A.O. Scott’s Better Living Through Criticism

A.O. Scott’s Better Living Through Criticism was an interesting reading experience for me. Non-fiction is not a genre I would typically pick books out of; I read the occasional biography for fun (Audrey Hepburn, Earnest Hemingway, Hillary Clinton, etc.) and every once in a while I will pick up something about some historical event or another to read through, but for the most part, nonfiction is not my favorite. Needless to say Better Living Through Criticism did not excite me on top of the fact that it is a nonfiction book, it is a nonfiction book about the “art” of criticism. I expected it to be dry, boring, and pretentious. I was 2/3 right; The subject matter did not necessarily pique my interest, so the reading was somewhat boring in that matter, and A.O. Scott did come off somewhat pretentious at times, but it was not dry. I was pleasantly surprised by how the way he wrote made it easy to read even when I wasn’t necessarily interested in what he was saying. His writing style was creative and engaging, however, his style hardly made up for his moments of grandiloquence. While I agree that criticism an important part of cultural understanding, A.O. Scott made criticism sound like the be all end all of social order. I appreciated the information he gave us, but the way he presented it was somewhat exhausting.