How Not to Critique Someone Else's Writing.

By saying they should have written about something else.

Photo by chris robert on Unsplash

One of the most annoying experiences of being a writer is the tendency of so many people to critique one’s essays or books, not on what they actually say but what the reader thinks they should have written about instead. I have even had this happen with my book when one review of it was essentially an argument that it would have been much better if it had been about something else. Unsurprisingly, the reviewer felt the book should have been about what he was most interested in, rather than what I am.

I realise that, in life, people are interested in entirely different things and not only interested in different things, but some find a particular thing of paramount and overwhelming importance. So important, in fact, that they can find it very difficult to understand why anybody would ever focus on anything else. Being a somewhat single-minded person myself, I can sympathise with this. Once, on contemplating the very straightforward crossword clue “unit of power,” my brain immediately went to Foucault’s theories on discourses of power and statements being a unit within them and completely failed to realise that the answer was, of course, “watt.”

So, I do sympathise with the single-minded and with their impatience with having to pay attention to people going on at length about topics that are of no interest to them or outside their area of knowledge. However, generally, when people are writing essays or books in any popular outlet, one does not have to pay attention to them. It is very easy to find essays that address issues of importance or interest to you while scrolling past those that don’t. I tend to do this. It would not occur to me to demand of the writer that they stop writing about what interests them and start writing about what interests me instead.

I think most people are like me in this regard, but I have reason to know that some are not and instead think it completely reasonable to demand everybody else address the issue they find to be particularly important. I know this because I have received communications deploring the fact that I spend so much time addressing contemporary critical theories and associated activism and never address epidemiology and effective and ineffective treatments of Covid. The fact that I have spent fourteen years studying critical theories and none studying epidemiology or medicine is not regarded as a satisfactory answer.

I find it worrying that “lacking the sufficient knowledge to offer an informed opinion” is so often seen as a cop-out rather than a respect-worthy recognition of one’s own limitations. I fear it is yet more evidence of the devaluation of scientific expertise. When I offer this reason for my lack of writing on the subject of Covid, it is pointed out to me that other people seen as within my sphere have written quite a lot about it despite also lacking a relevant educational background. At this point, it is hard for me not to echo the familiar mother’s refrain “If everybody jumped off a cliff, would you do the same?” I manage, though, and limit my comment to advising people to avoid uninformed opinions, particularly if couched in politicised conspiratorial language, and focus instead of those accompanied by evidence in the form of rigorous research.

More often, however, people complain that a writer has addressed an aspect of a topic that they do not see as its most important aspect. This is most often couched in phrases like “I am disappointed that you focused on A and not on B,” “Why no mention of C?” or “A is not the point. The point is D.” It is irritating to be told what one should focus on in any specific essay but especially when one has written other essays that address the particular aspect of an issue the critic is complaining did not appear in this one. It is most infuriating of all to be told that one has missed the point of one's own essay. As the writer of the essay, I choose what the point of it is. If you are in any way confused about what the point of an essay is, the title can often offer a clue. If the title indicates that the essay addresses a point that you do not find to be interesting or important, I am quite sure you can find other essays that do. If not, perhaps you could write the essay you wish the author had written yourself as you obviously have such a clear thesis for the ideal essay in your mind?

This happened again yesterday after I wrote an essay about why debates on trans issues are so much intertwined with women’s issues and not with men’s. I wrote this after seeing a tweet asking this very question and deciding against responding to it with a tweet thread on Twitter. (It’s the first one in the essay). Although most people were quite happy for me to have written about this specific aspect of a broader issue, there were still those ready to complain that it was not about issues faced by children, the institutionalisation of certain “woke” ideas or enforced speech. Even if I hadn’t written a great deal about all these topics but particularly about freedom of belief and speech, this would be annoying as the point of the essay is in the title and there is no necessity for anyone uninterested in that point to read it.

Please, dear minority of readers who criticise any essay or a book on the grounds that it is not about something else, reconsider this approach. If you find yourself tempted to do that, do one of these things instead.

1. Check the title to see if the essay is about something you care about to reduce the risk of feeling disappointed by if it isn’t.

2. If it is not, search to see if the writer you wish to read has written about the subject or particular aspect of the subject you wish to read about.

3. If not, search to find out if any other writers have written about the subject in the way you wish to read about it.

4. If not, consider writing the essay you wish had been written by another writer yourself.

Thank you.