Abstract
This paper presents the Sydney Review of Books, which I edited, as a
case study in the intersecting conflicts about value in contemporary
Australian literature. It is a patchy and highly partial account of
negative feedback and complaints that I have received about the SRB,
especially those that bear on the question of what criticism should do,
a topic that is never far from the question of what literature is for.
Some generic complaints that fall within the scope of this paper: the
publication of negative reviews, the failure to publish enough negative
reviews; the deliberate scuttling the sales of authors by way of
negative reviews; infelicitous pairings of critics and books; writing
that is too scholarly or theoretical, writing that is insufficiently
scholarly; too many reviews of Australian books, not enough reviews of
Australian books, the failure to review certain books; the publication
of critical writing that is insufficiently analytical, critical writing
that shirks evaluation; the capitulation to identity politics/cancel
culture/political correctness, the failure to represent the diversity of
Australian literary culture. A journal of criticism that did not field
highly critical feedback would be a dull enterprise. What these
complaints reveal is a set of conflicts between audiences and, dare I
say, stakeholders, around the economic, social and aesthetic value of
literature. I am sorry to say that it will all be anonymised – and that
reflects the great breach between what Australian critics, writers and
readers are willing to say in public about the value of literature, and
what gets said in private channels. As ceaseless proclamations about the
value of contemporary Australian literature bolster an increasingly
hyperbolic public discourse about Australian literature, narratives of
crisis and decline circulate in the backchannels.