Editor’s note, June 1996
Criticism
In this issue we carry three articles in one way or another dealing with literary criticism — on a bad book on Mansfield, on writers and their critics and on the appropriate context for Maori writing. Their emphasis is on the substance of the criticism. An article on the news media, similarly bemoans the substitution of trivia for weight.
Not everyone agrees. In the wake of the savaging of Saint Kiri’s Arts Festival underperformance Public Radio’s concert programme’s arts week featured four critics on criticism. The accent was on style, on exciting the reader or listener. Welcome to the fin de siècle.
Colin James