September 20, 2006
"Criticism and the Arts" panel (a longish report)
Given past experience with panel discussions, and common assumptions one brings to them, I didn’t have the highest hopes for one titled “Criticism and the Arts,” held last night at Hunter College. It featured Joan Acocella (of the New Yorker, Greil Marcus (author, most recently, of The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy and the American Voice, Alex Ross (of the New Yorker and the weblog and forthcoming book The Rest Is Noise), and Mark Stevens (of New York magazine), four eminent critics one must respect no matter one’s opinion of their opinions. Thankfully, the panel was moderated adroitly by Wendy Lesser (of the Threepenny Review), and the brisk pace—two questions from Lesser to all four panelists; two more questions thrown open to them generally; three or four questions from the audience—engaged until the end, when it was “time for wine and fizzy water, so you’ll feel this is more of a conversation than an opportunity for us to talk at you.”
I found it somewhat surprising that I generally agreed with what all four critics said, though whether that surprise is rooted in disappointment that I’m affected by the same factors that influence their work (and no longer am independent firebrand, however self-styled) or pride that I can claim similar methodological concerns remains to be determined. Acocella came off as the seen-it-all chronicler (an aside: I've been particularly taken with her recent writing on books, notably this introduction to Stefan Zweig's Beware of Pity; Ross the obsessive stylist and last-ditch proselytizer for an increasingly marginalized art form; Marcus the storyteller who sneaks autobiography into each ruminative, "mystical" association; and Stevens the skeptic—both about the use of an institutional “we” and attendant overidentification with one’s platform and an art market seemingly out of control. There were few insights about criticism in the abstract, but plenty about these writers’ practice.
Acocella, Marcus, and Stevens fell into the job; they were, respectively, a Comp. Lit. PhD, a boorish partygoer who thought the Rolling Stone reviews section undercooked, and a foreign-news writer at Newsweek before undertaking criticism as a practice. So too with Ross, though he admitted to a fascination with both writing and music—and to writing about music, however amateurishly—from a young age (i.e., his college radio show). His experience mirrors my own: I was a punk rock zine-maker who applied to a magazine journalism program when entering college, promptly switched, and tried my hand at all manner of majors before ending up with a BA in Urban Studies and, just a few years out of school, a job at a magazine.
My own thinking diverges from the panelists most with regard to the inevitable question about the function of negative criticism, and how they approach it. Marcus jumped in immediately, stating that “it keeps the critic alive” and is “tremendous fun”; Acocella and Stevens concurred, albeit without the zeal. All three, if I recall correctly, agreed that it was easier to write negative reviews than positive, which is the opposite of my experience. I dislike writing critical reviews, although I won't shy away from one if it is merited. I assume that the artist in question created his or her work in good faith, no matter how fatuous the end product, and therefore I take it as my duty to approach the task with equal seriousness, and to explain—even more clearly than in a positive review—precisely why I am of my given opinion. I often turn to colleagues and ask them to preview critical reviews by saying something like, “I’m about to get harsh on [name here]. Will you read this and make sure I’m on point?” I assume that the panelists take their negative reviews seriously, but was surprised by the candor with which they spoke of enjoying the effort. Another assertion that interested me: Several panelists suggested that they are less inclined to write negative reviews now than in their youths. Lesser offered a summary that I jotted down as “hatred draws on you, the critic; love draws on the subject.”
Miscellaneous points: Marcus dislikes Anthony Lane, and feels his cleverness takes too much (unwittingly obvious) work, is too crafted; Acocella writes in the darkened performance space by running the heel of her palm against the edge of the paper, albeit with mixed results; Marcus wrote a negative review of a Pauline Kael book and received a call from her in which she admitted, “My daughter agrees with you, but I don’t,” before hanging up; Ross admitted a truism rarely discussed: “It’s a very lonely business.”
Writers to whom the panelists look (or looked at one time) for inspiration: Arlene Croce, Edwin Denby, Edmund Wilson, William Empson, T.S. Eliot (“I had to fight that one off later”) (Acocella); Kael, Wilson, Manny Farber, D.H. Lawrence, Howard Hampton (Marcus); Andrew Porter, Kael, Wallace Stevens (“The apex of writing in the twentieth century”) (Ross); Baudelaire, Delacrois, Matisse, de Kooning, other poets and painters (Stevens).
UPDATE, 12:30PM: Jon Lackman of the ever-useful Art History Newsletter wrote to me and proved, well, ever-useful, by pointing out Acocella's essay "What's Good About Bad Reviews?" which was originally published in Dance Ink in 1992.