Careers in criticism examines what D.G. Myers thinks can be done about the possible problem of lousy literary criticism. It’s worth reading, but I suspect that the other problem, which goes undiscussed in this post, is the difficulty of deciding what is good criticism: many people complain that lots of academic and other criticism is bad (I probably count myself in their ranks much of the time), but they tend to disagree with what would be good in its stead. Deciding is particularly hard in a field where wildly divergent ideas of what constitutes quality exists. Therefore you get… gridlock, high school politics, and so forth.

How to solve this? Myers says:

[Elberry] thinks that I am suggesting that “critics should write about less well-known books,” but I suggest this only as a method, a practical expedient, for undertaking their real responsibility: namely, to contribute to literary knowledge. The demand upon critics (in the university and out) must be, not to “write something new and different,” but to add something new and different to the store of human understanding.

I bet that most people who are writing just to “write something new and different” would argue they are adding to the store of human knowledge. I definitely agree with Myers’ formulation on a high level but am not sure how to implement this on a lower level. The best ideas I can come up resolve issues in academic publishing: right now, it can take years to publish an essay in a peer-reviewed journal, which then locks it behind pay walls on the Internet. The length raises the obvious and uncomfortable question: if it takes three years to publish a paper, is the paper really that important? That this process takes forever is hardly new; Lucky Jim mocked it in the 1950s.

My solution: have peer-reviewed journals “publish” online, and have publication be a link to the author’s paper on the author’s website. The journal’s editor could also copy that paper to their own site after anonymous peer review. That way, the information is freely available, especially to people in countries where most universities can’t afford journal subscriptions under the present model; the theoretical “size” of a journal could be limitless, although the practicalities of reading would probably still limit that size; there would still be a recognized body of work that makes up, say “Modern Fiction Studies;” and the journal could still issue a print edition every n months or years for those who prefer it. This would cause the journal to lose the revenue stream that currently comes from publishers, but that stream seems to be so small that universities could replace it in return for the prestige of housing the journal. Alternately, the exceedingly low cost of web publishing—one could buy server hosting with 200GB+ per month transfer limits and so forth for $100/month—could obviate the (relatively) high cost structures that journals already have while reducing barriers to entry.

Current top-notch journals have no incentive to adopt this model, as it would challenge their hegemony, but if lesser journals began adopting it and scholars preferred it, the quality in my wiki-like journal would rise, and competition might force top-notch journals to adopt the same strategies if they’re going to retain their position. Since publishing in English lit seems mostly a prestige and influence game, this strategy has few drawbacks I can perceive. If anyone knows of a reputable journal (which is to say: one backed by a university with at least a few years of regular publication) that’s already doing this, I’d love to hear about it.

The other change is one I read about in Freakonomics, the blog: require peer reviewers to say publish/no publish on each paper, and give comments, rather than giving comments with the implication that, if they’re not taken, one will automatically be rejected. Rather than having a three- to four-draft round-robin time-waster of questionable benefit, a peer reviewer would have to say “yes/no,” on the first iteration in its current condition, and the reviewer’s comments would be an option rather than requirement. This structural change seems less important than the one above.

Anyway, given that I’m in grad school for English lit, expect more on this topic in the future, since I’m now tasting the peer review that many others have called bitter and find that they’re mostly right.

EDIT: Myers has a follow-up post, with a response to some of my comments, here.