Archives for 2006

I’m writing a long piece for Commentary (and recovering from my niece’s visit to New York last week). You won’t hear from me again until Wednesday, or maybe Thursday. In the meantime, go visit some of those other nice blogs in the right-hand column.

“Two kinds of person are consoling in a dangerous time: those who are completely courageous, and those who are more frightened than you are.”

A.J. Liebling, “Paris Postscript,” The New Yorker, Aug. 10, 1940

“Every time we pick up a book, we expect to fall in love; but after a certain number of disappointments, our expectation turns to mere hope; and eventually we give up even that. But no true reader ever gives up entirely. We still want to be moved deeply; we are still looking for books that, as Orwell put it, will burst the thermometer.”

Lots of interesting critical self-reflection is afoot lately. The quotation above comes from a piece linked seemingly everywhere, Ruth Franklin’s half-essay, half-review of Black Swan Green, published in the New Republic and reprinted at Powell’s Books, addresses some of the pitfalls of positive reviewing. Positive reviews are harder to write well, she claims, for any number of reasons. For one, the well-pleased critic finds herself in unintentional competition with a book’s jacket copy and associated hype–all of the productions of the publishing house’s publicity machine–and it’s not always easy to avoid sounding like part of that machine herself. “We damn not with faint praise, but with hyperbole.” she writes.

I entirely agree with Franklin’s sentiments about overly nice reviewing, which only makes me part of a large chorus. The Believer‘s Snarkwatch was a trial balloon, as she notes, that quietly but quickly sank. But, as someone who reviews ten or twelve books a year, I’d say the problem is less that many bad books are being given glowing reviews, and more that there are a lot of pretty good books out there. Quite good books. Blown kisses to my editors, but it is a rare thing and thus, frankly, some fun, to receive a book for review that’s truly bad–in large part because it happens so seldom. The great majority of the novels and short story collections I review are pretty good–but not essential. In the long run, they probably won’t be remembered as important. In the short run, though, they’ll give the right readers some considerable pleasure and perhaps enlightenment. As a critic, then, my job as I see it is to set aside that perpetually recurring dream of making a great discovery–and all of the attendant overblown adjectives–send out some sort of signal to the readers who I think will appreciate this particular book, and describe the book using verbs instead of adjectives as much as possible–not what the book is like, but what it does. The hardest thing is to maintain an honest sense of proportion in describing what a book achieves. (And for the record, I basically agree with Franklin’s high assessment of Black Swan Green).

Meanwhile, A. O. Scott had a piece in the New York Times last week (warning: the link may expire today) that tries to parse the yawning difference between the critical and popular receptions of a movie like Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. As you might imagine, plenty of film and culture bloggers have had something to say about that. It was the always sharp Peter Suderman, though, who pointed out that nowhere in his piece does Scott venture an answer to a key question: “What is the job of the movie critic?” In lieu of anything along these lines from Scott, Suderman graciously obliges with some thoughtful musings.

The subquestion, I suppose, in Scott’s essay was about what, if any, responsibility a critic has to the general moviegoing public. This is a tough question for many critics, and for someone like me especially. Most critics would bristle at the thought of having to serve the masses. Pandering, they’d call it, and dismiss the whole idea. As a firm believer in the usefulness of markets in determinging value, however, I’m not as sure. Now, while I have no love for the inscrutable non-taste of the moviegoing masses, I find myself wondering if a critic doesn’t have some obligation to them. Newspapers and magazines are businesses, after all, and they have an obligation to sell papers. A critic without a public is hardly worth whatever investment–however tiny–his or her publication has made in his or her writing.

In the end, he lands on a close analogue to what he tries to do as a critics: “it seems to me that the best description of a film critic is as a public teacher, one whose job is to be interesting, helpful, available (answer those emails!) and knowledgeable. One hopes that film critics are also film enthusiasts who enjoy not just the entertainment part of film but the intellectual side as well.” One does.

I keep an eye on the Web sites of more than a hundred American theater companies. Many of them are well designed, but at least as many are thoroughly exasperating to anyone looking for information about a company and its schedule–especially a journalist with a deadline who doesn’t have time to root around for basic facts.

If you want to keep traveling critics like me happy, make sure that the home page of your Web site contains the following easy-to-locate information:

– The title of your current production, plus its opening and closing dates

– A link to a complete list of the rest of the current and/or upcoming season’s productions

– A “CONTACT US” link that leads directly to an updated directory of staff members (including individual e-mail addresses)

– A link to a page containing (1) directions to your theater and (2) a printable map

– Your address and main telephone number (not the box office!)

An elegantly designed home page that conveys a maximum of information with a minimum of clutter tells me that you know what you’re doing, thus increasing the likelihood that I’ll come see you. An unprofessional-looking, illogically organized home page suggests the opposite. This doesn’t mean I won’t consider reviewing you–I know appearances can be deceiving–but bad design is a needless obstacle to your being taken seriously by other online visitors.

Two examples of good design:

– Steppenwolf

– Paper Mill Playhouse

Seven examples of bad design:

– This is an informative but cluttered home page.

– This is an uncluttered but insufficiently informative home page.

– This is an informative but amateurish-looking home page.

– This home page gets just about everything wrong–and it also contains a hugely irritating sound bite that plays each time you go there.

– This is a textbook example of unattractive, eye-resistant design.

– So is this.

– This superficially attractive site is so poorly organized that it’s hard to use.

(You don’t have to spend a fortune on an effective Web site, by the way. Remy Bumppo‘s bare-bones home page gets the job done.)

All this free advice applies equally well to other arts organizations, by the way. Any specifically museum-related suggestions, Mr. Modern Art Notes and Ms. Culturegrrl?

I made my will last week. Not to worry–I’m as healthy as a middle-aged horse–but in light of my recent illness, it seemed prudent to ensure that my worldly goods, such as they are, will be properly distributed should my cardiologist turn out to have been wrong about my future prospects.

Making a will is an uncomplicated affair for those who, like me, are neither rich nor overly endowed with possessions. I do, however, own forty works of art (not counting my cel set-up from The Cat Concerto), and at one point I considered leaving them en bloc to some small regional museum whose permanent collection is weak on the American moderns. In the end, though, I decided it would be more appropriate for me to share some of the vast pleasure I’ve derived from living with art. I’m leaving two of my most treasured objects, Milton Avery’s March at a Table
and John Marin’s Downtown. The El, to the Phillips Collection as a gesture of gratitude to my favorite museum. The rest will go to friends and family members.

It took me two days to figure out who was to get what. By the time I was done, I felt so ceremonial that I started drawing up a list of music to be played at my funeral. At that point my sense of humor finally kicked in, and I found myself recalling this passage from Boswell’s Life of Johnson:

I have known him at times exceedingly diverted at what seemed to others a very small sport. He now laughed immoderately, without any reason that we could perceive, at our friend’s making his will; called him the TESTATOR, and added, “I dare say, he thinks he has done a mighty thing. He won’t stay till he gets home to his seat in the country, to produce this wonderful deed: he’ll call up the landlord of the first inn on the road; and, after a suitable preface upon mortality and the uncertainty of life, will tell him that he should not delay making his will; and here, Sir, will he say, is my will, which I have just made, with the assistance of one of the ablest lawyers in the kingdom; and he will read it to him (laughing all the time). He believes he has made this will; but he did not make it: you, Chambers, made it for him. I trust you have had more conscience than to make him say,

“I believe that the great painters, with their intellect as master, have attempted to force this unwilling medium of paint and canvas into a record of their emotions. I find any digression from this large aim leads me to boredom.”

Edward Hopper, “Notes on Painting”

Jazz singer Julia Dollison is in town for a one-nighter this Tuesday at Sweet Rhythm. I wrote the liner notes for her debut CD, Observatory, and what I said then still goes:

“There’s this singer I want you to meet. She’s really, really good.” I must hear at least three variations per month on that tired old theme, but when Maria Schneider spoke those words to me five years ago, I took them seriously. What kind of jazz singer, I asked myself, would be interesting enough to catch the ear of the outstanding big-band composer of her generation?

Here’s the answer.

It starts with the voice: warm, airy, dappled with summer sunshine, technically bulletproof from top to bottom. (Check out those honking low notes in “Your Mind Is on Vacation.”) Such voices are born, not made, and Julia Dollison has one. Yet she never coasts on her chops. Instead, she sings like a horn player in love with lyrics, the way Lester Young knew all the words to every ballad he played. Her solos are pointed and meaningful, little musical stories that take you to places you’ve never been.

Then comes the style, an alchemical blend of jazz and pop that makes Harold Arlen and Rufus Wainwright sound not like strange bedfellows but the oldest of friends. Don’t call it “fusion,” though: that might smack of calculation, and there’s nothing calculated about Julia’s singing. She grew up listening to all kinds of music, and now she just sings what she hears, naturally and unselfconsciously.

Did I mention the arrangements? Actually, that’s not quite the right word for her root-and-branch deconstructions of standards. They pass through her mind like light through a prism, emerging refracted and transformed. “In a Mellotone” is nudged into a joltingly ironic minor key, while “Night and Day” is superimposed atop a Coltrane-like harmonic steeplechase. “All the Things You Are” becomes a spacious, Latin-flavored soundscape decorated with the pastel washes of overdubbed vocals that are Julia’s trademark….

The band includes Geoff Keezer on piano, Ben Monder on guitar, Ted Poor on bass, and Matt Clohesy on drums–remarkable players all.

For more information, go here.

I’m under the radar but not entirely inactive. Check out the Top Five and Out of the Past, in the right-hand sidebar, for a couple of brand-new picks from me. And wander over to the Lit Blog Co-op, where sometime today I’ll be posting more on my nomination for this season, Edie Meidav’s Crawl Space. I’ll contribute something more robust to this blog after work, though I won’t be helped by a sprained, swollen left ring finger. Ah, the joys of learning to skate. I’m down a knee and a finger and I haven’t even picked up a hockey stick yet.