With the proliferation of digital and self-publishing platforms, along with the increased use of algorithms and manipulation of online book review and consumption metrics by publishers, websites and even writers themselves, the ability to discern what constitutes “the best” literature for readers is an especially 21st century problem.

More than a question of marketplace factors, this shifting of the literary landscape towards an ever-privileging of the writer over the reader, coupled with the growing ideological argument that the only “representative” criteria worth considering is the identity of the writer who produced the work is, to say the least, a troubling trend.

This paper seeks to argue the need for a return to the valorization of critical commentary as a key driver to the success of a thriving literary community. As part of this discussion, I will focus on some of the unique challenges faced in Atlantic Canada, where the geographical and communal distance between writer and reader is problematically small. 

Thomas Hodd is a professor of Canadian and Atlantic literature at l’Université de Moncton. His essays and reviews have appeared in many scholarly and mass media outlets, including The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and the Literary Review of Canada, as well as Canadian Poetry, Studies in Canadian Literature, and Canadian Literature. He is the editor of A Soldier’s Place: the War Stories of Will R. Bird and Mary Melville, the Psychic: a Critical Edition, and is former editor of The Antigonish Review.