On Hating a Work of Art and Needing to Be Right About It

You're no Martyr!

I recently read Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar and I really, really didn’t like it.

Everyone else seems to disagree.

According to The New York Times Book Review, “what Akbar pulls off in Martyr! is nothing short of miraculous.” The New Yorker’s critic said “Martyr! is almost violently artful, full of sentences that stab, pierce, and slice with their beauty.” And Raven Leilani, author of Luster, claims “Kaveh Akbar renders the full spectrum of life, and death, with great beauty and care.”

To all of these esteemed thinkers, I say: no.

I think it’s a lazily written, unresearched, imprecise, immature, bad book.

In fact, I feel that so strongly that I’ve been arguing with some of my friends, who seem to agree with the reviews above — they loved reading the book, it moved them, and they are certain it’s excellent.

Why do I feel the need to assert my negative opinion? And why do I so desperately need to be “right” about this?

Is hating a product of self-betrayal?

“The world is full of people suffering from the effects of their own unlived life. They become bitter, critical, or rigid, not because the world is cruel to them, but because they have betrayed their own inner possibilities. The artist who never makes art becomes cynical about those who do. The lover who never risks loving mocks romance. The thinker who never commits to a philosophy sneers at belief itself. And yet, all of them suffer, because deep down they know: the life they mock is the life they were meant to live.” — Carl Jung

I wasn’t planning on writing about Martyr! today.

I don’t have the energy to pick it apart point by point, and I’m not sure anyone wants to read my scathingly negative review of a book they might quite like.

But then I came across the Jung quote above, and something clicked.

When I was yelling (quietly) at my friend Morgan, who had recommended the book to me rapturously, she asked why I felt so strongly that the book was bad.

I joked that it might be because I’m a failed, lazy poet, and I can recognize far too many of my own tendencies in this book, which also has the nerve to be a huge success.

No one hates a poet like another poet, especially one who isn’t read.

Hate is always a sign of intense interest.

For the record, I stand by my general assessment of the book. I don’t think it’s very good at a number of levels.

But not-amazing books are plentiful. My small-scale crusade to force everyone to listen to me criticizing this one is telling.

It’s kind of like the way so many homophobes end up getting caught on their knees in a bus station bathroom eventually: you may say you’re disgusted by gay people, but there’s got to be a reason you continually rant about with what other dudes do with their penises.

I’m not suggesting that I’m secretly in love with Martyr! But I do think there’s something in the book and its success that reminds me of a path some part of me believes I could have taken.

I don’t write novels. I almost never write poems anymore. Very occasionally I make music.

Seeing someone actually making and releasing things is, at some level, a reminder that I’m not, and that’s unpleasant.

Having the New York Times Review of Books rhapsodize about it? When it’s bad?!?

I mean, come on.

Hate is always partly self-hate.

What I’m getting at is this: I don’t think I’m mad at Kaveh Akbar.

He’s written a book that has struck a chord with critics, and likely hundreds of thousands of readers (including many of my friends, who are almost unanimously into the book — my wife and I seem to be the only holdouts).

The reason I feel such a strong compulsion to assert that it’s not as good as people say has everything to do with my feelings about myself.

If I can prove that the book is actually weak, then in a way I’m justifying my own failure to make and share art.

I can assuage the voice in the back of my head that says “you’re not even trying, and if you did it wouldn’t be nearly as good as this.”

If I didn’t have that anxiety, I just wouldn’t care so much.

So I’m writing this to acknowledge that I’m being unreasonable in my critique of this book, and to remind myself that all the energy I’m spending telling people not to bother with Martyr! might be better applied to making and sharing art of my own.

So that other people can point out how bad it is.