Help! My narrative structure is smothering my leitmotif!

I would love to watch a New York Times literary critic write a novel. After years of vivisecting the novels of others, they know every possible part and piece that goes into a great book and how they should fit together. Their attempt would probably be akin to a biology student trying to reassemble a dissected cat into a purring, meowing animal. They know how to take it apart, but they have no idea how to give it life.

I know the function of writers. It is to give us the stories we need. I don’t know where to locate that need on Maslow’s hierarchy, but I know it’s there. From the first cave paintings, events were put into an order that told not just what happened, but why it mattered. I know the function of writing teachers. They help give us the writers who give us the stories. I know the function of editors. They clarify a writers vision and hold back writers who aren’t ready to articulate one.

What is the function of literary critics? To interpret complex literature for us? Like ministers placing themselves between God and his ignorant flock, they deign to tell us what a book means. Authors don’t need the help any more than God does. Is it to teach writers? I have learned from a literary critic here and there, but the reward is far too little to wade through the smug, obtuse and condescending crap that often passes for literary critique these days. Is their function to warn us away from unworthy books and guide us to those with merit? They assume that their taste, temperament, education and experience are so far superior to our own that we should substitute their critical thinking for our own.

Certainly critics such Michiko Kakutani, Motoko Rich and others at the NY Times aren’t talking to Midwest, blue collar, hard-ass me. These modern Pharisees use a lexicon of jargon to separate themselves from us Philistines. Words and phrases like leitmotif and euphony and overarching narrative keep us confused rabble at bay. Empty and abstract clichés like intricate, deeply felt, reverberate, incandescent, fecund language, and echoes tell us nothing concrete, nothing useful about a book. What mainstream literary critics do is taste the dish and try to describe the flavor to us—usually in prose not half as evocative as the authors they critique—while simultaneously telling us whether or not we should try it. Of what use is that compared to tasting for ourselves? They get an ego bolstering position as arbiter of literary worth and a platform from which to shout. And a check, of course. What do we get? Talked down to, mostly. And we are spared the effort of thinking and deciding for ourselves.

Literary critics don’t help writers, in fact have ended careers that might have borne sweet fruit some day. They do more to obstruct than to aid readers, and they are but poor imitations of editors. While I would not go so far as to line them up right behind Shakespeare’s lawyers, it might not be a bad idea to ignore them until they are forced to find more useful work.