Criticism on Twitter?

Contemporary writers, of course, use social media to promote their works and interact with readers, so it’s reasonable to assume hat writers of yesteryear would have used FaceBook, Vine, and Twitter, too. Imagine Oscar Wilde, for example, blasting out tweets!

Adam Hirsch, in the Times, wonders, however, if critics should use social media for their work. He thinks not:

But this kind of yes-or-no judgment is not a replacement for criticism, just as a 140-character tweet is not a replacement for literature. That’s because criticism, like literature, is not information but experience: the experience of a mind engaged with a text — that is, with another mind.

Anna Holmes, respectfully, disagrees:

If the point of contemporary literature and criticism is to comment on the human condition, to excavate and explicate the increasingly crowded, global and wired way we live, then a curiosity about — and embrace of — one of the most innovative and meritocratic communication technologies of the 21st century would seem a logical next step.