[From the Ithaca Times; text by Corey Millard] A.O. Scott, one of The New York Times’ esteemed film critics, will be coming to town next week as a part of Ithaca College’s continuing Distinguished Visiting Writers Series. The series, headed by Writing Department faculty member Jack Wang, has consistently provided outstanding lineups, including Pulitzer Prize winners Stephen Dunn and Robert Olen Butler last year. Scott’s visit will be no exception.
Scott’s path to eminence can serve as a sort of anticipatory model for students because of the many “swerves and surprises” it’s taken. Scott realizes that positions of great reverence and reputation aren’t often directly achieved. His current stature, for instance, was a long time in the making.
“I think I’ve always been interested in criticism as a form of writing and a way of approaching the world,” Scott says. “Popular music, movies and books were all of equal importance to me as a teenager, and reading criticism was a way of sharpening and deepening the experience of those art forms. Writing it was something I gravitated naturally toward, though it took me awhile (and a detour into grad school) to be able to do it professionally.”
After attending Classical High School in Providence, Rhode Island, Scott completed his undergraduate work in comparative literature at Harvard before moving on to Johns Hopkins, where he “spent most of a decade not completing a doctorate in English and American Literature.”
Scott’s time at Hopkins was beneficial, though it didn’t ultimately yield a degree. “Spending a few years reading deeply and widely in great literature can only be good,” he says.
Scott insists on the importance of characteristics like perseverance and temerity when addressing his success in a business that can often come off as alienating and severe. In his business, timidity facilitates a muddled, unconvincing reviewing style. It has, in fact, been Scott’s unbridled, shameless persistence that has allowed him to achieve his current status among the country’s elite reviewers. Though, in a fashion atypical of revered critics, he downplays his talents.
“Luck plays a huge part,” he says, “as does persistence. I kept sending queries to the Times’ Book Review and accepted every assignment they gave me.”
Scott spent time reviewing books for The Nation, The Village Voice, Newsday and The Times Book Review before landing a job in the editorial department of the New York Review of Books. His willingness to publish in any paper or magazine prepared to print and pay him - including Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal - precipitated a level of exposure that allowed his writing to coalesce into a full-blown, full-time career as the Sunday book reviewer at Newsday. It wasn’t until 2000 that editors from the New York Times came calling.
“The film critic job was kind of out of left field,” he says, “and nothing I sought. They called me up and asked me if I wanted to apply. Figuring I had a) no shot and b) nothing to lose, I said ‘why not?’”
Scott had written minimally on the subject of film before, but the Times liked what he had to contribute to their operation, so he was hired. In his eight years there he’s developed a close relationship with the Times staff. Scott was even part of the process in bringing Manohla Dargis, former critic for another of America’s newspaper titans, The Los Angeles Times, to the paper’s staff.
It is, perhaps, Scott’s unapologetically individual approach to film criticism that has gained him the reputation he now enjoys. For instance, Scott berated “Passion of the Christ” four years ago, writing: “what makes the movie so grim and ugly is Mr. Gibson’s inability to think beyond the conventional logic of movie narrative.” For this he received what he describes as “memorable hate mail.” And he is unwavering when it comes to films - like “The Dark Knight” - that receive almost unanimous praise. His opinions aren’t influenced by anyone else, and his critical voice is invariably authentic. Scott even voiced support last week for a film like “Wall-E” to grab the fifth Oscar nomination in a race otherwise essentially secured by “Frost/Nixon,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “Slumdog Millionaire,” and “Milk.” And his opinion of “The Reader,” the film that did eventually receive that fifth spot, isn’t very high. It’s this autonomy and freedom of expression that have contributed to Scott’s success.
Scott’s appearance at Ithaca College on Tuesday, Feb. 3 will draw on the experience he’s gained ascending the ranks of media criticism, encouraging students and addressing the changing scope of criticism.
“I’d like to step back and consider criticism as a kind of writing,” he says. “An intellectual vocation and (as the title of my talk has it) a way of life, apart from whatever professional structures exist at the moment.”
Scott notes that the importance and relevance of paid, published criticism could indeed “vanish within a generation” - the result of the Internet’s tendency to expand critical outlets and marginalize the importance of printed media. This will certainly make its way into his lecture, as this marginalization has metastasized into a full-fledged crisis, resulting in the firing of over a hundred full-time critics in the past few years. And Scott will likely address blogging as well, which the venerable but extremely traditional Tom Wolfe addressed last year. Blogging is, appropriately, a topic gaining more and more momentum within the realm of media criticism.
Scott’s success has provided him with important pieces of advice for aspiring writers - pointers any young journalist could benefit from. “Keep writing as much as you can,” he says. “And also, especially when you’re starting out, don’t be a prima donna. Get your copy in, clean and on time. Take editorial input graciously, even if you push back against it. Behave like a professional - it’s amazing to me how many young writers don’t seem to understand these basic principles.”
Ultimately, the A.O .Scott approach can be condensed thusly: “My mentor John Leonard summed it up in two words: writers write. There are lots of easier things to do, and certainly easier ways to make a living. But the more you do it, the better you will get at it, and the more you will understand what it is.”
A.O Scott will appear at the Klingenstein Lounge of Ithaca College’s Egbert Hall next Tuesday, Feb. 3, at 7:30pm.