Books, Arts & Manners: Kramer Versus

The New Criterion Reader: The First Five Years, edited by Hilton Kramer (Free Press, 429 pp., $24.95)

When, in 1982, Hilton Kramer left his position as chief art critic for the New York Times, many of his friends suggested that where he should go was to the nearest psychiatrist. After all, in leaving the Times, Kramer was abandoning a post of considerable prestige and leverage. Still, leave it he did. He was determined to start a new monthly, The New Criterion. The reason? “ ‘The real reason for instituting [the] new publication is the disgusting and deleterious doctrines with which the most popular of our Reviews disgraces its pages,’ ” the editors put it in their first issue, quoting Sir Walter Scott. They went on, “The dishonesties and hypocrisies and disfiguring ideologies that nowadays afflict the criticism of the arts are deeply rooted in both our commercial and our academic culture. … It is therefore all the more urgent that a dissenting critical voice be heard, and it is for the purpose of providing such a voice that The New Criterion has been created.”

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David Lipsky

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The New Criterion Reader: The First Five Years, edited by Hilton Kramer (Free Press, 429 pp., $24.95)

When, in 1982, Hilton Kramer left his position as chief art critic for the New York Times, many of his friends suggested that where he should go was to the nearest psychiatrist. After all, in leaving the Times, Kramer was abandoning a post of considerable prestige and leverage. Still, leave it he did. He was determined to start a new monthly, The New Criterion. The reason? “ ‘The real reason for instituting [the] new publication is the disgusting and deleterious doctrines with which the most popular of our Reviews disgraces its pages,’ ” the editors put it in their first issue, quoting Sir Walter Scott. They went on, “The dishonesties and hypocrisies and disfiguring ideologies that nowadays afflict the criticism of the arts are deeply rooted in both our commercial and our academic culture. … It is therefore all the more urgent that a dissenting critical voice be heard, and it is for the purpose of providing such a voice that The New Criterion has been created.”