The Critic: A Friendly Voice

By Claire Miller


“Really? How was it?”

Without fail, these are always the first words out of my mouth when a friend of mine sees a new movie or watches a TV show that just premiered. I’m always on the lookout for a new book to read or some other form of entertainment, and who else would I turn to for that information but my friends who have already read/seen/experienced it?

So when I read an arts review in The Red & Black or The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, that’s what I’m looking for – a friend to tell me whether I should spend my $8 on the new Vince Vaughn movie or wait for it to come on cable before wasting my time on it. I see the critic’s role as another friendly voice whose opinion I can solicit before delving into a book or seeing a dance concert.

This semester, I started to loosen up my creative writing skills after being classically trained in the “art” of hard-news writing and found that my best material came from imagining my best friends as I wrote. Would I want Amy and Cassidy to waste their money seeing “Uncle Vanya?” (The answer to that particular question is a resounding “no,” in case you were wondering.)

I know the critic isn’t always the most beloved of the creative writing community. Henry Fielding once said, “Now, in reality, the world has paid too great a compliment to critics, and has imagined them to be men of much greater profundity than they really are.” But if people looked at them not as cultural snobs handing out criticism from on high, but rather as friends who just want to help you decide on a book, maybe people will finally understand the heart and art of the review.