There is excellent criticism that discusses the writer's personal life at length and depth, and excellent criticism that just about faints at the idea of that. There is no one true, correct, righteous way to create criticism (or any other art) when it comes to writing about music, for example, there is excellent criticism that draws deeply on musicology, and excellent criticism that doesn't contain a single instance of information, knowledge, or insight drawn from that discipline. You can freely admit to the reader in your introduction that you picked your subject to some degree because you thought it would be popular rather than because you care about it or have anything specific to say about it, and the result could still be entertaining/edifying/insightful/'good' You don't have to love, or in fact feel any particular way, about the art you are tackling in order for the result to be good Here are a collection of more or less specific things that I honestly believe to be true about criticism/aesthetics/critical writing/what have you: The previous one, on Donuts, I just might buy myself at some point. Here are a collection of more or less specific things that I honestly believe to be true about criticism/aesthetics/critical writing/what have you: - You don't have to love, or in fact feel any particular way, about the art you are tackling in order for the result to be good - You can freely admit to t The second of three 33 1/3 books I've borrowed from a friend and am taking entirely too long to read. The second of three 33 1/3 books I've borrowed from a friend and am taking entirely too long to read. This is freshman composition-class-caliber writing of the most banal kind.more Really? You think that "Exit Music" by Radiohead is a "carefully constructed song"? Brilliant. 'Exit Music' thus seems like a carefully constructed song, perhaps more so than some of the more singable songs." 'Tears' rhymes with 'hears', and 'everlasting peace' finally breaks the pattern altogether. 'Wake-dreams' and 'pack-dressed' connect alliteratively. "'Sing' and 'song' balance each other, 'now' and 'one' recall each other. For example, in discussing "Exit Music (for a Film)": Most of his analysis amounts merely to describing the songs, as if we haven't heard them before, instead of providing any extra insight into the songs' structure, lyrics, or inspirations. But then he doesn't perform any actual analysis he doesn't tell us what all this means, or why we should even bother counting all these details. He also name-checks obsessively, but usually drops literary names, not names from music or rock music - Philip Larkin, Matthew Arnold (laboriously comparing Thom Yorke's voice to "sweetness and light" - ugh).Īnd then there's the tedious, pointless quantification - he counts how many measures each song's various sections contain, the time signatures, the track lengths, whether the songs are "wordy" or not, whether the lines employ verbs or nouns, etc. And when he does fold Radiohead into the discussion of how "OK Computer" is a "CD album," the treatment is pretty minimal. This hardly seems relevant because while "OK Computer" was released on an LP, it's pretty rare and so most listeners only know the album on CD. The author spends nearly a third of the book talking about how LPs are different from CDs, without mentioning Radiohead AT ALL. He also name-checks obsessively, but usually drops literary names, not names from music What a crap book.