Places Of Interest
The Believer: Interview with Tom McCarthy
The Smart Set: Nobody’s a Critic
Criticism isn’t powerful anymore. It doesn’t drive anything, it doesn’t define what is good and bad in culture.
John Sutherland, Blogs at The Guardian: So farewell then, lit-crit
But this traditionally vibrant sector, with its myriad outlets, is on the wane. Terminally, it would seem. Pages are falling away, like leaves in autumn. They used, for example, to call the literary pages in the New Statesman “the back half”. Now it’s “the back sixth (in a good week)”. Why is lit-crit - as a main item in our cultural diet - going down the tubes? Some hypothetical answers may be suggested:
