Hot on the heels of critic Sven Birkerts’s lament last week in the Boston Globe’s Ideas section that the blogosphere threatens shared literary culture comes Globe book critic Gail Caldwell’s moan that “the scribes and priests no longer hold the keys to the holy word; the word itself has splintered into an infinite series of possibilities.” Both plaints boil down to the same sudsy riff, self-protection mingling with a fear of possibility.

It is easy to dismiss both commentaries as the ramblings of priests anxious to protect their status as guardians of “the holy word.” The Internet is filled with mega-tons of filler, but bloggers are not the only crass contributor to our attenuated literary culture — mediocre gatekeepers are also responsible.

The wagons-in-a-circle-mentality stirs up sentimentalized nostalgia for the (perhaps illusionary) good old days of common literary culture. Given how badly literature is covered and reviewed today, there is no reason bloggers couldn’t serve what Caldwell calls “the grammar that holds and delivers the cultural dialogue — the old truth-and-beauty path that Plato argued was the way to the sublime” as well as, perhaps even better, than the beleaguered gatekeepers in newspapers and magazines. Neither piece undercuts powerful arguments that there are more opportunities for serving the ideals of serious literary discussion on the Web then in the shrinking column inches provided by print publications.

What’s interesting is that, when faced with a cultural crisis, these defenders of the media status quo respond with hand wringing and melancholic posturing, not a call to arms. Traditional cultural dialogue is fading away, they weep, fragmenting into byte-sized pieces. Shouldn’t the values of the past be fought for? Apparently not. For Birkerts and Caldwell, the best that defrocked priests can do is mourn for the past and feel superior to the techno-barbarians. Neither critic supplies any suggestions for protecting the critical values they profess to love: no demands for mainstream newspapers and magazines to supply more in depth criticism, no requests that the media hire editors who take the craft of reviewing seriously, no suggestions about how to assure the future of meaningful cultural dialogue.

Are Birkerts and Caldwell interested in the prospects for meaningful literary discussion on the Web? Their lamentations are reactions to the pain caused by technological change in the present, suggesting that they are looking at the past and future of cultural dialogue from a superficial perspective. Paul Valéry makes my point in his essay “The Outlook for Intelligence”:

The idea of the past takes on meaning and constitutes a value only for the man who has a passion for the future. The future, by definition, has no image. History provides us with the means to imagine it.

The priests are lining-up to sing sad songs for the “truth-and-beauty path.” But a passion for the future is the key to understanding, and reinventing, cultural dialogue online. The gatekeepers should consider accepting their responsibility to help shape the course of history. There is nothing certain about the fate of critical values on the Web. They may vanish in a blogging wasteland or find a new lease on life. But the past only truly lives for those who seek ways to help cultural dialogue survive, for those who fight the good fight to build online communities of smart and curious readers that respect serious critical thinking about books.

The challenge posed to those who care for the future of literary culture is obvious – to use their expertise and energy to build a common literary culture on the Web. The past won’t completely die if it is reinvented. There is no virtue in crying into your handkerchief while history is in the making.