Essay: "The New Needs Friends"

"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations, the new needs friends."

 

Anton Ego - from Ratatouille

It seems to me that artistic criticism has two purposes.  The first is essentially didactic; to identify the artist's mistakes to help him or her improve.  The second is evaluative; to determine whether the art is "good" or "bad" and how it deserves to be ranked in comparison to other works.  The value of didactic criticism is obvious but the worth of evaluative criticism is less apparent.  Why do we need to classify art as good or bad apart from whether it's popular? 

Essay: "No Real Limits of Any Kind"

For those of you who haven't heard of it, the computer program "Steam" is like a combination between an online video game store and a social networking site. So you buy your games through the program and then when you play them online, you can add people you play with to your friends list and then chat with them and set up games later. A number of extremely unusual people have "friended" me through Steam after a successful round of Team Fortress 2 or Left 4 Dead, but surely the most unusual is a young man who I know as "Turtle."

Essay: "Ian McEwan"

I had high expectations when I read Atonement a couple of years ago.  The movie was receiving rave reviews and the novel had been shortlisted for the Booker and was being named to various "Best Novels in the History of the Universe" lists by prominent magazines.  McEwan had already won a Booker and I felt a kind of confident anticipation when I started to read it.  I felt that not only would I enjoy Atonement, but that I would probably tear through the rest of McEwan's books as well.  I felt as if I was in for a treat.