Donna Seaman's Approach to Reviewing the Arts

Everyone has their own personal spin on being critical whether they can realize it or not.  Some people do it with ease and can whip out a review faster than a teenage girl “whipping her hair back and forth” on the dance floor.  In the Chicago Time out piece, ten pretty well known critics chitchatted about their tricks of the trade and how they go about reviewing the arts.

Donna Seaman of Booklist and WLUW’s Open Books seemed to have a pretty lucid take on ways to be an effective critic and the way she does it.  First and foremost, she’s passionate, and this rings clear considering she comes right out of the gate stating so.  “Dedicate yourself to and devote your critical attention out of hunger for what books or music or, literally, food grants you.” You’re not going to want to write about Swan Lake if you’ve spent the entirety of your life listening to Black Sabbath; you’re not going to be knowledgeable either. Go to the events, read the books, look at the paintings, and eat the food that you feel inclined to.

  However, she believes you shouldn’t completely immerse yourself too deep in your emotions and should be able to see the whole picture without blinders.  When you understand the way you see something, why you see it that way, and still understand what the purpose is, you’re going to have a well-rounded view.

She’s become stubborn with her work too; she thinks about what she’s working on, and that’s it!  When she immerses herself in reviewing something, an urge comes over her to learn more and she self-educates herself.  If some little know it all then feels the need to strike back at her, she will know what she’s talking about and give them an informed piece of her mind.  This is also how she earns trust from her readers.  Not everyone is going to like what she has to say, but if she says from a passionate and well-educated place, she’s going to get that trust she strives for. 

            Writing should obviously always have some sort of creativity to it in order to keep it from becoming a total snooze-fest.  Donna uses wordings that flow like conversation in the readers mind so they can get those brain cells working, if they don’t already.  When they feel they can relate to their critic of choice, they are going to become loyal to him or her, and they are going to want to be thrown into more and more art.  They are going to want to live it and breathe it along side their critic because they can trust her. 

Though some people out there are making a disgusting amount of money writing cheap articles that frankly just don’t cut it, Donna Seaman isn’t in it for all that.   The passion she feels for books gives her this constant urge to dedicate her life to them.  It’s critics like this that we should follow because after all, we don’t want to waste our precious lives away reading a thoughtless and unenthusiastic work.