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Ordinary people put too much faith in the judgment of experts, which is bad for us and bad for the experts.
1939
King George VI 1936-1952
A girl reading a newspaper, by Georgios Jakobides.
By Georgios Jakobides (1853-1932), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.
‘Girl reading’ by Georgios Jakobides (1853-1932), a Greek artist who in 1925 was appointed Director of the Athens School of Fine Arts after spending seventeen years in Munich, Germany. Authors, like artists, have a complex relationship with critics, but W. Somerset Maugham felt that in general, English authors dealt with it more calmly than authors on the Continent. “I think English authors are self-centred” he wrote. “They are, perhaps, as vain as any others, but their vanity is satisfied by the appreciation of a private circle. They are not inordinately affected by adverse criticism, and with one or two exceptions do not go out of their way to ingratiate themselves with the reviewers. They live and let live.”
Introduction
In The English Critic (1939), NL Clay urged his readers not to let themselves be daunted by expert authority, slick advertising or mesmerising jargon. Every opinion deserves to be weighed and tested; and failing to subject the opinion of experts and professionals to scrutiny not only leaves the ordinary man a slave to fads and fashions, it coarsens the experts and professionals too.
To the ordinary man of to-day ‘Critic’ seems to mean one who delivers judgment in print.
It is not so much that the ordinary man does not rely on his own judgment as that he has excessive reverence for the printed verdict of the professional. He will argue fiercely with the man next to him in the football ground but will change his mind about the quality of a broadcast item after reading in his morning paper what the Radio Critic says. He takes the Dramatic Critic’s word when deciding what play to see and makes his book-lists from the selection of compliments bestowed by critics and artfully displayed by advertisers.
Many who take their reading seriously smile with superiority at this respect for printed opinion, but fail to see how little they themselves rely on their own opinions. Success in public examinations has often been the reward of those who have neither convictions nor courage but who can reproduce the judgments of others. Even when discussing books in friendly talk they frequently parrot the findings of critics. This weakness on the part of the reader tends to make the reviewers of our newspapers and journals proud of their following and influence, arrogant towards readers and condescending towards authors.
