Newsletter #36: What's happened to arts criticism?
Thoughts on the death of a role model
Dear friends and readers,
I have a piece out today in Persuasion. It's about arts criticism as it existed when I came of age as a critic in the late 1980s, what's happened to it since, why it matters, and how all this reflects the changing situation of the arts more broadly. (As always, the title and subhead are not my own.)
In other news, here's the video for the event I did in November for American Jewish University, "How Zionist Youth Movement Changed My Life." It was a great conversation with another old role model.
For those of you who are getting this newsletter for the first time, I generally use it for news of new work only. For new podcast and other appearances, you can friend me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter/X.
To catch up on (most of) the pieces I announced in earlier editions of this newsletter, see the “Recent” column on the Essays & Reviews page of my website. For a selection of past podcast and other appearances, see the Media page of my website.
Thanks for reading.
Bill
Although I'm not a New Yorker, I used to visit every year in the 1980s and early 1990s, for the Dance Critics Conference, where I met Deborah Jowitt and other leading critics (although not Arlene Croce, whose writing I also loved). I agreed with most of your remarks in this piece, until your uncalled-for swipe at Sally Rooney. Have you actually read any of her novels? I've read them all and know hers to be one of the strong, thoughtful, idiosyncratic new voices coming out of Ireland, a worthy "descendant" of the great Edna O'Brien, whose biography I've written (it comes out later this year). I have found contemporary Irish literature to be superior to the American variety, largely because a sense of tragedy is ever-present and a love of language, as well.
I doubt if Elizabeth Hardwick would have liked Rooney's novels, but frankly, I am not in thrall to her unforgiving taste. I was taken aback at the way several reviews of my biography treated EH as an unblemished literary goddess whose Kentucky origins and troubled personal life were unworthy of being discussed at length. Much as I admire many of the people you cite, I am not a worshipper at the shrine. In the end, they are all, however clever and original as thinkers and creators, fellow human beings with blind spots and other failings. Incidentally, Rooney's most recent novel, Intermezzo, is by far her best.