The Plight of the Bin Men

In Outcries and Asides, J.B. Priestley quotes from On Writing and Writers, which consists of extracts from the notebooks of Professor Walter Raleigh: Criticism is not the exciting thing it was in the brave days when the critics were few and bold. It has become an industry of the workshops, carried on by those who look at new books, and look at nothing else. The greater part of critics are parasites, who, if nothing had been written, would find nothing to write. Until they meet with a live author, they cannot get to work; and they are not unwilling, in case of necessity, to infest one another. Shakespeare says what he thinks of life; Coleridge says what he thinks of Shakespeare; the modern essayist says what he thinks of Coleridge; we say what we think of the essayist—where is all this to stop? It goes on until the parasite that completes the chain is too small to nourish another. . . . This reminded me of Clive James, in Cultural Amnesia, translating a paragraph from Alfred Polgar:…