Critiquing the Cultural Critic

The idea of Cultural criticism has always been a major part of society, whether we like it or not. Criticism has always been a way to improve on content, it always stinks to hear it. But there is always someone that won’t like what is put out, so that it is how we create content and learn to improve upon it, even if it does in fact hurt our self-confidence. To me, A.O Scott’s story Better Living Through Criticism was an interesting take on how to be a critic, even if it was kind of ironic that a well-known critic of The New York Times would also be discussing about the idea of criticism and how to be a critic.

I most definitely found his style of writing to be incredibly confusing and just going on and on, then reaching the point around the end of the chapter, often times I felt myself skimming the chapters just to get to what the point of how that it is okay to be wrong as a critic, and or even just one variant of how to be a critic. I feel like I had learned more how to be a good critic with the lectures that were given over the past semester, rather than the other book. Overall, while I did like learning Scott’s perspective over what the idea of criticism is. However, if there was a point to learning about how to be a better critic rather than trying to offer interpretations over the fact that everyone is a critic and that it can be easy to create and offer ways onto improvement for the better future. Then I feel like I was lost in the translation for A.O Scott’s story and I had learned more on how to be a better critic from class.