Page 120 - Aldi Lukman Nurhakim_How to Write Critical Esays: A Guide for Students of Literature

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dogmatic variants are likely to be inaccurate and unconvincing:
‘It cannot be denied that’, ‘No one can ignore’, ‘All readers
must feel that’, ‘It is impossible to doubt that’. Some readers are
remarkably stupid and may well be able to miss a point which
to you seems obviously important. They may not deserve your
consideration but your own reputation for thoughtful
truthfulness does. Other readers, in spite of being highly
intelligent, might just dare to diverge slightly from even your
favourite opinion. They do merit your respect and one of them
may be going to read your essay.
Consider this: ‘The reader cannot help but be amused when
Oscar Wilde remarks in “The critic as artist” that “there is no
sin except stupidity”.’ Surely a thoughtful guess at the responses
available to Wilde’s readers here might hypothesize a less
helplessly single-minded consensus. Some readers, at whatever
risk of sounding pompous, might wish to retort that the
intellectual snobbery celebrated in the epigram can be as
offensive as the simple-mindedness it decries; or that one
strenuously achieved belief, however clumsily expressed, could
seem refreshing to anyone who has endured too many of
Wilde’s casually assembled denials of value; or that reading
prose composed of richly witty aphorisms is like ploughing
through a whole box of chocolates. Such readers can ‘help but
be amused’ and the effort may help to keep their critical eyes
open.
The formulas which deny exaggeration itself are even more
obviously useless: ‘It would not be extravagant to claim that’,
‘It is no exaggeration to say that’, ‘It is impossible to overstate
the case for’. You cannot bully the reader into using your own
yardstick. Such claims are superfluous where the statements
which they introduce sound reasonable. Where they may not,
your sense of proportion, though loudly trumpeted, will not
change your reader’s.

SOME WORDS NEARLY ALWAYS LEAD TO OVERSTATEMENT

Hardly anything worth critical comment appears at all points in
all of an author’s works. Sweeping generalizations sweep
relevant exceptions under a carpet beneath which your most
impressively observant reading will be invisible. So beware