Two book reviewers at Salon discuss a new book, The Death of the Critic.  Many of the usual discussion points are rehashed, but then the lit blog world is thrown this bone:

And believe it or not, I’ve learned things from Amazon reviews, from letters pages, from literary blogs, from all sorts of non-traditional outlets. The quality of writing is certainly variable, but then so is the quality of traditional journalism.

No! I can’t believe it!

For all the talk of the end days of literary criticism, I’ll point out once again that membership in the National Book Critics Circle has risen by almost 50% since last year.  Sure, they’re letting clowns like me in, so at worst book criticism is becoming a less exclusive club.   Maybe even less serious.  Maybe less academic.  However, death of criticism itself seems a bit of an over statement.