Vladimir: Moron!
Estragon: Vermin!
Vladimir: Abortion!
Estragon: Morpion!
Vladimir: Sewer-rat!
Estragon: Curate!
Vladimir: Cretin!
Estragon: (with finality) Crritic!
— Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
CRITICISM
In our algorithmic era, the social function of the critic has largely disappeared. You don’t need to read reviews to know what to see, listen to or read, or even to know what options are out there. Your feed will know before you do, and tell you.
But for the same reason, the need for criticism that doesn’t tell you what, but seeks to understand how, may be more valuable now than ever. And not only to audiences, but to artists, who need critics less to boost their work (that’s what Instagram and TikTok are for) than to take it as seriously as they did when they made it.
As a critic, I try hard to work in that mode. I never treat art as content to be consumed, but use the same process of discovery that an artist uses to create to explore the impact a work of art has had on me.
Since 2018, I have been the film and theater critic for Modern Age. A complete archive of my work for them can be found here. My writing on art and culture has also appeared in The American Conservative, where I wrote frequently on film and books and was the theater critic from 2012 to 2017, as well as in The New York Times Book Review, the Jewish Review of Books, The Weekly Standard, The New Republic and other outlets.
highlights in arts & culture
-
We Are the Robots
Modern Age
Winter/Spring 2025
Machines are mirrors for humanity in two new films and a recent play. Read -
How “The Brutalist” Brutalizes History
Modern Age
January 14, 2025
And everything else the supposed “masterpiece” touches. Read -
Encounters with East and West
Modern Age
Fall 2024
Salesman in China and Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days are brilliant cultural mirrors. Read -
Seeing Through a Monster’s Eyes
Modern Age
Summer 2024
The Zone of Interest is a very different kind of horror, and Holocaust, film. Read. -
Barbie and the Franken-Feminists
Modern Age
Fall 2023
The recent films Barbie and Poor Things try to reinvent the woman—and fail. Read. -
Us or Them
Jewish Review of Books
Summer 2022
It all started with a tweet: “Curious about your whiteness? Come to our meeting.” Edelman was curious.Read. -
Two Hamlets of the 21st Century
Modern Age
Summer 2022
The Northman and Fat Ham present tragic and comic reinterpretations of the prince of Denmark’s revenge tale. Read -
The Tragedy of Joel Coen’s Macbeth (Film)
Modern Age
Spring 2022
A new adaptation of the Scottish play sets aside supernatural terror for court intrigue. Read. -
Kazuo Ishiguro's Suffering Servants
Modern Age
Summer 2021
From the British class system to cloning and artificial intelligence, the relief of man’s estate comes at the cost of his soul in the works of this master. Read. -
The Wrath of Corleone
Modern Age
Spring 2021
What does a rewatching of the three Godfather films reveal? That it was always Michael’s story to tell. Read. -
Theater in the time of COVID
Modern Age
Fall 2020
Playhouses are closed but the show must go on—and some Zoom performances are powerfully affecting experiences. Read. -
Louis and Woody
The Weekly Standard
February 12, 2018
What’s the way forward for an exposed creep? Read. -
Mid-Century Modern
The New Republic
July 27, 2016
Recent productions have revitalized 20th-century classics of American theater. Have they also clouded our sense of history? Read. -
Michel Houellebecq’s Affair with Islam
The American Conservative
November/December 2015
Submission is neither nativist nor liberal: it's a fantasy for European exhaustion. Read. -
Our Shakespeare
The New York Times Book Review
May 29, 2014
The Library of America chronicles the history of American responses to Shakespeare from 1776 to the present day. Read. -
Shakespeare in the Original
The American Conservative
January/February 2014
Men playing women, candles instead of electric lights—why two new productions stage the Bard the old-fashioned way. Read.