Style Is the Man
Dwight Macdonald shows us that only a great writer can be a great critic.
By CLIVE JAMES
"Macdonald could be so concerned with the toxic effect of a Norman Rockwell painting radiating from the cover of The Saturday Evening Post that he would start echoing Adorno’s ideas about capitalism creating taste. But Adorno was exactly wrong about, say, popular music. A hit song has never been imposed on the people. The people choose, and record-industry executives knock themselves out guessing where taste will go next.
A supreme author of critically gifted prose, Macdonald at his dazzling best was just as open: anything produced by anyone, he would examine for its true quality. That’s what a cultural critic must do, and there are no shortcuts through theory. But deep down he knew that, or he would never have bothered to coin a phrase. Back again because they never really went away, Dwight Macdonald’s essays are a reminder that while very little critical prose is poetic, great critical prose always is: you want to say it aloud, because it fills the mouth as it fills the mind."
A supreme author of critically gifted prose, Macdonald at his dazzling best was just as open: anything produced by anyone, he would examine for its true quality. That’s what a cultural critic must do, and there are no shortcuts through theory. But deep down he knew that, or he would never have bothered to coin a phrase. Back again because they never really went away, Dwight Macdonald’s essays are a reminder that while very little critical prose is poetic, great critical prose always is: you want to say it aloud, because it fills the mouth as it fills the mind."
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