Analyst or Moralist?

For all its good intentions, art that tries to minister to its audience by showcasing moral aspirants and paragons or the abject victims of political oppression produces smug, tiresome works that are failures both as art and as agitprop. Artists and critics—their laurel bearers—should take heed.

This demand for moral clarity/purity in fiction (or perhaps art more broadly) and a belief that anything that strays from that or requires a lot of grey is tacitly supporting Something Bad/Regressive Politics

At its best, cultural criticism is love and art that exists to give love to other expressions of art. It's beautiful in its indulgence.

Here on my screen was the distillation of a peculiar American illness: namely, that we have a profound and dangerous inclination to confuse art with moral instruction, and vice versa.

Good arts criticism–not just about music–is important because its job is to put the music in context and as a result, broaden the listener's enjoyment and understanding.