Frank Kogan

Your comment here kind of sums up my take on this and similar claims. If we were to say "writing about pop could feel like pop," you'd have something that could still be interesting to explore a little, a potential that we could think about realizing. But then writing about pop could also feel like a technical manual and be pretty good (dryly analyzing how chords are constructed) and it could also feel like a slap in the face and be pretty good (those Meltzer reviews that "walk away" from the subject), even though pieces of criticism that had these characteristics might not necessarily be good (and might often, in practice, be quite bad).

Would generally be happier in any given conversation about "what makes for good criticism" to just be talking about "what's making for good criticism right now and why"? This is what people in the rockcrit community tend to do by default 90% of the time, even though it's those 10% meta arguments that get everyone's fingers flying in response. I'm not against meta arguments, lord knows (that would be me saying "meta doesn't make for good criticism" which would be a rule made to be broken), just not some of 'em. Would say that it's easy to confuse the "and why" of what counts as good right now with the trap of assuming that thing will still be good next time.

FWIW, the Meltzer quote is in one of your post-scripts to the Presentation of Self essay.