Après moi, rien

Claudia La Rocco on Jennifer Homans's new history of ballet: "I've never been able to wrap my head around the critical impulse to proclaim an art form kaput.... Perhaps it is best seen as a railing against one's own mortality. Critics age, too, and for some of them the world that helped inspire their creative identity diminishes as they do, replaced by new generations who depart from what they held most dear."