Populist warblings

From "Deliver us from these latter-day Pooters" (The Observer, November 26, 2006):

For the time being there is room enough for both sets of critics: the bloggers and the professionals. But what if the media one day does as Hill suggests, and gives up on serious criticism, exchanging it for the populist warblings of the blogosphere? This would be easy to do, and cheap. But my God, I hope it will not happen. This is not only because there are so many critics, past and present, that I admire. It is because so much of the stuff you read in the so-called blogosphere is so awful: untrustworthy, banal and, worst of all, badly written. After I heard about the spat between Hill and Sutherland I devoted an entire day to book blogs, trying to give them a fair chance. This was not an edifying - or even a very interesting - experience, and I really, really love books.

It's likely that Rachel Cooke's assault will set some book- and lit-bloggers a-quiver with righteous indignation.

Meh. I think I've encountered this sort of disdain before. Cooke's dismissal of bloggers ("populist warblings," indeed) reminds me of some academics' dismissal of their community college brethren: If you teach there, they sniff, you most certainly cannot be one of us.

Well, that rather misses the mark, doesn't it? A faculty member of the English department at Podoink U. and a faculty member of the English department of Podoink Community College face different populations and, by extension, different demands on their time and talent. To behave as if one position were intrinsically better than the other seems rather beside the point, doesn't it? Or are the egalitarian impulses lurking beneath my petulant elitism getting the better of me?

Cooke seems to make a similiarly unnecessary exclusion: that bloggers cannot possibly compete with "the professionals" (i.e., traditional print critics). Aren't they each writing with different audiences and goals in mind? I wonder, is it really a competition? I also wonder about the definition of "professional," but that's the stuff of another post, isn't it?

(And, yes, I realize that some lit- and book-bloggers will be aggrieved to see their efforts likened to those of community college professors. It's an analogy, folks. It's my analogy, and I think it works. Hey! Is that petulant elitism I espy lurking beneath your impulsive egalitarianism? Heh, heh, heh.)

Personally, access to both -- traditional reviews appearing in periodicals and book- and lit-bloggers' recommendations and rejections -- has enriched my reading life immeasurably. I don't prefer one to the other; I greatly enjoy the mental conversation each inspires.

And ya' know what? I could live happily without all of the storms in chipped teacups. Really, I could. Less meta-book talk and more just plain ol' book talk, okay? That's what this reader craves.

Related aside: We recommended Nick Hornby's The Polysyllabic Spree back in April 2005. If you missed it then, put it on your wishlist.

Added later: Good evaluation of Cooke's piece here.