Better Living Through Criticism: How to Think About Art, Pleasure, Beauty, and Truth

by A. O. Scott

Overview

The New York Times film critic shows why we need criticism now more than ever

Few could explain, let alone seek out, a career in criticism. Yet what A.O. Scott shows in Better Living Through Criticism is that we are, in fact, all critics: because critical thinking informs almost every aspect of artistic creation, of civil action, of interpersonal life. With penetrating insight and warm humor, Scott shows that while individual critics—himself included—can make mistakes and find flaws where they shouldn't, criticism as a discipline is one of the noblest, most creative, and urgent activities of modern existence.

Using his own film criticism as a starting point—everything from his infamous dismissal of the international blockbuster The Avengers to his intense affection for Pixar's animated Ratatouille—Scott expands outward, easily guiding readers through the complexities of Rilke and Shelley, the origins of Chuck Berry and the Rolling Stones, the power of Marina Abramovich and 'Ode on a Grecian Urn.' Drawing on the long tradition of criticism from Aristotle to Susan Sontag, Scott shows that real criticism was and always will be the breath of fresh air that allows true creativity to thrive. "The time for criticism is always now," Scott explains, "because the imperative to think clearly, to insist on the necessary balance of reason and passion, never goes away."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143109976
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/07/2017
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	1,017,167
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.70(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

A. O. Scott joined The New York Times as a film critic in January 2000. Previously, Mr. Scott was a Sunday book reviewer for Newsday and a frequent contributor to Slate, The New York Review of Books, and many other publications. He has served on the editorial staffs of Lingua Franca and The New York Review of Books. In addition to his film-reviewing duties, Mr. Scott often writes for the Times Magazine and the Book Review. He lives with his family in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Table of Contents

Introduction: What Is Criticism? (A Preliminary Dialogue) 1

Chapter 1 The Critic as Artist and Vice Versa 13

Chapter 2 The Eye of the Beholder 43

Self-criticism (A Further Dialogue) 81

Chapter 3 Lost in the Museum 91

Chapter 4 The Trouble with Critics 121

Practical Criticism (Another Dialogue) 153

Chapter 5 How to Be Wrong 167

Chapter 6 The Critical Condition 213

The End of Criticism (A Final Dialogue) 253

Afterword: A Reply to My Critics (One More Dialogue) 269

Acknowledgments 283

Index 285

Editorial Reviews

Maclean's Non-Fiction Bestseller

“In this book, as in his reviews, Scott’s voice is genial, reasonable and self-aware. He elucidates complex ideas with snappy language. He’s funny, but not cynical or snarky…. What he does especially well is explain how art develops and why our varied responses to it matter, pinpointing where criticism fits into the equation.” —Newsday

“Mr. Scott is very intelligent….What may matter more is that Mr. Scott is fun to read…[Scott] says that the simple questions—always with complex answers—that criticism poses are: ‘Did you feel that?’  ‘Was it good for you?’ ‘Tell the Truth.’  He reminds us that critical judgments, like art itself, demand intellectual and sensuous, even sexual, responses.  Mr. Scott answers his own demands….”—Wall Street Journal

“Rousing and erudite.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“Witty and thoughtful…. Reading Scott's book is like watching the stiff-upper-lipped hero of a British 1940s thriller facing down his or her adversaries — modest, brave and utterly unflappable.”—LA Times 

“If we were looking for an intelligent, informed and often funny account of why we can’t live comfortably with criticism (in any of the word’s meanings), and can’t live without it, either, we need look no further, and shall probably want to read this book more than once….”—New York Times

“Impassioned and deeply thoughtful ….Scott lays out a taxonomy of meaningful thought (and the meaning of thought itself)….His disciplined reasoning, impressive erudition, and deep commitment to his art (as he defines it) are never less than provocative and elegantly articulated. A zealous and well-considered work of advocacy for an art too often unappreciated and misunderstood.”—Kirkus 

"This stunning treatise on criticism from New York Times film critic Scott is a complete success, comprehensively demonstrating the value of his art...a necessary work that may enter the canon of great criticism." - Publisher's Weekly starred review

From the Publisher

…lively and argumentative…if we were looking for an intelligent, informed and often funny account of why we can't live comfortably with criticism (in any of the word's meanings), and can't live without it, either, we need look no further, and shall probably want to read this book more than once.

The New York Times - Michael Wood

…[a] lively, often impassioned, occasionally breezy defense of a profession that many see as headed to extinction…Better Living Through Criticism mostly exemplifies the rhetorical virtues it so enthusiastically celebrates as being peculiar to the critic: attentiveness to detail, alertness to context, a hunger for larger meanings. The critic, Scott declares in the book's final dialogue, is "a person whose interest can help activate the interest of others." In an era of reflexive contempt for erudition, taste and authority…it is no mean feat to help activate, as this book will surely do, an interest in the genre of which he and others of his generation may be the last professional practitioners.

The New York Times Book Review - Daniel Mendelsohn

★ 11/23/2015
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. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

03/01/2016
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

Library Journal

2015-12-23
An exploration of criticism, which "is not an enemy from which art must be defended, but rather another name—the proper name—for the defense of art itself." New York Times film critic Scott delivers an impassioned and deeply thoughtful defense of his vocation in this unusual tome—"unusual" in the sense that the author offers not a history of arts criticism, an account of his own evolution as a critic, or practical advice for aspiring critics, but rather an examination of the sources and functions of criticism itself. It's perhaps a bit abstract and theoretical for the general film fan looking for pithy insights into the film reviewing game, but Scott is after something more rarified here. His position from the outset is defensive, as he acknowledges the antipathy many seem to feel toward critics, an attitude built on assumptions that critics hate pleasure, are motivated by artistic jealousy, and bring intellectual faculties to bear on material that doesn't warrant such fussy academic attention. Criticism is often seen as an essentially parasitic endeavor, a vulturelike scavenging on the remains of someone else's talent and effort. Scott argues—persuasively, bolstered by rigorous logic and observations about the work of such titanic figures as Aeschylus, Rilke, Kant, and Keats—that criticism not only works symbiotically with art, but is necessary for art to even exist and have meaning in the first place. Scott lays out a taxonomy of meaningful thought (and the meaning of thought itself), and if he occasionally ventures too far into dense theoretical thickets or indulges borderline-irritating gimmicks—e.g., a series of interviews conducted with himself is an overdone trope and too cute by half—his disciplined reasoning, impressive erudition, and deep commitment to his art (as he defines it) are never less than provocative and elegantly articulated. A zealous and well-considered work of advocacy for an art too often unappreciated and misunderstood.

Kirkus Reviews