Against the Grain: The New Criterion on Art and Intellect at the End of the 20th Century [Hardcover]

Hilton Kramer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 1995

An abundant selection of incisive writings from The New Criterion, the magazine that has emerged as the foremost voice of critical dissent in the culture wars. No one who reads this volume can be in any doubt what the cultural war in the U.S. is all about, or who ought to win it. —Paul Johnson, Wall Street Journal

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

It would be a shame if the audience for this collection were confined to New Criterion subscribers. Broadminded readers will find an illuminating perspective in many of the 44 pieces culled from the magazine's past half-dozen years. Not everyone will, or should, like everything in this collection: e.g., Donald Lyon's review of "Angels in America" is likely to anger some; Maurice Cowling's consideration of Raymond Williams will be of limited interest to others. In pieces grouped into loose headings like "The Arts Today" or "The Academy in the Age of Political Correctness," David Fromkin, John Gross, Donald Kagan, John Simon, Joseph Epstein, New Criterion editors Kimball and Kramer, late publisher Samuel Lipman and others write about the fate of the museum; the Sobol Report on New York state's history and social-studies curricula; T.E. Lawrence; John Corigliano's 1991 opera The Ghosts of Versailles; teaching Henry James; and much more. In these and broader essays, they particularly rail against the pursuit of philosophy without truth; against great lives deprived of their greatness; against visual art abstracted from the object, demonstrating that what is left is often meaningless rhetoric. Occasionally, writers indulge in a bit of bombast themselves (sometimes to undeniably funny effect as in Kimball's discussion of Michel Foucault's fame in American universities "where hermetic arguments about sex and power are pursued with risible fecklessness by the hirsute and untidy"), but even when one disagrees with their positions, one still has to admire the grace and erudition with which they are presented.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This second collection of essays (1989-94), culled from the pages of the New Criterion (after The New Criterion Reader: The First Five Years, Free Pr., 1987), covers a wide range of topics touching on contemporary culture, specifically, higher education and the arts. A number of the selections seem nothing more than acerbic darts against the cultural (read "leftist") establishment. Many of the noted contributors, however (including Brad Leithauser, Joseph Epstein, Martin Greenberg, David Frum, and Hilton Kramer), use their forum for fair and justified critiques of the cultural hegemony perpetrated upon the arts and the academy in recent years. Offering an intellectually stimulating counterpoint to the politically charged rhetoric often found in the cultural wars, these essays, which envision a return to the conservatism of Thomas Carlyle in matters of art and education, emphasize aesthetics and continuity rather than transient political necessity. Highly recommended for public and academic collections, particularly those that do not subscribe to the New Criterion.?Martin R. Kalfatovic, Smithsonian Institution Libs., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 477 pages
• Publisher: Ivan R Dee (February 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 156663069X
• ISBN-13: 978-1566630696
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 5.9 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,373,168 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Partisan Criticism=Good Criticism, June 16, 2006

By 

L. Sapp "LKS" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Against the Grain: The New Criterion on Art and Intellect at the End of the Twentieth Century (Paperback)

Although I tend to disagree with a lot that's in here the criticism is nevertheless quite good. If you enjoy art & cultural criticism then this is a wonderful compilation to dig into.