The National Book Critics Circle gave out awards last weekend. See their list here and their posts on each category here. John Leonard, book critic and former editor-in chief of the New York Times Book Review, received the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award. In his acceptance speech, he made this interesting observation:

The books we love, love us back. In gratitude, we should promise not to cheat on them — not to pretend we’re better than they are; not to use them as target practice, agit-prop, trampolines, photo ops or stalking horses; not to sell out scruple to that scratch-and-sniff info-tainment racket in which we posture in front of experience instead of engaging it, and fidget in our cynical opportunism for an angle, a spin, or a take, instead of consulting compass points of principle, and strike attitudes like matches, to admire our wiseguy profiles in the mirrors of the slicks.

Yes, but isn’t the point of our critique to get to the praise from our peers on the otherside? We want to hear how clever we are, how sharp-eyed we are, that nothing can stand before our scrutiny. Our peers may not bother to read and actually judge our critique, and why should they? We are right, are we not? Oh, the books we could write if only we had the time.