Has Covid killed criticism?

The pandemic was bad for criticism with its universal dogma of ‘kindness’. Restaurant, theatre, film and book critics felt compelled to be kind, as if criticism itself was coughing at a death bed. But who does this kindness benefit?

Last year I reviewed Michael Rosen’s book about his Covid-19-related coma: Many Different Kinds of Love. I liked it, but I suggested that publishing the notes people had written to him as he lay in the coma was a waste of both their time and ours. Rosen didn’t like this and moaned on Twitter: ‘I think they are the power and the beauty of the ordinary. And how extraordinary that this is ordinary.’ But surely the function of criticism is to try to separate the ordinary from the extraordinary?

Rosen’s followers were duly cross. A few replies later he got what I think he wanted all along: ‘Every part of your book was perfect.’ I hope Rosen — or Mr Kvetch as he calls himself — was made happier by this review, but I worry that criticism is sinking to enemies exacerbated by the pandemic: relativism of quality (you did your best, well done!); the deprofessionalisation and decline of journalism; the parallel rise in marketing and the fear of a Twitter backlash, which is laughable because Twitter is the most critical place on earth. Don’t read Sally Rooney if you don’t like her, said another writer on Twitter recently, which really means: shut up if you didn’t like my novel.

Cinema is flagging too. The title of the new James Bond film is No Time to Die. British critics have taken that very literally and applied it to the film industry, not the film. The new Bond film won five stars almost everywhere in Britain, though American — and female — critics were a little less insane.