"Criticism is a serious intellectual act" - William Zinsser

After wading through the big words and pompous tone of William Zinsser’s “Writing About the Arts,” a chapter taken from his book, On Writing Well, there is good advice to be had about being a critic and creating one’s own voice – it just takes some ego flaunting, on behalf of the author, to get there. It is pretty clear from the text that this is a man that knows what he is talking about (and he almost comes right out and announces it) and at the same time, this is a man that takes himself and his “art” a little too seriously.

The saying that “everyone is a critic” would surely be an insult to Zinsser as he believes that in order to be a critic, one must possess a “special set of skills and a special body of knowledge.” Moreover, he is presumptuous in assuming that every writer, at some point in his career, wants to be a critic. To some extent, everyone is really a critic as each person has his own opinions but whether he is an educated critic is the question. The author makes a strong point in emphasizing that a good critic needs a strong background in the medium that he is critiquing. The idea is to be able to draw on other examples in support of the ones being given and give additional information to the reader as part of the education process. Essentially writing a critique is educating the reader as to why this film may or may not be worth it to see or why this book is a best-seller – a good critic can evoke an opinion from the reader as a result of his words.

Despite his seriousness and stuffiness, I did draw the most from this idea of being able to provoke a response from my readers as a result of my critique. This is an area where I want to be able to improve in my writing as having a voice/opinion of my own becomes necessary. Whether it is right or wrong, I want to become more opinionated in my writing and when I can get this voice, I can better be able to draw responses from my readers. However, at the same time, I want to be able to entertain with my words and so when Zinsser says that “criticism is a serious intellectual act,” someone needs to tell him to lighten up because when it becomes too serious, the critique loses some of its humanity.