Better Criticism

Paid critics are an endangered species, and good criticism is a dying art. Editors are culling many, and frequently all, of their best critics. In the academic world, balanced criticism is being driven out, in favour of weird and wacky, hard-left dogma. Especially on the internet but also in newspapers and magazines, there's more bad criticism than ever before - needlessly rude, ill-judged, poorly expressed or bigoted, and sometimes all four. There are "reviews" that are not reviews at all, but paid-for marketing tools or uncritical hagiography by friends and relations of the artist (and sometimes by the artist himself). Corruption in the field of reviewing is rife. Bad is driving out good. Even in such havens of free speech as Western Europe and America, the story of criticism over the last few years has been a shocking tale of sackings, corruption, suicides, murders and editorial stupidity. Better Criticism shows how and why Criticism has become the most undervalued of all the arts, and presents Ten Commandments which should help anyone to become a better critic.