Harsh critics baying for blood

YOU hate what you cannot be. Think about it. You could apply that illuminating little aphorism to any number of situations: the office, the school gate or playground, in politics, among neighbours; with different races or religions.

And behold our brave new world where bile and cynicism and sneer and rage are given free rein as never before, in all their bold new forums. Hatred seems to be admired more than ever now. Championed, celebrated.

Take a new literary award in the UK which aptly reflects our sour-spirited age. It's the prize for Hatchet Job of the Year by a reviewer - the winner being the writer who's torn apart someone else's book in the most memorably blistering, excoriating way.

It was won this year by Camilla Long for her attack in The Sunday Times on Rachel Cusk's memoir, Aftermath, which detailed the end of her marriage with painful honesty. Long wrote off Cusk as "a brittle little dominatrix and peerless narcissist who exploits her husband and her marriage with relish", a novelist who "describes her grief in expert, whinnying detail". That doesn't sound like thoughtful, constructive criticism to me; it's a personal attack.

Cusk is a fine writer in the tradition of Virginia Woolf with 10 books under her belt; Long has none to her name. As Coleridge said 200 years ago: "Reviewers are usually people who would have been poets, historians, biographers etc, if they could; they have tried their talents at one or at the other, and have failed; therefore they turn critics." This new prize is rewarding a reviewer for a grand and triumphant spewing of highly personal viciousness; it's a gleeful stewing of envy and malice that pedestals the little person, and I'm guessing it will only encourage more cruel recklessness like it (and this in a reading world when the power of the books pages is dramatically waning; publishers acknowledge they just don't hold the sway that they used to).

Because, of course, literary editors prefer the vitriolic review over the benign in order to spice up their pages. It gets noticed, it's successful, it triumphs.

Take the recent banquet of misogyny, sexism and racism at this year's Academy Awards, courtesy of its shockingly deflating host, Seth MacFarlane. Once again, he's been lauded in some quarters. Yet his crude attempts at offensive humour felt flat, uninspired, leaden, obvious. This was meant to be entertainment - but for whom? Why had the academy sunk to this? Because in this day and age they think it works. It's how to get those elusive younger viewers, how to generate the column inches. Ricky Gervais led the way with his hosting of the Golden Globes in 2010 - so ugly-spirited that he was asked back to do it twice more.

We don't want civil or graceful anymore, we want memorable. Controversial. Buzz. Traction. It's just like the newspaper editors who prefer relentless attacks on political figures and stories about party instability whether manufactured or not - because they generate interest in their product. It keeps the consumer glued.

We hate what we cannot be. Let's play a little game. Apply it for fun, say, to a Seth MacFarlane, whose biggest target on Oscars night was hugely successful, confident, working women; people much more successful in his field than he is. Hmmm, feeling threatened perhaps, mate? Then there's Ms Long. Does she dream of being as successful a writer as Ms Cusk? The latter maintained a dignified silence throughout the recent grubby little Hatchet Job prize. But in these matters I do love the famed response to a critic that's attributed to German composer Max Reger: "Sir, I am seated in the smallest room of my house. I have your review before me. In a moment it will be behind me."

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