A Terry Teachout Reader

Rating:
Summary: Homemade Intellectual
Review: Critics of all kinds would do well to heed the advice of Edmund Burke that "men of intemperate minds cannot be free." Radio, TV, and the internet bombard us daily with intemperateness born not from the difficult search for truth but from the desire to get attention, to provoke, or to score points.

Critics with standards face the equally discouraging, leveling forces of a democratic culture. More than anyone, they are likely to be transformed into curmudgeons. Thus it is no surprise that Teachout has written a book about H. L. Mencken, curmudgeon number one, who despite a keen literary eye is often remembered less for what he said than for the biting way he said it.

But the good news is that Teachout, in his first collection of essays and reviews, is more temperate and more accessible than Mencken and many other critics past and present. He reminds me to some degree of Joseph Epstein: Both are Midwestern autodidacts who believe in critical standards and measured judgements, and who demonstrate them in a writing style that is conversational without becoming formless, mean, or vindictive. Teachout appears to have a broader range of critical interests than Epstein. He is less self-consciously literary, more willing to engage with popular culture, the scourge of Clement Greenberg and Dwight McDonald, whose definitions of "middlebrow culture" haunt these pages. He is less willing than either Greenberg or McDonald to herald the end of western civilization, least of all because of a hip-swinging truck driver from Tupelo. At the same time, he writes about opera, dance, and classical music - subjects it would be difficult to categorize as middlebrow - and he writes about them in a way which is comprehensible rather than condescending.

Teachout's subjects lean toward distinctly American voices: Willa Cather, Tom Wolfe, Chuck Jones, Bill Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Aaron Copland, and Whit Stillman. His judgements about Norman Mailer and Camille Paglia are dead on. I wish his fine essay on Alison Krauss had been included. I would also like to read his take on the music of Pat Metheny, a fellow Missourian whose music transcends its genre.

I enjoyed his personal essays as well, especially the elegy for Woody Herman in which Teachout reflects on his own youthful ambition and experience playing jazz bass. To the degree that something useful can be gleaned from these experiences, they are more than mere nostalgia. Like the rest of the essays here, they teach us something about art and criticism and the wisdom from which they spring.

Rating:
Summary: Homemade Intellectual
Review: If you are not already familiar with the work of the critic Terry Teachout, this fat, satisfying collection of his writing will turn you into a fan who keeps a lookout for his reviews (like me.) He started out as a musician but soon revealed a startling range of mastery of writing about theater, dance, literature and the movies. He is known as a conservative, although he strikes me as much more moderate in temperament than many of the more well-known red-hot leftists who write about the arts. And he's cosmopolitan enough for his writing to appear in the "New York Times" and "Washington Post" as well as "National Review" and "The New Criterion." In the introduction he declares what he has deciphered about the culture in the last 15 years: that strange time of "post-modernism" where no one believed that anything was real except the self, was ending in the 1990's even before the cataclysmic shock of 9/11. And that expired, unlamented "middle-brow" culture that existed before the 1960's may in fact point a way out of the morass.

Teachout has an informal conversational style that nevertheless displays his great learning (very lightly.) Unlike a lot of critics, particularly self-conscious post-modernists, he is a lot of fun to read. It appears Teachout owes much of his allegiance to the great Modernist tradition that produced jazz, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, and Willa Cather; and the popular culture of Ed Sullivan, Chuck Jones, Dawn Powell, Frank Sinatra and Tom Wolfe. (Wolfe could be considered Teachout's Godfather or grey eminence.)

Some of my favorite essays in this volume are: "Norman Mailer: Forgotten But Not Gone", a stinging take-down of Mailer's tattered reputation. "Stephen Sondheim's Unsettled Scores" in which Teachout proclaims "Sweeney Todd" the greatest American opera. "That Wascally Professor", his joyous analysis of the great old Warner Brother Looney Toons. "The New New Music", about the death of serialism, atonality, and the recovery of melody (and sanity) in classical music. "My Friend Nancy", his touching memoir of the too-soon deceased cabaret singer Nancy LaMott. "Tolstoy's Contraption", about how possibly the best writers today are not writing novels but making independent films (Whit Stillman, Darren Aronofsky, Kevin Smith, etc.) "Scoundrel Time", the definitive internment of the disgusting Lillian Hellman. "Seven Hundred Pretty Good Books", a nostalgic tribute to the fast-fading memory of the Book of the Month Club. Well, I could go on and on. Ther's also witty, insightful considerations of Camille Paglia, Tom Wolfe, John Steinbeck, Elvis, David Helfgott, John Sayles, Whittaker Chambers, 'The Sopranos"... This book is a feast, and if you are a fan of popular culture you can't afford to miss it.

Rating:
Summary: The End of Post-Modernism; and the Return of Mid-Cult?
Review: If you are not already familiar with the work of the critic Terry Teachout, this fat, satisfying collection of his writing will turn you into a fan who keeps a lookout for his reviews (like me.) He started out as a musician but soon revealed a startling range of mastery of writing about theater, dance, literature and the movies. He is known as a conservative, although he strikes me as much more moderate in temperament than many of the more well-known red-hot leftists who write about the arts. And he's cosmopolitan enough for his writing to appear in the "New York Times" and "Washington Post" as well as "National Review" and "The New Criterion." In the introduction he declares what he has deciphered about the culture in the last 15 years: that strange time of "post-modernism" where no one believed that anything was real except the self, was ending in the 1990's even before the cataclysmic shock of 9/11. And that expired, unlamented "middle-brow" culture that existed before the 1960's may in fact point a way out of the morass.

Teachout has an informal conversational style that nevertheless displays his great learning (very lightly.) Unlike a lot of critics, particularly self-conscious post-modernists, he is a lot of fun to read. It appears Teachout owes much of his allegiance to the great Modernist tradition that produced jazz, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, and Willa Cather; and the popular culture of Ed Sullivan, Chuck Jones, Dawn Powell, Frank Sinatra and Tom Wolfe. (Wolfe could be considered Teachout's Godfather or grey eminence.)

Some of my favorite essays in this volume are: "Norman Mailer: Forgotten But Not Gone", a stinging take-down of Mailer's tattered reputation. "Stephen Sondheim's Unsettled Scores" in which Teachout proclaims "Sweeney Todd" the greatest American opera. "That Wascally Professor", his joyous analysis of the great old Warner Brother Looney Toons. "The New New Music", about the death of serialism, atonality, and the recovery of melody (and sanity) in classical music. "My Friend Nancy", his touching memoir of the too-soon deceased cabaret singer Nancy LaMott. "Tolstoy's Contraption", about how possibly the best writers today are not writing novels but making independent films (Whit Stillman, Darren Aronofsky, Kevin Smith, etc.) "Scoundrel Time", the definitive internment of the disgusting Lillian Hellman. "Seven Hundred Pretty Good Books", a nostalgic tribute to the fast-fading memory of the Book of the Month Club. Well, I could go on and on. Ther's also witty, insightful considerations of Camille Paglia, Tom Wolfe, John Steinbeck, Elvis, David Helfgott, John Sayles, Whittaker Chambers, 'The Sopranos"... This book is a feast, and if you are a fan of popular culture you can't afford to miss it.

Rating:
Summary: Passionately Argued, Highly Reasoned Criticism
Review: This is criticism at its best, passionate, reasoned, engaged and engaging, grounded in strong values and beliefs. In the introduction to this volume, Terry Teachout notes that his only formal artistic training is in music. When he discusses other art forms, he says it as a "more or less will-informed amateur, not a practitioner." Still, the breadth and depth of his criticism is impressive: Teachout's interests include music, dance, literature, theatre. film, television and the visual arts. Teachout's insights help the reader to gain new dimensions of understanding and appreciation for familiar works; and he communicates his enthusiasm for the unfamiliar in a manner that makes the reader want to seek out the works he's celebrating.

It's also a pleasure to read someone who leaves no doubt where their opinions lie. In his piece on mentally ill pianist David Helfgott, he doesn't shrink from describing what he sees as Helfgott's exploitation by his wife and others as a "sin." His look at Norman Mailer ("Forgotten But Not Gone") is as devastating an assessment of the celebrity author as was H.L. Mencken's famous obituary for William Jennings Bryan after the three-time presidential candidate dropped dead immediately following the Scopes trial. Teachout, by the way, is author of an excellent biography of Mencken. It's clear that he's learned from, and is following in the footsteps of, the best.--William C. Hall