Welcome to graphomaniac! Why literary critics are accused of being dirty

Writer and critic Yelena Ivanitskaya said on her blog:

Again a fire in the litprocess. Paid services portal Pechorin.net accuses the magazines "Kamerton" and "Alterlit" of libel for articles by Inessa Tsiporkina and Dmitry Filippov. Both authors wrote that ...the paid services portal provides paid services: reviews, publications, nominations for the authors' money.

...The conversation about "paying for the litprocess" has matured for a long time, but I brought up the match with my post of August 2. I express my support to Inessa Tsiporkina and Dmitry Filippov..."

Indeed, the Pechorin.net portal provides paid services to authors.

For example, "publication in thick journals", "publication of a book review", "award nomination". This circumstance prompted Ivanitskaya at least two fair questions:

1. do thick magazines know that an employee of the literary portal sells publications on their pages?
2. how to distinguish the review and / or nomination paid by the author from the impartial ones?

On the portal itself, it says so:

“Publications and reviews. 36 critics, 24 magazines, 7 portals.

Competitions, events, articles, interviews, translations.

Services for writers.

To the publication of poetry and prose through a review in just 3 days.

A professional review from Pechorin.net is your fast track to publication in the best print or online magazines, to publishing books in popular publishers, to nominations for major literary awards. We have the largest team of critics on the web. Manuscripts sent to the critics of the project can be recommended for leading literary publications.

Look for details in the "Services" section or on our website: https://review.pechorin.net/. You can contact the portal by mail: [email protected].

Join the success of our authors by entrusting your texts to professionals..."

As for the "professionals", for example, the critic Ksenia Zhukova, listing her merits, awards and even citing an excerpt from her own opus, offers the following services to novice authors:

1. Recommendations for publication in thick journals.
2. Invitations to creative events, to seminars of LSU, SPR, PSA, acquaintance with the literary environment.
3. Improving your writing skills.
4. Possibility of promoting plays.

Appeal to the user.

For me, text has always been valuable, any text. Whether it's a play, a fantasy novel, a love story, a thriller script, a philosophical essay, or ... Something of your choice, something for my taste. And I am omnivorous. It is all the more interesting to evaluate different texts, different in genre, different in style, just different. As a journalist, I am impressed to write about the restaurant business, and about cultural events, and about sociological factors. As an editor, I like to sculpt something that is barely readable into something that the author just gasps himself. And this is, "ah" this one. It's just that he is not always visible to us at first glance. For this there is a critic .... "

And here is what another critic, Anna Zhuchkova, writes:

"Opportunities for the author

1. publication of a book review.
2. recommendation for publishing text on the "Texture" portal..."

There is no doubt that such a market exists and will always exist - graphomania is an extremely common disease, and, of course, patients need therapy, which in this case is a review. But how to distinguish a professional criticism from a paid one - that is the question! Why, if one may say so, critics, do not supply their, if one may say so, reviews with the mark: "paid for", or "as an advertisement"? The answer is simple: the reader will not read this ... And then, who needs such a review ?!

“Reading for money is work. Opinion for money - propaganda or advertising...”, - Ivanitskaya rightly believes.

As the commentators of this post have correctly pointed out:

- They have to live with something. What else can you sell in a magazine? Pencils, or what, rubbing? They trade what they can.

- It would be surprising if the Russian literary process was not commercialized following the example of science, education and mass culture.

- Here are the consequences: the reader leaves, a closed caste of their writers and their critics emerges, and everyone demands money from the state, then they try to divide it up. Without a reader, literature and literary life turns into something.

***

The founder and editor-in-chief of the Pechorin.net portal Alexey Nebykov himself responded to this scandal:

"Fight for reputation

Everything I wanted to say on the topic of the "scandalous Pechorin".

Slanderous and offensive articles by Inessa Tsiporkina and Dmitry Filippov about the activities of the Pechorin.net portal and its specialists have been removed at my request from the Kamerton and Alterlit websites.

These articles contained inaccurate information discrediting the business reputation of the portal, insults to the critics of the project, as well as writers ordering review services on the portal. The authors of the deleted articles spread gossip, settled scores with specific persons cooperating with the portal, and did not aim to present in their materials an objective picture of the activities of the site and its specialists.

Other unreliable materials on the topic that have appeared on the network are currently with lawyers, where in the near future they will be given a legal assessment to make a decision on the subsequent initiation of measures in the framework of judicial, administrative and criminal proceedings.

I would also like to thank my literary friends who spoke publicly in support of the Pechorin.net portal..."

And this is true, because the point is not in the work of the commercial portal, but in the work of its employees, who, probably through a misunderstanding, call themselves literary critics.