'Critic' is a title of honour, heavy with implications of eminence, and not a plain statement of fact. Once you have published a novel or two, you are indisputably entitled to call yourself a novelist; plenty of people, however, spend their lives writing about books and works of art without ever producing a sentence which can be described as criticism, except in the vulgar sense. 'Critic' is comparable, really, to 'philosopher'; it has been said that there is no such thing as bad philosophy, since below a certain standard, it simply ceases to be philosophy. Critics are rarer beings than is customarily supposed; the 'chief literary critic' of the Daily Beast is, I feel, making a grand claim for his merits. If, like me, you feel that your fortnightly effusions do not entitle you to be considered as the heir to the Goncourt brothers, then it is altogether far less embarrassing to settle for 'book reviewer'.

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