can watch with my dad--a rare treat these days--my eyelids are propped up with toothpicks. Or should be.

But partly in response to what I am going to write about, I am going to write anyway, for at least (if not much more than) 750 words. Last night, when I was possibly more tired than I can remember being in recent years, which is saying a lot considering how much you know I have written here about my near-permanent state of exhaustion, I wrote about two lines, basically so I could tell myself that at least I had posted, and went to sleep about 5 hours earlier than I usually do.

Today, when I logged on to my email account, I saw that only one person (where have you gone, blog commenters? away for an extended Memorial Day vacation?) had posted yesterday. And that person had written something to the effect of, "Hey. That wasn't 750 words."

Touche, anonymous. I'm blushing. Or at least I was. And I also felt a funny mixture of shame and annoyance, amusement and respect. And then I remembered that a very old friend, whom I will call C only so I can pay homage to Gossip Girl, as did Janet Malcolm (speaking of critics) in a recent New Yorker, recently made my first and only blog "request," as though I were a popular radio show.

"Write about how everyone's a critic," she said, and although I did not when she asked, only because I was not sure what to say, tonight I do have a few thoughts, I think, on the subject.

First of all, this is a cliche for a reason, and although I know she made the request in irritation herself at the way most criticism is so inane, I don't think it's inherently a bad thing; it just is.

I can see critical faculties developing in front of my eyes with Annika, who is eight months old. If I give her something she does not like, such as pureed green beans, she squints up her eyes, puckers her mouth, spits out the mouthful all over the sweater I am wearing, oblivious to the fact that I have a meeting and no alternate sweater and really no time to change. But I digress; what I am getting at is that already, in infancy, she is a critic; that is to say she knows on some level anyway what she likes and what she doesn't like, and can express both the preference and the rejection.

And really, we do this from birth, prefer and reject, in almost every arena of life, and our ability to take in information and prefer it or reject it increases exponentially until sometimes it seems like all we are is our likes and dislikes, and we judge each other thusly, as well as ourselves.

But the saving grace with criticism is that we are free to choose both the criticism we give and that which we take to heart, that which we use, and thank god for that. Have you ever know someone who seemingly had no critical faculties? Not the person who is criticizing constantly but in his or her head--that is a bird of a different color, and a sort of scary bird with hidden talons and a mean, pecking beak behind a rounded facade. I mean someone who seems to take everything in and neither prefer nor reject it? I have only known one or two in my life so far, and believe me, it makes for a person you wouldn't want to be stuck beside on the bus for more than about a half a block.

But a good critic? Someone whose word you genuinely value, someone whose preference or rejection means something profound to you, based on your own criticism of this person's taste, aesthetic, knowledge, values or other ineffable category we can call "essential self"? This is an invaluable person to have in your pocket as concerns your work, your very life; this kind of criticism can mean the difference between your own success and failure, this is a critic to keep, even when the criticism is harsh and directed at you.

I am realizing, writing this, that the proper response to C's request is actually a graduate dissertation, not the 750 words I owe my anonymous critic. But in closing, I will recount an exchange I had recently with one of my favorite students, a 14 year old with excellent critical faculties of his own. One of his weakest teachers (critic: me) is fond of a technique called "peer editing," which I believe she uses to avoid having to actually read her students' work, which she gives no evidence of doing. In spite of the fact that my young friend is an A student, and one of her favorites, he finds her utter lack of criticism endlessly frustrating, as he should, and has come to feel that another A+ from her is meaningless, which she has indeed rendered it.

But the peer edits--they can be even worse than no criticism at all. The last paper he wrote, the peer assigned his paper made a number of edits that were flat-out wrong. He changed words that were spelled correctly to incorrect spellings, wrote "don't get this" by the strongest sentence in the essay and on and on. My young friend was at a loss for how to respond, knew he couldn't make bad changes, but felt he needed to respect and honor the "peer edits" per the assignment.

When showed the paper, I thought about my response for--well, actually I answered instantaneously. "Is this a student whose opinion you admire and respect?" I asked. "Intellectually speaking, I mean. Not in terms of his ipod list."

"Not at all," he answered just as quickly. "I actually think he's kind of a dimwit."

"Then you have your answer," I said. "You're not going to make changes to your paper you know will make it worse." I could sense his relief.

The thing, everyone is a critic, whether asked to be, as in this example (or as a blog commenter, by definition, I suppose), or not, but not all criticism is equal. I am reminded of Orwell, in another context of course; forgive me, George, but in my humble opinion some criticism, some critics, are more equal than others. Actually, I have no doubt he'd concur.

And as for my friend C, she is the kind of critic, it is safe to say, who could tell me that a dress I was trying on was not quite right, and I would immediately start unzipping it to hand it back to the salesperson. In fact, you couldn't pay me to take it home with me after that. More relevantly, she is also the kind of critic who, if she tells me if something I write is good, I believe it.

C, who is--like many extremely talented people--her own harshest critic, knows everything I have written here already, although sometimes she forgets. But I do think it's useful to think about who our most valuable critics are, and why, and to force ourselves to listen to what they say, even when we really don't want to hear it.

I am going to give myself a B- for this entry. It's all over the place and not particularly insightful. But I am also going to give myself an A for effort, because I really, really didn't want to write at all tonight, and I took the gentle criticism and did it anyway. Anonymous: A+.