Everyone is *not* a critic

A CRITIC’S MANIFESTO is a good illuminator of the role of the critic, vis-a-vis my discussion with Ryan Miller on the 50. It supports Ryan's view of the critic as the owner of knowledge. It also points out that the critic needs taste, and then goes on to the uses of criticism.

I think what we didn't discuss much was the inability for any sort of list like the 50 to do much more than aggregate the unaggregatable. One ought to read a critical piece to get an understanding of a work. An aggregation of people's opinions without any understanding is just a game. It's not that either of us were thinking anything but that the 50, per se, is a game, but at the same time, it's probably best that people know that neither of us were taking it that seriously as a critical document. Lists are good for getting ideas for works one might want to take a look at, but they're useless as tools for gauging the quality of those works.

Anyhow, read the article. It's long, but rewarding. And true. I'm a big reader of the criticism in the New Yorker precisely because I learn so much from those articles. There are weeks when the critics are all that I read in the magazine, but never weeks when I don't read the critics. We were having a discussion of the magazine's negative review of Into the Woods after the daughter had seen and enjoyed the show, and then I went and read the review, and behold and lo, it pretty much just lambasted the work itself and hardly had a thing to say about the present production. Okay, if you don't like Lapine/Sondheim, so be it. I enjoyed reading the article, but this is not one critic whose taste I agree with. Making it good reading—who needs to see nothing but one's own opinions mirrored? I already have my opinions. I'm interested in finding out something else.