Reputations

I was mildly taken aback to come across a review of a biography of Norman Mailer in the Graun today having referenced the author last Saturday for the first time in yonks. Bit of a coincidence. And I was even more taken aback to find out that the biographer believes Mailer to be not much of a writer, to say the least: unreadable, ludicrous, incomprehensible, atrocious and hilariously terrible. Now I'd be the first to admit that there are obvious variations of quality in Mailer's work, not least because he wrote so much and so ambitiously, but such a dismissal just doesn't seem fair. Interesting to note that the reviewer of the bio doesn't agree, by the way.

All this got me set me thinking about the fluctuations in writers' (and other artists') reputations after their deaths. I suppose that at one time a damning put-down by an important critic might have meant that a writer would be generally dismissed. But it seems to me that things have changed and mightily so with the development of the web and all its on-going commentary in cyberspace. I sense a democratization of critical assessment. If enough readers like what they read and communicate enthusiasm for it, then a writer's reputation can survive the slings and arrows of higher criticism. 

Indeed, I wonder if this might apply to Mailer himself. I've noticed a heck of a lot of enthusiasm for his work in those review sections frequented by 'ordinary' readers and I've got a feeling folks are going to be reading his best stuff (the non-fiction, I reckon) well into the twenty-first century.