News at Eleven: By this I mean that critics must strive

to write stylishly, to concentrate on the excellent sentence. There is so much noise and screen clutter, there are so many Amazon reviewers and bloggers clamoring for attention, so many opinions and bitter misspelled rages, so much fawning ungrammatical love spewed into the ether, that the role of the true critic is actually quite simple: to write on a different level, to pay attention to the elements of style.

from The New York Times: Why Criticism Matters: With Clarity and Beauty, the Weight of Authority
then The New York Times: Up Front: Why Criticism Matters
then The New York Times: Why Criticism Matters: Beyond the Critic as Cultural Arbiter
then The New York Times: Why Criticism Matters: From the Critical Impulse, the Growth of Literature
then The New York Times: Why Criticism Matters: The Intellectual at Play in the Wider World
then The New York Times: Why Criticism Matters: Translating the Code Into Everyday Language
then The New York Times: Why Criticism Matters: The Will Not to Power, but to Self-Understanding

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