“A critic’s duty, in the second half of the 20th century, was to uphold classical standards against the fripperies of fashion and to convey an ideal of enlightenment to commuters who glanced at a newspaper on their way to and from work. Times change. It is easy to deprecate today’s critics as unworthy of giants’ shoes, but the challenges of the 21st century are of a different order from anything the arts have known since Gutenberg made the quill obsolete.”