I should probably know enough to just leave it alone at this point. But look: I sometimes get the impression, from the emails that I get – which, let me say, I truly cherish – that what some (only some) people who disagree with me want is more acknowledgement that I might be wrong. Well, look – I take every piece of criticism of me I read seriously, and I read them all. Yes, I could be wrong. I can always be wrong.
But I have to engage as directly and straightforwardly as I know how. And if I’m going to get it wrong, I’m going to get it wrong honestly and directly. It’s the only way I know how to remain corrigible, to remain true, to both fruits and supporters alike. A lot of people make fun of me for this kind of pretense, and lord knows, it’s pretentious. And it won’t satisfy the people who are inclined to complain. But the alternative, the safe alternative, is so much worse. If you are inclined to call that self-aggrandizing, I won’t disagree.
Believers hate the idea that anyone might be a knowledgable critic of something they have accepted. They don’t see that the danger of their cry to “educate yourself” is that you might read outside their canon and come to a different conclusion than they did.
It’s a weird thing, this implicit expectation that everyone who ever writes something on the internet is supposed to Get It Right (and ought to be shunned or lambasted for getting it wrong, or even just maybe getting it wrong — I don’t think your criticisms of Park have been off-base). People don’t understand: This is supposed to be a conversation; and possibly, just possibly, the back-and-forth itself is more significant than whatever conclusion(s) we come to.
It’s funny, because I think this is an area where the high-school cool kids style social dynamics Freddie often criticizes is most apparent. Although I think the assumption that is most destructive isn’t that you have to be right all the time, its the assumption that its ok rip into someone personally for social cachet because they are wrong, making definite statements the literary equivalent of a limping gazelle in lion country.