Bill Marx
The questions at stake are good ones and not asked very often in contemporary plays: why do some win and others lose in America? And what are the responsibilities of the haves and the have-nots?
In its program, the A.R.T. links today’s 1% with the French aristocracy, a stab at relevance that does both the snobby thugs of the French Revolution and the super well-off of today a disservice. Say what you will about the 1%, but they aren’t stupid.
“The Great American Railroad War” reminds us of an inspired journalistic reaction to the crimes of an earlier age of robber baron.
The plans to serve the jazz community that WGBH offered to JazzBoston during the meeting, from an internet jazz station to making Eric Jackson more visible on the station’s talk shows, are only part and parcel of the strategic dithering, a cover for lowering standards and doing little.
Why does Laura Miller feel, given her belief that negative reviews are often useless, that she has to kick criticism while it is down? Why argue against the efforts of a small number of delusional reviewers in major publications who continue to speak fruitless negativity to the indifferent masses?
“New York Times” Book Critic Dwight Garner makes salient points about the need for incisive criticism, claiming that too much happy talk denies common sense and undercuts credibility. But the ‘gonzo’ masterwork “Fire the Bastards!” hammers the point home much more memorably.
Helen Constantine’s new translation of Balzac’s “The Wild Ass’s Skin” serves this wonderful and weird book well. It is one of the great, black comic fables in world literature, a dazzlingly demented exploration of a society’s lack of imagination.
Book Commentary/Review: Imagine There Are No Negative Reviews — It’s Not So Easy If You Try
Who has taken criticism out of the hands of the “true critics”? Is someone making me read rancid Amazon reader reviews? Where do we look for the “true critics”?
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