Happiness Quote by Brooks Atkinson

Criticism rarely gets billed as an act of joy, but Atkinson insists on it: the critic as town crier, not executioner. The line is deceptively simple, almost old-fashioned in its civic cheer. Yet it carries a pointed defense of the profession at a time when reviewers were easy to caricature as gatekeepers with poisoned pens. Atkinson, the era-defining New York Times theater critic, reframes the assignment as public service: the highest pleasure isn’t flexing taste, it’s delivering good news to a hungry audience.

The intent is also a quiet argument about what theater is for. A “good play” isn’t treated as private connoisseurship or insider prestige; it “has come to town,” like a traveling miracle, a shared event that changes the air. That phrasing makes art feel municipal. Theater becomes part of the city’s weather system: when something excellent arrives, the whole place is improved.

Subtext: the critic’s power is best used affirmatively. Atkinson isn’t denying the necessity of negative reviews; he’s saying the moral center of criticism is recognition, not demolition. The line flatters readers, too. It assumes a community that wants to be told where the life is. In the mid-century Broadway ecosystem, a Times rave could make a show; Atkinson treats that influence less as dominion than as responsibility.

It works because it makes a profession sound like a vocation: to spot the rare thing and ring the bell, so the crowd can gather before it disappears.