Writing About ‘Writing About the Arts’

I found this excerpt very helpful and insightful, especially examining the differences between reviews and criticism. I also appreciated the humor in the writing that could have easily been very tedious reading. As I read Zinsser’s advice and guidelines for good review writing, I kept cringing thinking about the review of Sweeney Todd and how many of his rules I’d broken, among them: don’t give away too much of the plot, use specific detail, avoid ecstatic adjectives (clichés), and express your opinion firmly. I absolutely agreed with his take about, “last minute evasions and escapes”, and how this can be the, “most boring sentence of the editorial”. It’s a trend that I’ve noticed in many articles yet I still did the same thing in the Sweeny review. After reading this the idea of writing the much more complex criticisms seems daunting since I’m not an expert in any of the arts, and I feel much safer writing reviews. The only way I could write criticism would be to do research in the medium I’m writing on, but that would be defeating the purpose since the critique is supposed to be a unique opinion from the critic.