“Now, maybe more than ever, in a cultural desert characterized by the vast, glimmering territory of the Internet, it is important for the critic to write gracefully. If she is going to separate excellent books from those merely posing as excellent, the brilliant from the flashy, the real talent from the hyped… then the critic has one important function: to write well.”
Tag: 01.02.11
The New Critical Paradigm
“The age of evaluation, of the Olympian critic as cultural arbiter, is over. While there are still critics out there, often at prominent publications, who like to issue dogmatic rulings (“The novel exists to _____!”) and to chastise writers, their nostalgic efforts merely add to the noise of culture.”
History Defends The Critics
“There have been many other defenses of criticism — by Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde and Lionel Trilling, to name only a few — each an effort to establish, or re-Âestablish, the continuing relevance of a literary form whose value has been challenged for much of its modern history.”
Ballet Boom?
“A host of ballet-inspired films, among them the Hollywood hit Black Swan, with the help of dance-based television shows, has sparked a rush for all things ballet-related, from catwalk fashion and its high-street equivalent, to dance lessons and tickets for The Nutcracker.”