Snark: Treat It Like a Barrelfish Hunt

Two of my favorite bloggers get together when Maud Newton interviews Terry Teachout about "the process and ethics of formal and informal criticism" and other literary issues.

When to be snarky? When you’re writing about something pretentious, especially when other critics have been taken in by its pretensions. In art, pretentiousness is all the deadly sins rolled into one. Or when you’re writing about something that’s unserious by definition, especially when its creators are rolling in dough-–like, say, the makers of Dracula: The Musical, to which I happily gave both barrels and then some in The Wall Street Journal. Such folk are fair game: they have their cash to keep them warm. In most other circumstances, I think snark is usually contraindicated. What’s more, it should never be used on somebody who isn’t in a position to snark right back at you. Fair’s fair.

I'm not sure I buy into the first half of this reasoning completely--for one thing, hating on Broadway producers seems a bit too easy, and for another, I'm not totally sold on the idea that the wealthy (whether artists or producers) are due less consideration because they can shield themselves more comfortably against your criticism--though in all fairness I'd guess that's not the lesson Terry would want us to draw from his remarks. I agree much more solidly with another portion of Terry's statement on this subject: "If not used in scrupulous moderation, [snark is] bad for the soul." Which I suppose will lead some of you readers to mutter about the state of my own soul, and I wouldn't entirely disagree...although I do try to keep on the right side of the line between forceful criticism and blatant snark, though I'm sure I fail from time to time. I also think he's absolutely right that mockery is the best response to pretension; or, as I told one person who asked me if I thought ridicule was an effective means of communication, "Yes, when I wish to communicate that I find something ridiculous." (Now, if I did practice ongoing snark here, it might read an awful lot like this blog, which I just found out about this evening.)

Terry, by the way, can also be seen in yesterday's NYTBR where he illuminates the life and work of Anthony Powell with barely a trace of snark, and that only for the unclever prose of Powell's biographer.