Jackie Danicki

AA Gill gets me thinking about the value of bloggers when he writes about the sorry state of theatre criticism:

Look at restaurants and food. The incremental improvement in the quality and sophistication and enjoyment of eating, cooking and buying food [in Britain] has coincided with the rise of good, angry, witty, opinionated writing. It’s the same with contemporary art and books. Literary criticism may be as corrupt as a Russian customs officer’s Christmas party, but it’s vital and commands attention for books. Varied and lively opinionated criticism isn’t necessarily good for individual productions or artists, but it is good for the genre as a whole. If there is no intellectual, aesthetic, political, spiritual, passionate argument about what gets made, then the only arbiters of value are the box office and the phone-in. Bad culture drives out good unless there is someone there to stop it. Look at cinema, which is now virtually critic-proof.

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