No, I’m not banging on about bad reviews again … honest! – but as I slowly wade through Ted Hughes’ Collected Letters (published by Faber) every now and again I come across some gems, and I found this one this morning in a letter from Hughes to poet Anne Sexton about reviews. It’s from the writer’s perspective rather than the publisher’s, and it made me laugh. Here is a wee bit of it:
Don’t you worry about reviews. I’ve just been getting a load of them too. Both kinds are bad, but the favourable are worst I think. They tend to confirm one in one’s own conceit – unless they praise what you yourself don’t like. Also, they make you self-conscious about your virtues – just as when you praise a child for some natural charm. Also, they create an underground opposition: applause is the beginning of abuse. Also, they deprive you of your own anarchic liberties – by electing you into the government. Also, they separate you from your devil, which hates being observed, and only works happily incognito. Also, they deprive you of your detachment from the scene into which you are injecting your work, by making you a visible part of the scene. Also, they satisfy ambition, which only works from a radical discontent and public neglect. Also, they banish your spirit helpers, as when the eskimo hunter enters a gift shop and buys a car. Also, they falsify your life, by forcing an identification of you and your poems: your poems earn the praise but you read and accept it. Etc Etc.
Sharon
