What is the point of criticism? What are critics good for? For New York Times film critic A. O. Scott, these questions provide rich grounds for a thoughtful, beguiling, and expansive exploration of the role of criticism in the human experience. Better Living Through Criticism: How to Think About Art, Pleasure, Beauty, and Truth, now available in paperback, is less a defense of the status of professional critics, than an examination of criticism as a universal, intellectual, and creative undertaking. With great wit and insight, Scott shows how a passionate, skeptical engagement with art in all forms can help give meaning and direction to our lives. In a starred review, Publisher’s Weekly called the book, “A necessary work that may enter the canon of great criticism.” New Yorker writer Vinson Cunningham joins Scott for a conversation on art and the intellectual responses it demands.

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