Volume 26, Number 17 · November 8, 1979
Harking and Barking
By Michael Wood
On Not Being Good Enough: Writings of a Working Critic
by Roger Sale
Oxford University Press, 218 pp., $12.95
Celebrations and Attacks: Thirty Years of Literary and Cultural Commentary
by Irving Howe
Horizon, 256 pp., $14.95
The Good Word and Other Words
by Wilfrid Sheed
Dutton, 300 pp., $10.95
'Criticism,' Wilfrid Sheed said recently, 'is what every reviewer would like to write if he had the time.' One might add that reviews are what critics often write while they're trying to get up the nerve to commit a bit of criticism. But these are complementary thoughts, acknowledgments of a distinction which is frequently fudged. Many reviews behave as if they were criticism already, eager eyes cocked at a future collection. Others wish to be seen as magically transposed because they have been kept in a drawer and handed over to a publisher in a bundle. Still others do their daily or weekly stuff with such strangled solemnity that they are plainly making a bid for instant promotion to the other category.
Review, 3586 words
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