[contextly_auto_sidebar id="Af3WnbX7JuSvdi2C0uLj0Xwv9IxmV5r4"] HOW much longer will the beleaguered polymath last? No one knows. But my friend and guest columnist Lawrence Christon has penned an appreciation of the great Australian-born writer. With no further ado: "THE LONG GOODBYE," By Lawrence Christon At 75, Clive James is close to the end of a battle with a form of leukemia that’s … [Read more...]
What Killed Adulthood? Pop Culture or Capitalism?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="jery8F5jteMew95L1w4tWKmHZdFvaBDv"] ONE of the smarter back and forths over the last week or so has been the response to A.O. Scott's essay "The Post-Man," on how genuine adulthood has seeped out of American culture. He's taken the usual hits for being a nostalgic, entitled, puritanical white man -- charges I'm sure he could see coming a mile away -- most of which … [Read more...]
The Death of Art’s Third Place
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="m8KE0CbwCulzkRvRmJL6ZGSvuY8h2kLD"] DAVE Hickey has long been one of the orneriest and most original voices in the art world -- his book Air Guitar is a revelation -- and he recently posted something that hits me almost literally where I live. He's talking about the disappearance of a discourse around visual art that is neither grounded in academia or the marketplace. … [Read more...]
Will Indie Film Survive?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="u8nyNEUGiw9T3t2MS4otkepc3HaoApPt"] ONE of the casualties of our current cultural situation is the erosion of the middle -- the middle class, the midlist author, the middlebrow, and the mid-budget film. Independent film, with its interest in boundary pushing and risk-taking, may not seem to belong in that company, but it's vulnerable to all the same forces. The New … [Read more...]
“American Top 40,” Poptimism and Winner-Take-All
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="plD2J41Igr64VnQSKm3MiH74DQcHRIgZ"] IS it possible to hate Casey Kasem? Probably not. His show was a lot of fun, and he was the voice of Shaggy. But his death is being received in an odd way that's unfair to him and wrong about the way culture, popularity and economics work. In short, he's being drafted into a war in which he never fought. My new story in Salon … [Read more...]
Art Critic Kenneth Clark: Savior or Snob?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="2JRpGl1G6WEGCmBeZpJ8hGQwTyo0KCNg"] IT'S always easy to look back at cultural figures from earlier eras and denounce them as "elitists," and that's clearly what's happened to the great British art critic and interpreter Kenneth Clark. Through books on landscape and the nude, and his BBC television documentary series from 1969, Civilisation, Clark exposed an enormous … [Read more...]
Peter Rainer’s Movie Criticism
IT’S almost impossible to find a word that can be changed in Peter Rainer’s film criticism, or a way to express an idea better than he already has. That’s a lesson I learned the hard way, during the year I served as Peter’s editor. It makes his work a pleasure – sometimes a revelation – to read. I can’t recall many critics who you really feel thinking on the page quite as well as Peter does; the … [Read more...]
Prog Rock Tales
YOU would have to look long and hard to find someone who felt less warmly about the movement known as progressive rock as your humble blogger. (If the genre was bad in its original appearance, it seemed doubly awful in its ‘80s AOR rebirth.) I expect a lot of us who came of age in the years after punk feel the same way, and preferred the concision of college radio or “modern rock” acts like R.E.M. … [Read more...]
Culture and Criticism
TWO of my favorite journalists, film critic A.O. Scott and media reporter David Carr, have gone back and forth about a number of important issues lately. Some of this is analog vs. digital, print vs. Internet stuff.Some of it has to do with the nature of the press, of DIY/artisanal culture, or the revival of vinyl records. And in this swirl of new and old, they ask, what is the role of the culture … [Read more...]
Ken Burns vs. His Critics
AS a former (and very minor) member of the nation's conspiracy of jazz critics, i remember quite well the vitriol hurled at ken burns for his "Jazz" documentary. the UK's guardian, for instance, called the series, for its treating jazz like an art form that died with ellington, "a jam session in a mausoleum."in some cases the charges were fair, in other cases not.in any case it struck me that … [Read more...]