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Published on 7/25/08
Published on 7/24/08
Video
So if I’m 18 years old, call you and tell you I want to be a critic, what advice do you give? Go for it? Don’t?
Mario Naves
Get a day job.
Charlie Finch
Get an agent.
Douglas Wolk, critic, author, Reading Comics; blogger, Lacunae
Don’t do it!!
Dwight Garner, critic, The New York Times and Paper Cuts blog
Read everything you can get your hands on, great literature and also great criticism—Pauline Kael, Dwight Macdonald, George Orwell, James Agee, John Updike, Alfred Kazin, H.L. Mencken, etc. Read the current critics, too—become the kind of person who flips to the “back of the book” (a.k.a. the reviews) first in all kinds of magazines and newspapers. Remember what criticism is: the art of making fine distinctions. Start writing for your school newspaper, high school or college—I bet it doesn’t have a book critic. Yet.
Andy Horwitz
Start seeing as much work as you possibly can, always read the program notes, do your research and write, write, write.
Adam Buckman
Stay the hell away from the Post, because I plan on clinging to this job until my remote-control has to be pried from my cold, dead hands.
