TWO WEEKS AGO I posted a review of a biography of American abstract expressionist Barnett Newman that included a review of his work by NY Times critic John Canaday. It’s worth reproducing his lede:
Give a man enough rope, they say, and he'll hang himself. The adage received double proof this week at the Guggenheim Museum. That body hanging from the rafters belongs to the painter Barnett Newman, and the companion object swinging alongside is Lawrence Alloway, the museum's curator, who wrote the catalogue for Mr. Newman's exhibition of 14 paintings called "The Stations of the Cross."
 |
| Sir James Galway |
There’s a shooting-range aspect to a certain kind of review. Although it’s not, by my casual reading, as prevalent in the major periodicals, it has flourished – and then some! – in the many online platforms afforded to anyone who can use a keyboard and the internet. This blog is one of them, but I’m here to appraise Canaday and his ilk, not to bury them. (That’s a standard critic’s fillip: Quietly inserting a paraphrase from Shakespeare or other literary model. It flies past those who don’t recognize it; those who do feel as if they’re part of a rarefied group. The more obscure the quote, the more rarefied the group. References to well-known pop-culture sources, however, are merely pandering.)
When I was growing up, I felt myself an outcast from society at the outset. Knowing I’d never find the acceptance I craved, I decided to become a critic. I would aim my bastinados at the feet of those who were living in comfort, making money, getting laid. I would assert my worth at the expense of those whom I’d criticize, writers and performers who were doing what I wished to do and probably doing it better.
It took me many years to land that seat; meanwhile, I absorbed the writings of John Simon, Rex Reed, Pauline Kael, even going back to G.B. Shaw, who could be just as snotty as the aforementioned when he wrote about music. And, speaking of music, there was none as arch and destructive as Virgil Thomson while, ironically, the ordinarily arch and destructive H.L. Mencken proved to be a witty and insightful.
Eventually I had to acknowledge that my novel wasn’t going to be finished any time soon and that The New Yorker wasn’t about to print any of the stories I submitted. (The best I ever did in that realm was to receive a personalized rejection from Playboy taking issue with the way I ended the piece, although leaving the door closed to a revised resubmission.)
I talked my way into writing press releases for a local presenting house. The PR director there urged me to pursue work as a reviewer, so I wrote and submitted some samples to the local periodicals. I concentrated on classical music, figuring there’d be little competition. I was right. My forty-year reviewing career began.
Began with reviews of classical-music concerts, of course, for the Schenectady Daily Gazette, awarding me the glorious sum of twenty bucks per review. Thus was in 1983, but even then that fee was an insult. “But you’re getting free tickets,” went the rationale, with the added observation that this was meant to be something a fully employed schoolteacher would do in the evenings. “This is my only job,” I argued, soon getting that fee bumped to forty.
But I also was soon hired by Metroland, an Albany-based weekly that really was intended to point its youthful readers to area rock concerts. Adding classical-music reviews was intended as a prestige move. I thought it was hilarious. It appealed to my sense of futility, without which no artist can sanely function.
Here’s where the Canaday ilk come in. Once settled into that critic’s seat, I tasted the power. My reviews would be read not only by those involved in a particular event, but also by the many more who hadn’t been there and could vicariously experience the experience through my words. I added theater reviews to my agenda (competition was sparse and I tended to hand in stories quickly and with little need of editing), and then expanded from that into restaurant reviews.
I’d been in the business, as both waiter and then chef in some white-linen joints downstate, so I thought myself better qualified than the area’s other food writers, all of whom were arts editors self-awarded the job. This meant I was supposed to be more understanding, even merciful.
All of which fell away in 1987 when I visited a short-lived Albany eatery that showcased traditional fast food items in a more healthy format. My full review is here, but don’t trouble yourself. I’ll touch on the high points.
Early in the piece, I noted, “D’Lites tries to dignify road food by surrounding it with oak and brass, but you might just as well try to make a Yuppie by placing a farmer in a Volvo.” (The passage of time has made this ironic, as I now live on a farm and drive a Volvo. But I was a Yuppie long before those things fell into place.) Going further, I complained,
D’Lites takes this pettifoggery further by suggesting that the damn things can be served in “Lite” form (like the atrocious beer styling) with salubrious results – about as effective as only smoking half of your cigarette.
And, “It’s ‘lite’ this and ‘lite’ that on the menu, enough to take the fite out of any orthographist.” There’s the kind of cleverness I know I’m better off avoiding, as it distracts too much from the mission of the review. But it remains hard to resist, as in my closing paragraph:
We figured we could end this on a good note with a serving each of “creamy natural soft-serve frozen yogurt,” but nobody knew how to work the frozen yogurt machine. Maybe we just didn’t come at the rite time.
Expanding my review reach into opera, I met the indulgence temptation again. One night, after watching a lousy production of “Pirates of Penzance,” my inner Virgil Thomson kicked in. As I note in the intro to this review, which you’ll find here, I’m not proud of it and offer it only as an example of what you might be seduced into writing when you crave that “hey, look at me!” moment, showing off how smart and witty you are. What pulled me up short, after this piece was published, was a call from a friend to tell me how hilarious he thought it was. A quiet voice of sanity said to me from within, “That’s not the purpose a review is supposed to serve. You’re just trying to be John Simon.”
A horrible goal. Reviewing somebody’s work and making it all about yourself is a terrible indulgence. You have this bully pulpit, unchallenged except, perhaps, by a later letter to the editor remanded to the back pages.
Look at this piece. It begins with a too-typical look-at-me moment. “I saw Rudy Vallee in concert.” The only reason for including it was to show off my esoteric experience, much as John Canaday name-checks Mike Nichols and Elaine May in his Barnett Newman review. Then there’s this:
The action was set in the year 2025, “somewhere along the Milky Way.” Apparently this was a move to save on the expense of costumes and setting, with the result that it looked as if a high school production of “Li’l Abner” wandered onto the set of “You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown.”
I’m not sure exactly what that’s supposed to mean, although dropping in the names of other shows at least suggested that I’d seen other stuff (but at that point, I’d seen neither). I’m ashamed to confess that I still find the paragraph funny, but I also believe it was too mean in the context of the piece. And that “road company of ‘Barbarella’ crack” is there only to prove how caustically funny I could be.
I regretted that review. I later worked with the company’s director, to whom I apologized, even as he admitted that it was a poor production. I tried to mend my ways. And I gained another important insight one evening as I attended a concert by flutist James Galway and the orchestra he was touring with. I haven’t blog-posted the review, but if I can find it, I’ll post it next week.
The 2700-seat theater was packed, and I felt angry. It’s only because Galway has been on Johnny Carson, I muttered to myself. Why else would all these people come to hear Baroque-era flute concertos. And as I sat through a delightful concert, I mentally constructed savage sentences remanding the sheeplike people around me to a snob’s perdition. And then the angel on my should (an infrequent visitor) reminded me that 2700 people had turned out in Schenectady, to witness a classical-music concert by a world-class artist. So what if he tootled “Flight of the Bumblebee” on network TV? Wasn’t that a vital marketing tool? Wouldn’t these people – or at least the review-readers among them – find reinforcement in a properly laudatory review and perhaps feel compelled to spend money on more such events?
And that’s the crux of a critic’s job. You’re a member of a community. Even in New York City. You’re a vital part of the artistic milieu that extends from writers and performers and musicians and audience to yourself, sitting on the aisle in a very prime seat, theoretically so-placed because you offer an articulate knowledge of the art form on display and can interpret it in a manner that reinforces the audience’s experience and contextualize it to the community in which it’s presented. You’re there to help. Sure, there will be many moments when constructive criticism will be needed and helpful. And there will be moments when, like John Canaday reviewing Barnett Newman’s compelling but austere work, you need to have the humility to step aside and let somebody more capable than you clamber into that critic’s seat.
No comments:
Post a Comment