“Serious arts criticism is looking beleaguered these days in the face of forces ranging from a celebrity-besotted media to the rise of critic-bloggers on the Internet to falling newspaper circulation to suspicion of anything that might be considered “elitist.” The age of great critics – popular, influential writers such as Virgil Thomson on classical music, Clement Greenberg on visual art, Edwin Denby on dance or Pauline Kael on movies – is long gone. Today, critics are more likely to be glorified touts giving thumbs up or down than probing thinkers and literary stylists.”