I've never felt defensive about the enterprise of criticism. I understand critical essays to be just that—a subspecies of essay, and the essay is a literary art.

Unlike most forms of art, some critical essays—reviews—have an immediate use, i.e. to encourage readers to engage with the reviewed work, or to avoid it.

But this only makes the review different in degree from other arts, not different in kind. Exempting some satiric barbs, art that alludes to any other piece of art implicitly recommends the alluded-to art.

Moreover, the alluding artist makes a particularized *evaluation* of the art she alludes to. References are not haphazard.

Alluding artists pick out particular elements (themes, images, characters, turns of phrase, leitmotifs) from preexisting art, and redeploy them for specific purposes.