Review - Better Living through Criticism

Book Review of:

Better Living through Criticism

How to Think About Art, Pleasure, Beauty and Truth

A book written by A.O. Scott

Reviewed by Dan McDonald

 

            A few weeks ago I saw a short Twitter recommendation of A.O. Scott’s book Better Living through Criticism. Then I discovered that an interview with A.O. Scott was to take place at an independent movie theater in Tulsa, where I live. I did not read the information about the interview carefully. I expected to see the interview on screen. Instead when I got to the cinema house the interview was in person. After seeing the interview I quickly went and bought the book and had him sign it. I snapped a photograph just before handing him my copy of the book to sign.

            A. O. Scott has been a movie critic for the New York Times since January 2000 and chief critic since 2004. I was drawn to read the book partly because on occasion I blog about books I read and movies I see. Imagining myself as an amateur critic, I thought perhaps I would find help on how to do critiques in my blog. I found that the book helped me realize that at sixty years of age, I will not likely ever be a critic in the way A.O. Scott is a critic. Scott’s work reveals a person who has thought philosophically about what a critic does and should do and where he fits in the scheme of humanity’s search for meaning as it is expressed in art and becomes part of our humanity’s conversation about our search for meaning and understanding.

As I read his work I could not help but notice for me a sense of a parallel that I find as an Anglican of being an interested layman compared to an actual theologian. We all have our views and opinions and convictions of what we understand as truth, but the true theologian is normally much more trained in theology than the interested layman. The trained theologian learns to study the Scriptures and tradition in the broader contexts of how the information of theology is impacted by philosophical movements, cultural considerations, historical context, local congregational scenarios, and individual considerations. The trained theologian should have layers of depth to his theological viewpoint that will elude the interested layman. I think this parallel is true enough that when I finished reading Scott, I realized that he views a movie, a book, a piece of art, or a gourmet dish with this sort of layered training in how to view the arts. His book brings us into a contemplation of an overview of humanity’s analysis and critiquing of the arts through the centuries from Aristotle to Susan Sonntag, with considerations of various critics through the centuries including those who were themselves creators of art such as Keats, Shelley, and Wilde.

That isn’t to say that a blog like mine has no place any more than a congregant’s perspective is to be disregarded because he isn’t a priest or a layman. But there is something to be argued for the craftsman who has sought to understand his craft in its history, technique, varied schools of thought, and has reached a point where when seeing a movie, painting, or a written piece there are instant parallels and connections and contrasts the critic sees in the piece within the history of the art form.

In some ways I have learned that as a blogger I need to see myself realistically in what I do in comparison with A.O. Scott does at the Times. I get to watch occasional movies, read occasional books, visit museums occasionally – and Scott spends his life and works at a vocation where he gives himself to do this on a full time basis. I have had for some time the concept of writing that sees writing as conversation. The big issues of life never are really settled. In theology and behavioral sciences there are continually robust conversations about how free or how determined are our actual determinations of will. What constitutes the best form of government in encouraging individual freedom while strengthening what the preamble of our constitution described as the nation’s general welfare? These kinds of considerations are discussed in theology, politics, around workplace water fountains, in pubs with fine ale, and in theaters, books, and pieces of art. Not only are these matters discussed and become expressed in works of literature, film and other arts, so are other aspects of life. As every teenager has ever experienced, sometimes what a sixteen year old wants to see addressed in film or literature is that which actually appeals to the gender of one’s choice. “Sixteen Candles” may not have addressed supposedly great issues, but John Hughes had the chance to show a work of art envisioning  a handful of young people working through their coming to age struggles that characterize the experience of surviving that temporary high school culture and learning to discover the important qualities required to create the bonds that will bind people together through a lifetime.

I learned in reading A. O. Scott that the work of creating art, and the work of our critiques whether office workers exchanging viewpoints of the latest movie around a water fountain, or the staff writer for the Times or the Atlantic, are each involved in this big on going conversation of what is good, true, beautiful, pleasant, vile, disdainful, lacking fullness, or actually an expression of genius inspiring excellence is the timeless work which binds together in distinctive manners the art creator, the professional critic, and the occasional blogger that despite his common lot feels he must say something about what he sees, feels, and believes.

There is so much more to be said about Scott’s book, how he believes in the development of argument to set forth a critique, how he understands that critics being wrong is part of the process by which criticism works, and how the critic is an artist expressing his criticism and the artist is inescapably a critic expressing his relationship to the world in which the artist lives. This is a book I both recommend and will read again because I know I missed a lot reading the book one time. I suspect for most readers this book will deepen your love of the arts as well as strengthening your ability to analyze the arts you engage with more definite considerations.