Approaches to Critique

We all enjoy reading budding work, but have some apprehension about critiquing it. We say things like:

I'm not a good writer so I shouldn't criticize others. This is a different genre than I've ever worked with. It's too time consuming. I don't want to be a downer. I don't have anything good to say.

All worries aside, I would like to offer a little insight and some options. The insight is that if someone sent you something to review, it's okay to review it. You don't need any special qualifications to critique a piece. The writer wants your time and consideration focused on their work so you can tell them about your perceptions of it, that's it. If you can do that, then you're set. Here are a few different approaches you might try:

1. What stands out, what I remember. Imagine that you're in a restaurant and you've tasted a Chef's Mystery Soup. No one told you what was in it, so you're sitting there after your first taste, trying to figure out the ingredients. This method doesn't take too long. Read the piece aloud to yourself, then as soon as your done, jot down what stayed with you. The writer may find this helpful, especially with early drafts. It will help them pinpoint where the strengths are in the piece.



2. The next level. Imagine that you're looking at early schematics of airplane design. You may not be any sort of aerospace engineer, but you have an instinct about what might successfully soar once put to the air. This method requires that you spend a little time thinking about the piece and what the writer is trying to accomplish. Perhaps it takes too long to develop the tension or perhaps there is more telling than showing. Whatever it may be, try to find just one thing that would really bring the piece into the next draft. If it seems close to a final draft, you might use the following approach.

3. Red Pen. Especially with long works, the red pen critique is a pain in the ass on both sides, but it has to be done eventually. I recommend that you never do more than a chapter at a time and do this with absolute care. Imagine that you are helping your grandmother prepare something for publication. You really want her to put her best effort forward. Some of the tasks will be grammatical housekeeping, some of them will be outright editing, and there may even be some sections that need to be rewritten or expanded. It's not about getting it perfect. It's about thinking about how this writer is going to put their best effort forward. You don't want them trying to write like Shakespeare if they really write like Eggers.

Palmas

[NOTE: This is just a first draft, but I like this piece so far.]


I would have sat at home thinking of how to rephrase things. I would have cleaned the apartment or swept the front stoop or made some vegetarian pasta. Johnny had taken a part-time job at the Children's Museum and it was the first Saturday I'd been without him in months. I'd recently taken to confessing my love for him and he always talked me out of it, shrugging it off with cheap vodka and drawn out chess games.

Augusto's daughter dragged me out that day. Augusto had made his signature sangria and taken to the guitar. The back yard was full of new and old friends, each proud for knowing the charismatic guitarist and singer. His daughters were no less proud, laughing and performing their palmas loudly so as to correct the aimless clapping of rhythmless gringos.

The sunlight on that Saturday afternoon increased as the wood platform was assembled on the lawn. The dancers were Augusto's new wife and a couple of other women that she had resisted and eventually deigned to share the stage with. Though I had seen this all before, it was the first time that I'd ever seen a male flamenco dancer take to the stage. Earlier I had thought he was just some eccentric cousin or another wannabe trying to rub elbows with the ever authentic Augusto. His black pants were tight on his skin and his brightly colored shirt was blousey. If it were any other circumstance I might have laughed at his silly bravado complete with turned out mustache.

Rather than shirk, it was in this moment that I realized what I was missing. I was overcome with the fire of flamenco. The whole orchestration was inspired. It was often dissonant, but Augusto's enthusiasm brought everything back in line, either through some scintillating change to the melody or a renewed vigor in the rhythm.

And where was the passion in my life, I wondered.

I changed the idea for my letter that evening. I had spent the night agonizing how I failed Johnny, how I should have shut up my feelings for him and gone on like a true friend and not a betrayer. But I wanted to betray. I wanted to expose my heart on my sleeve and have him laugh or become angry. Anything. I would have taken anything, but this backyard flamenco changed me and I was no longer mad with love. Resolve had found me unaware, but I felt it and would heed it. I would be strong and love would follow me if it dared. I couldn't do the palmas to save my life, but I got the gist-- we are all in search of great passion, not because we want it but because we need it.

The note that I passed on wasn't one of angst and unrequited love, but of fearlessness and this is what I said.

"While it pains me to leave you, I must. I feel my life's flame growing dim with each passing day. We are living lies upon lies and I can no longer bear it. Do not seek me out, do not speak of some incomparable love or of time spent. I am gone from you and I take my fire with me."

I packed up in the night and he would not be heard from again. The young can love only so long as they keep their hearts open-- and I was learning to avoid the perils of unmatched affection.

I left nothing behind me except a dark inevitability. I set a pace, my own rhythm, as I went forth and discovered the morning again, listened to tales of forlorn and wanting, forged on through the gestures of ambition in city life, and settled finally one year into my right self. My purposeful and intent self. I didn't need a guidebook or a special program, just years of wading through the muck which there was a great deal of.

Dining at Maria’s

He didn’t read the menu, just opened up to the page where the enchilada plate was and read the description. He loves this dish, loves it with green and red chile, loves the rice and beans, and loves to read these ingredients like a poem.

His reading is foreplay and that he does as much in front of me, I can only interpret as pre-coital. This evening we discuss drinking and a paper he’s working on concerning heart function. Perhaps he doesn’t remember that he told me about his own weak heart last summer. It was a broiling night and we were drunkenly passing by an apple tree. He wrapped his fist around its slim trunk as he spoke. I found I loved him in that moment.

I point out the coincidence between his actual heart condition and his scholarly passion for the heart and its movements- its function as the gross engine of human life. He sips at a hazy margarita and laughs gently almost haughtily. “Nothing escapes your study,” he says. I warm to the compliment, but I don’t dare touch his hand in case I have misinterpreted. His narrow blue eyes assure me that he has shown me his heart albeit through a veil. He has presented to me his appetite- his knowing appetite, his taste for anticipation.

Am I one of the ingredients in the description for the house enchilada plate? This is no hyperbole- I am no Romeo and he is no Juliet. But night has fallen and life is a dream. We are laughing in the dream because everything unintentional is ironic. More, I want more, I want to see the ugly side, but I don’t have the heart to turn such a wonderful exchange into a freak show. Afterwards, during the drive, in these moments of fullness he says, “Everyone was looking at us; they thought we were crazy.”

Oh, I think to myself, what should I say to that? Normally it would be: “If you know you’re crazy, then you’re enlightened.” But the car is cold and I’m full. I don’t talk about enlightenment in moments like these. This is a post-coital moment. I just want to get to the next place, a lull.

We go to lecture and listen about the Book of Matthew and about functionalism and essentialism. I am nervous to touch him, even with knees. This peace is good. We are the audience now, watching a man celebrate his joy, wondering if everyone thinks him crazy.