Book Review ‘The Critical Temper’: The Permanent War for Culture

The late and much-feared New York Times art critic Hilton Kramer was once seated next to Woody Allen at a dinner. Allen asked whether Kramer ever felt embarrassed when he encountered in social settings artists whose work he had disparaged in print. No, said Kramer. Why should he be embarrassed? They made the bad art. He merely described it. It occurred to the critic after the party had concluded that he had once published an adverse review of an Allen movie, The Front.

Forty years ago, Kramer founded The New Criterion, which was taken over in his declining years by Roger Kimball, who supplies the anecdote above in a marvelous chrestomathy, The Critical Temper: Interventions from The New Criterion at 40, a volume that brings together some of the funniest, most cutting, most perceptive, and most appreciative pieces published in that august, sometimes Augustan, journal over the past decade. Kramer and Kimball’s monthly magazine of arts, culture, and media has far outlasted its honored ancestor The Criterion, T. S. Eliot’s publication, which dissolved on the eve of World War II after 17 years of contrarian and conservative rebuke to its era’s prevailing cultural dogmas.

About the Author

Kyle Smith

Kyle Smith is the film critic for the Wall Street Journal.

Featured Tags

Manage following

Conservatism

The late and much-feared New York Times art critic Hilton Kramer was once seated next to Woody Allen at a dinner. Allen asked whether Kramer ever felt embarrassed when he encountered in social settings artists whose work he had disparaged in print. No, said Kramer. Why should he be embarrassed? They made the bad art. He merely described it. It occurred to the critic after the party had concluded that he had once published an adverse review of an Allen movie, The Front.

Forty years ago, Kramer founded The New Criterion, which was taken over in his declining years by Roger Kimball, who supplies the anecdote above in a marvelous chrestomathy, The Critical Temper: Interventions from The New Criterion at 40, a volume that brings together some of the funniest, most cutting, most perceptive, and most appreciative pieces published in that august, sometimes Augustan, journal over the past decade. Kramer and Kimball’s monthly magazine of arts, culture, and media has far outlasted its honored ancestor The Criterion, T. S. Eliot’s publication, which dissolved on the eve of World War II after 17 years of contrarian and conservative rebuke to its era’s prevailing cultural dogmas.