Richard Davenporthines

Critics can be creative – look at Malcolm Cowley

The Long Voyage: Selected Letters of Malcolm Cowley reveals a great reviewer who preferred to rehabilitate and encourage, rather than rebuke or revile

Arshile Gorky (Photo: Gjon Mili//Time Life/Getty) 
issue 11 January 2014

Even Spectator book reviewers have to concede that their craft is inferior to the creative travail of authors. Henry James railed against the practitioners of literary criticism long ago:

So much preaching, advising, rebuking & reviling, & so little doing: so many gentlemen sitting down to dispose in half an hour of what a few have spent months & years in producing.

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