A. O. Scott’s Better Living Through Criticism challenges the reader to evaluate their perspective about criticism. When I started reading the book, I felt if Scott was presenting a world where he was a superhero returning criticism to some elitist set of ideas. Early in the book he congratulates himself for assessing comic book movies as mindless entertainment cash cows for Disney and laments the pop cultural fanboy phenomenon that called him out. Pop culture critics are often viewed as elitist. I’m sure we’ve all read a review about a favorite movie only for the critic to rip apart the movies flaw. For most of the book, I felt as if he was overlooking an important piece of why his criticism of The Avengers received so much backlash, and why the book overall felt flat to me. Each piece of reviewed material is subject to the objectivity of the person viewing it. Each person’s worldview shapes how they are going to judge the content presented to them. Scott even recognizes this as he points out, “in his day comics were for nerdy kids.” During an early chapter of the book Scott calls true criticism the younger sibling of art. Criticism exist in the same dynamic of a sibling rivalry. Later in the book, he says the “Foundational sin of the critic… is lack of sympathy with the artist.” Scott explains that a critic has the power to build up an artist or destroy their careers. He then closes the book on something I think is really profound, that as a critic, we the readers of his book are the hero of the story. That this very critic is it’s own form of art, inspired by his writing.