Better Living Through Criticism

Starred review from November 23, 2015
This stunning treatise on criticism from New York Times film critic Scott is a complete success, comprehensively demonstrating the value of his art. His first major assertion is that criticism is indeed an art, and that “a work of art is itself a piece of criticism.” From here he moves swiftly, with humor and insight, to show how art works hand in hand with critics’ “activity of loving demystification.” Scott ties criticism to philosophy, most compellingly citing Immanuel Kant’s The Critique of Judgment, which asserts that “the judgment of taste... cannot be other than subjective.” He is equally comfortable discussing Rainer Maria Rilke’s sonnet “Archaic Torso of Apollo” and Marina Abramovic’s performance art piece The Artist Is Present. His most striking observations come in a chapter entitled “How to Be Wrong,” which Scott calls “the one job can actually, reliably, do.” He states that “choosing is the primal and inevitable mistake of criticism” as well as “the gesture that calls it into being.” Included are four “dialogues” in which Scott interviews himself, examining his assumptions and clarifying difficult points. This is a necessary work that may enter the canon of great criticism. Agent: Elyse Cheney, Elyse Cheney Literary Associates.

March 1, 2016

Scott (film critic, New York Times) offers this volume as a justification for his existence. Through a series of imagined "dialogues" between himself and a theoretical nonsympathetic interlocutor, he sets out to rationalize his career choice, and the existence of criticism in general, by showing how analytical thinking is at the center of life itself--this very centrality making it impossible not to approach art seriously. Coming on the heels of Rita Felski's The Limits of Critique, which strove to bring recognition to critiques' noncentrality--and amid popular reactions against theory throughout the culture wars of the last three decades--Scott has a nice open field to play in here and makes elegant use of the entire terrain, drawing strongly on Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment. He beautifully reveals criticism as a valid art form in its own right, pointing to virtuoso achievements in the genre by master poets such as T.S. Eliot and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. VERDICT Whether or not readers who are most likely to question the value of criticism will be the ones to pick up this title, fans of literature and film will enjoy. [See Prepub Alert, 8/17/15.]--Jenny Brewer, Helen Hall Lib., League City, TX

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