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A Critic’s Manifesto | The New Yorker

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The role of the critic is to mediate intelligently and stylishly between a work and its audience; to educate and edify in an engaging and, preferably, …

Save this story Save this story In the nineteen-seventies, when I was a teen-ager and had fantasies of growing up to be a writer, I didn’t dream of being a novelist or a poet. I wanted to be a critic. I thought criticism was exciting, and I found critics admirable. This was because I learned from them. Every week a copy of The New Yorker would arrive at our house on Long Island, wrapped in a brown wrapper upon which the (I thought) disingenuously modest label NEWSPAPER was printed, and I would hijack the issue before my dad came home from work in order to continue an education that was, then,

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