No one includes a thick skin among the prerequisites of a career in… No one includes a thick skin among the prerequisites of a career in the arts–but people should.  Maybe it’s more important than talent.  Imagine this: you sweat it out over your typewriter, pouring your soul out on paper, finally seeing the perfect cast on stage acting out your immortal words, and the next morning, you open up the newspaper and see your life’s work neatly summed up: “Smells to high heaven.  It is dramatized stench.”  It is no wonder that Shaw himself said, “Reviewing has one advantage over suicide.  In suicide, you take it out on yourself.  In reviewing, you take it out on other people.”  He may have had a point–particularly since he started out his writing career as a critic and had a grand time dishing the dirt himself.  Critics have carte blanche to bash, mash and otherwise main the great and no-so-great works of writers and artists.  It’s not their fault,  of course.  It’s their job.  They’re really not “drooling, driveling, doleful, depressing, dropsical drips,” as Sir Thomas Beecham once said (presumably after he received a bad review.)  At least,  some of them aren’t. And given some of the tripe they have to read or look at, it’s no wonder that many of them are not in the best of moods when it comes times to write their impressions.  And so they are among the best purveyors of professional nastiness in the world.14.      The author says that reviewers write nasty things like they do because they are:A.           Cruel people who want to destroy the dreams of aspiring authors, actors, etc.B.           People doing their assigned job and are jealous of other people’s talent.C.           People doing their assigned job who often get to see a lot of inferior work.D.           Stupid people who can’t write very well themselves.  Arts & Humanities English ENGLISH English