We can all agree that mixed metaphors and cliché are to be avoided. But few critics come down on them with the savagery Peck does, for the obvious reason that we all have our lapses – including, it turns out, Peck himself. For him, reviewing Crouch’s work “is like shooting fish in a barrel.” When he approached Moody’s book, he assumed reviewing it “would be easier than shooting fish in a barrel.” (Perhaps Birkerts does use stock phrases a touch too often; but at least he has the decency to mix them up a bit.) Peck may also want to rethink his habit of ferociously denouncing mixed metaphors even while declaring that his goal as a critic is to “hack away at the dead wood in order to discover the heart of the novel.” When it comes to the war against cliché, it’s not hard to portray Peck himself as something of a conscientious objector.

What appeal Peck has no doubt derives from his utter lack of amiability. Outspoken criticism remains as rare in our time as it was in West’s. The reason became clear to me when I worked in the books section of the National Post. Part of my job involved calling up writers and asking them to write reviews. I enjoyed getting to know many talented authors, but I couldn’t help but be struck by a common occurrence. Often, I’d say something along the lines of, “Why don’t you tell me what kind of books you’re interested in, and I’ll keep you in mind if I see any?” Nine times out of ten the writer would reply, “I’ll tell you what kind of book I don’t want to review: Canadian literature.”

We would then politely lie to each other: he would offer some perfectly implausible explanation for why he didn’t review Canadian fiction, and I would pretend to take it seriously. One Toronto novelist told me it was because his tastes were so narrow: “I would spend all my time saying why Michael Ondaatje’s dialogue isn’t as good as mine.” An author from British Columbia told me she didn’t want to review domestic fiction because she wasn’t sure “how much of it is any good”– a strange remark from someone who is herself a Canadian writer, and one whose name I often see on the backs of Canadian novels, underneath happy blurbs about how finely written they are.

The real reason these writers didn’t want to review their peers was that it’s a small community. The most honest ones would come out and admit as much: writing a negative review could hurt them in the future, either at grant time (many grant juries are composed of writers) or when one of their own books was sent out for review. The least honest would turn down opportunities to re-view – and then publish articles or give interviews in which they called for higher standards in book reviewing. Reading them, I would begin composing e-mails in my head:

Dear ——:
Read your piece in The Globe today. In your honour, I’ve had T-shirts made up with your picture on them:

Back:
I am a direct cause of literary mediocrity.
Front:
Ask me about hypocrisy.
Talk soon!
Andy Other literary editors invariably recount similar experiences. (“The poets are the worst,” one British editor told me, rolling his eyes.)

This perennial backdrop of squeamishness and careerism explains why criticism of the sort West called for exerts such an enduring appeal. The chief attraction of a good adventure in harsh criticism was captured in G. K. Chesterton’s remark that while a dead thing can go with the stream, only a living thing can go against it. Reading a critic like Rebecca West, we are brought into contact with a free and independent mind, one that forces us to re-examine the received ideas and inflated reputations that are a constant part of literary discourse.