A new novel called Everything Is Illuminated has been getting a huge amount of favorable attention. Being a novelist myself, I was, naturally, intrigued. That is, jealous. So I read the book.

It's a comedy with heart, and tells two interwoven stories, one contemporary about a young American Jew and one historical about his Ukrainian ancestors.

I was happy to discover that it is indeed ambitious and clever and altogether impressive. And I was even happier to find that it is not as transcendentally brilliant as its most extreme enthusiasts have claimed. How could it possibly be, as I read in a blurb, "one of the best novels ever?"

Why has the praise has been so extravagant? It's partly because dreck is so common and real talent so rare that critics in all fields often tend to go a little crazy in their praise for the very good. It's partly because Everything Is Illuminated is a first novel.

But the novel is also getting such extreme praise because the author, Jonathan Safran Foer, is so young, only 24. If the same novel had been written by a 44-year-old or a 54-year-old, you can be sure the critical reaction would be considerably muted.

In other words, B-plus or A-minus work like this regularly gets an A-plus. Because art is graded on a curve.

At both ends of the career arc, as I realized when I saw Woody Allen's new film, called Hollywood Ending, which opened this week. I liked most of the movies Woody Allen made in the 1970s, and a lot of them in the 1980s. But Woody Allen has made 13 films during the last decade, almost none of them very good. The last few, one a year like clockwork, have been astoundingly bad.

Yet plenty of respectable movie critics still give good reviews to Woody Allen's bad movies. B-plusses go to C-minus and D work.

I'm not saying Woody Allen gets a bye just because he's 66, like Jonathan Foer gets extra credit because he's 24. In Woody Allen's case, the over-praise is more a matter of inertia and retroactive respect: he made Annie Hall and Manhattan and Crimes & Misdemeanors, so let's... just... go easy on the guy.

But it's a parallel dynamic at work. One case is the converse of the other. The young comic novelist gets over-praised because he's a significant talent with no track record. He gets extra credit for his utter lack of history or baggage.

Whereas the old comedy director, after 30-odd films in 36 years, gets under-criticized for his new films because of his earlier talent and track record. He gets extra credit because of his history and baggage.

In his new novel, the Jonathan Safran Foer makes himself a character, which I found both ballsy for a 24-year-old first novelist, and slightly annoying.

In Woody Allen's new movie, he plays a formerly great, washed-up old New York director who makes one last disastrous movie about New York City. Which I found both ballsy for this particular 66-year-old director, and slightly depressing.

This is Kurt Andersen in Studio 360.