Prose by any other name

I SEE where one of our letter writers - bless em - has been expressing some interesting ideas about the business of aesthetic criticism, and the use of academic language.

Mr Piaras Mac Einri of UCC's Department of Geography stated the following: "One does not ask a blind person to review a painting, or a deaf one to evaluate a symphony. Similarly a person, whose lack of sympathy with a particular kind of language, style or subject is virtually all embracing, should not offer views on such matters in the review, pages of a serious newspaper.

I'm not sure how a lack can be all embracing, or even what level of pomposity is appropriate in a serious newspaper, but there is no good reason why blind people should not review painting exhibitions or why deaf people should not review concerts. People of a cynical turn of mind (and who probably do not realise they are insulting the hard of hearing and the unsighted) might be inclined to suggest that they do so all the time.

Indeed, newspaper critics are regularly savaged by readers for not "seeing" or "hearing" the same exhibition or concert seen or heard by the reader.

This paper often gets letters which open with the writer wondering if he or she has even attended the same concert under discussion.

Most modern concert halls nowadays provide loop systems which make the auditory experience perfectly satisfactory for those who are hard of hearing. If such people can hear the music then they are surely capable of commenting on it.

To suggest otherwise is certainly insulting.

As for blind people "viewing" (or reviewing) art exhibitions, this is not as unlikely as it may seem either. It is not very long since Dublin's St Joseph's School for the Blind put on a "textural" art exhibition, which could be "seen" by the unsighted and partially sighted by means of touch.

By all accounts it was very successful.

Those who are colourblind might well take exception to the notion that they should be debarred from exhibition review opportunities, or even from giving an opinion.

Speaking of colour blindness, our dear Father David O'Hanlon still thinks President Robinson wore a kelly green outfit on her Vatican visit, while other observers insisted it was not kelly green, but either very dark green, very sober green or very sombre green, so clearly there are divergent views even among the fully sighted.

I myself can just about imagine a sober green but do not wish to think of an inebriated green.

Of course, the whole business of literary criticism is becoming - more complicated. The reviewer of The Law of Love: a Novel with Music by Laura Esquivel (Chatto & Windus, £15.99) would need to be knowledgeable about literature, art, music and dance.

Why? Because Ms Esquivel's book (her sequel to Like Water for Chocolate) comes with its own compact disc: on it are five Puccini arias and a number of Mexican danzones.

Icons in the text indicate when the appropriate aria is to be played, so that the reader experiences the music at the same time as the character does. One is also expected to dance to the danzones at each "intermission for dancing."

As for this notion of "sympathy" with a subject, one British newspaper employs as its art critic a man who has made his reputation through a total aversion to modern abstract art and sculpture. Brian Sewell of London's Evening Standard cannot abide such art, yet regularly writes about it.

He is very much "out of sympathy" yet even his detractors have to allow that he is a competent critic.

Mr Mac Einri (responding to an accusation of "gobbledygook" in a book (Sex, Nation and Dissent in Irish Writing) mentioned by my colleague John Boland) also said that "academic language is necessarily precise and sometimes uses words of more than two syllables - it is not intended for six year olds."

Hmmm. Most six year olds are already well advanced in the academic process. And many of the six year olds I know - admittedly they are rather superior children - regularly use words of more than two syllables. I overheard one of them use the word "patronising" the other day: she knew what it meant, too.

However, it has long been clear that much academic writing is written with the sole purpose of impressing other academics, and it seems that black marks are awarded if the language is penetrable by anyone outside academia.

This presumably accounts for the choice by many academics of so many multi syllabic words.

As for precision, here is one sentence from the book in question: "Rather, his reification of the aesthete/philistine dichotomy as a dialectical racial conflict was the source of his hope for an aesthetic individualism, one whose antipuritanism was definitive of its modernity."

This was said of Oscar Wilde, and the kindest thing to be said of the sentence is that it is most unWildean.