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To print is to run the gauntlet, and to expose oneself to the tongue's strappado.
I like criticism, but it must be my way … I can live for two months on a good compliment.
In a long series of analyses of writers, summarized in my book, the writer and psychoanalysis , a section is devoted to scrutiny of writers' relations with critics. It was interesting to observe the combination of justified and irrational complaints.
The justified complaints were simple and straightforward. The average critic, claimed most of these patients, is a malicious negator of productivity because of his own artistic impotence. These critics, as Jean Paul Richter put it, “strip the tree both of blossoms and caterpillars.” The malice of these critics was referred to as an essential part of their neurotic makeup; Nietzsche was quoted: “Insects sting, not in malice, but because they want to live. It is the same with critics; they desire our blood, not our pain.” Why should a man who failed his test for a driver's license immediately become eligible for the job of examiner? The average reader's general lack of any opinion, and his consequent dependence on the critic, was deplored. One patient quoted Jean Sibelius: “Pay no attention to what the critics say; there has never been set up a statue in honor of a critic.”
The good critic — as opposed to the incompetent average