“What criticism shares with art, in other words, is a particular kind of magic: an exchange through which we transfer our attention and our trust to a different imagination, hoping that, by some transfiguration on the page, another person may begin to speak our minds.”
“What such reviews do … is to contribute to a climate in which creative work is taken seriously, and thus dignified as a pursuit. “It is my contention here that criticism, far from sapping the vitality of art, is instead what supplies its lifeblood; that criticism, properly understood, is not an enemy from which art must be defended, but rather another name—the proper name—for the defense of art itself,” he writes. Criticism sets a standard that artists can strive for or resist … ”
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