Written World

Art honours the world, and criticism honours art, even - perhapsespecially - when the critic sets out to destroy. The bad review ishardly ever written out of mere spite. In most cases, the motivationis disappointed idealism. Critics are people who love art and whohate to see it traduced. Hence the critic's sempiternal cry: You'redoing it wrong. What the critic wants is for you to do it better. Since 2008, acclaimed novelist Kevin Power has reviewed almostthree hundred and fifty books. Power declares, 'Even now, crackingopen a brand-new hardback with my pencil in my hand, I feel thesame pleasure, and the same hope. That's the great secret: everycritic is an optimist at heart.' Art that thinks and feels at the same time - 'good art' - requiresexplication. The writing of criticism in response to such art is anactivity that has taken place since Aristotle first sat down to figureout what made tragedy work. It is in the pursuit of this question -what makes good art 'good' - that Kevin Power found his vocation.During a ten-year stint as a regular freelance reviewer for theSunday Business Post, Power fell in love with the writing of criticism,and with the reading of it, too, particularly by talented novelistswho review books on the side. His conclusion is that criticism isabsolutely an art. But it is never more so than when practiced by an actual artist. These pieces, ranging from reviews of Susan Sontag to the meaning ofGreta Thunberg, apocalyptic politics, and literary theory, representa decade's worth of thinking about books; a record of the author'sattempts to honour art, and through art, the world. In The Written World, Power explains how he became a critic and what he thinkscriticism is. It begins and ends with a long personal essays, 'TheLost Decade', written especially for this collection, about his mentaland writing block after publishing Bad Day in Blackrock and hisdecade-long journey to White City. The pieces gathered by Powerare connected by a theme - this is a book about writing, seen fromvarious positions, and about growth as an artist and a critic.