To your question about what people starting out can do, I think there has been a crisis in criticism. I mean that in the most expansive way—not just hardcore criticism, but consideration of art. Think about the first album from some little band down the street from me. Who will write a review of that on the internet? No one. It was always hard to

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The internet has made it easy to evaluate all content — including criticism — against three key metrics: views, likes, and shares. Criticism, it turns out, underperforms.

But a critic, Nguyen implies, is not the man in the Ivory Tower damning or sanctifying specific works of literature based on his own taste: instead, criticism “comes from a deep fascination with the medium (literature, art, fashion, design, architecture, &c) and an overwhelming urge to discuss it, as deeply and as rigorously as possible, in... See more

I began to think that the role of a critic is also a relational one: If someone has spent years of their life on a work, they deserve a serious, sustained response. Critics who write such reviews aren’t just offering something to the maker of a work but to the world. Look here , a critic says. Imagine what culture could be like — if there was more... See more