Customer Reviews

A Jacques Barzun Reader: Selections from His Works (Perennial Classics)

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Like too many others, my journey to becoming a Barzun addict was a slow, steady build. Yes, it was through first reading 'From Dawn to Decadence' that I came to admire his electrifying prose and sparkling wit. And his books on culture and education...my gosh, man!

So there I was in the neighborhood bookstore and I see a brand spankin' new Barzun reader. Since I read in tangents, the format seemed a bit scattered but I bought it, knowing that I would always, no matter what tangent I was on, find something of interest in this volume.

I couldn't have been more right!! I've had the book for, maybe, nine months now and I'm STILL finding, savoring and rereading these excerpts. So many topics covered- from baseball to Berlioz, crime-fiction to higher education, race to romanticism. These days, whenever someone writes about so many subjects, there's always a suspicion that we, the readers, will find ourselves slighted- how can one person actually EXCEL in so many areas and still retain quality and grace. Barzun is a stunning example of someone who can and if you're anything like me (not reading all the way through, but reading each exerpt as it strikes your fancy), this book will rank on your 'most rewarding purchases' list

Michael Murray, editor of "A Jacques Barzun Reader," has compiled a beautifully varied collection of the great cultural historian's essays -- many of which even we hardcore Barzun admirers have never read & never thought we'd have the chance to read. For example, Barzun's provocative distinction between the "craft" of criticism & art in literature is a seldom-seen essay, & shed light on an aspect of Barzun's thinking that was unknown to me.

Is the book too small? I don't know -- perhaps any such compilation of Barzun's extraordinary & humane writing would be too small, too exclusive. These essays are (presumably) Murray's choices, & I have no quarrel with them per se. But where are other long-treasured & fascinating Barzun essays, such as "James the Melodramatist" or a thoughtful (& negative) critique he wrote decades ago on Eric Partridge's "Usage & Abusage"?

I begin to see that, in fact, a complete collection of Barzun's written work -- all seven or eight decades of it -- is called for. It would, of course, require numerous volumes. "A Jacques Barzun Reader" is an excellent start. I am happy to learn from the dust jacket that Michael Murray is writing a biography on Barzun.

A minor cavil with Murray's method: He chose not to footnote or otherwise indicate his alterations to Barzun's original text for a fairly sensible reason. However, I found myself wondering just which passages or what information was omitted from the reprint of various essays in the book.

This book may serve as an ancilla to Barzun's masterpiece From Dawn to Decadence, as a calmative for those upset by what they take to be Barzun's adverse criticism of subjects dear to them, and as a portable treasury of Barzun's writings - some of them never before published or hard to obtain. The first and third of these uses will be apparent to anyone who glances at the table of contents or samples some of the essays. The second use might be hinted at by quoting Barzun's comments on Complaint and Criticism from the selection "Science and Scientism," which Michael Murray's helpful bibliography tells us is taken from Barzun's 1964 book Science: The Glorious Entertainment:

"Criticism as I understand it differs entirely from attack or complaint. Its difference from complaint is especially important here, for I am persuaded that complaints against the machinations of culture today have become as poisonous as the things complained of. This is not surprising. Resentment and indignation are feelings dangerous to the possessor and to be sparingly used. They give comfort too cheaply; they rot judgment, and by encouraging passivity they come to require that evil continue for the sake of the grievance to be enjoyed.

"Criticism, on the contrary, aims at action. True, not all objects can be acted on at once, and many will not be reshaped according to desire; but thought is plastic and within our control, and thought is a form of action. To come to see, in the light of criticism, a situation as different from what it seemed to be, is to have accomplished an important act."

A Jacques Barzun Reader is a book for readers of Barzun, would-be readers of Barzun, and readers who have never liked Barzun. A treat for all these three kinds of readers are the few pages of verse at the end of the book. Readers ignorant of Barzun should start with a book of his on a subject they are interested in.

Since Mr. Murray, who is writing a biography of Barzun, no doubt worked with Barzun on the book, both his Introduction and the selections must have a certain authority for anyone interested in the inimitable JB.

5/9/2011: Mr. Murray has completed and published his biography of Barzun: Jacques Barzun: Portrait of a Mind

Barzun is one of the best thinkers of our time. It is great to have his thoughts on so many subjects assembled in this collection.

It is especially valuable since some of Barzun's most famous commentaries (for example, on baseball) are now out of print and hard to find. Buy this book, you will profit from having it on your bookshelf!

The breadth of subject matter, and the consistent intelligence with which it's handled, is just dizzying. You might not agree with a given position that Barzun stakes out in his galaxies of subjects, but he's always interesting, humane, thoughtful, and informed. Plus he's a lucid, vigorous, coherent writer of English prose -- you could use this book just as a style manual in learning to be a better writer!

Ideal for young people and students, who will find here a vast treasure-trove of necessary cultural reference. (So now you know who Berlioz was!) A place to begin building your humanities education, and your intellectual character, as it seems many of our colleges are no longer up to the task. It's one of those books that'll make you a better person. No fooling.

Great selection of subjects. Orifinal insights, well substantiated. Above all, beautifully phrased. Not one pompeous sentence and yet, elegance that is enviable. Any and all essays may be read and reread with renewed pleasure. Inherent are recommendations for further reading. In bed, during flight, waiting at the doctor's, spending an evening with a glass of wine. With Barzun you have company and time extremely well spent.

Jacques Barzun is sort of the social sciences' equivalent of Harold Bloom, albeit less personally and intellectually noxious. He is, however, the quintessential living `Dead White Male' scholar whose knowledge about his subject matter is very broad- he can write seemingly convincingly on opera, politics, baseball, Paris in the 1830s, and Raymond Chandler, but whose depth of wisdom about any one thing is paper-thin. His 2000 opus called From Dawn To Decadence was an ill wrought stereotypical `old man's lament', which unwittingly did more to show how wholly out of touch the man- born in 1907, was with modern life than bolster his argument that society was, of course, `in decline'. Of course, all of the arts nowadays- literature (poetry and prose), criticism, painting, music, film, television, theater, are in a collective slump. Call it the bane of PC. But, history shows it is just a matter of time before a rebound occurs. Culture is cyclical by nature, not an arrow in ascent nor a boulder in declension.

In 2002 HarperCollins released an omnibus of a few dozen of what they considered the best of Barzun's decades of essays, called A Jacques Barzun Reader, to cash in on the unexpected bestseller status the earlier book achieved. This was also done because, despite initially favorable reviews, many mainstream critics started rightfully taking Barzun to task for the reasons mentioned above. The over 600 page book has a few good moments of insight and prescience, but the truth is, the book only further strengthens the case that Barzun may know alot of historical facts, but has not a clue of how to put them in coherent and logical orders. In short, he doesn't know much, and doesn't know how to express it well. His whole academic and literary career is a testament to the power of connections and networking- the very ills he ironically, yet cluelessly, laments as aiding culture's descent.
The best essay in the book is from 2000, called The Word `Man', where Barzun starts off brilliantly and logically defending the specific (as in species) use of the word against PC revisionists who prefer desexualized terms like councilperson to councilman. Barzun argues the point as well as anyone could. Then the essay implodes midway, as the old man tries to be a `hepster', and parody the argument with an ill-advised bolster that claims teenagers are far more oppressed than women, and thus should be considered in such ontological and cultural revisionism. It does not work, and trashes the earlier brilliance of the piece, which is, in microcosm, all that is wrong with Barzun as a thinker and a writer- he simply does not have a clue when he is `on' nor `off'. Similarly, the essay How The Romantics Invented Shakespeare while historically correct, and skewering many of the points asserted by Shakespeare apologists like Harold Bloom and Helen Vendler, still goes on far too long, and gives no real insight into the push to canonize the Bard, only how it occurred. A similar problem of vacuity and over-length plagues The Permanence Of Oscar Wilde, which also bogs down in length and obscurantism. The opposite problem plagues his essay Lincoln The Literary Artist, which proffers the 16th President as a writer of stature, and fails. Yes, the Gettysburg Address and a handful of other speeches are well written, and contain `art', but are not in and of themselves art. There is any irony in that Barzun fails in his understanding of art's nature from both perspectives.

Yet, in a sense, these rhetorical and intellectual lapses are all that can be expected from books like this, where old men look back at their lives and inevitably see `the good old days' through the golden haze of senescence. Thus, even such ills as Nazism, Jim Crow, Vietnam, and religious intolerance, do not seem quite as nasty as they really were, and thus render most of his writings pointless, as he is lacking in insight, and out of touch, no matter how earnest in his preachments. His rigid bloviations make one want to bitchslap some sense into the man, but then, most old men are predictable in their opinions, and such books are only read for the wisdom that falls through the crannies of their egos, not for any grand wordplay. Unfortunately, Barzun lacks both- critical wisdom and the beauty of artistic craft. And, since art is far more grounded on beauty than truth, because beauty is more objective, enduring, and always pleasures, whereas truth is often subjective, facile, and more often pains, his often generic writing too often matches his failure as an objective historian, and that fact no amount of rhetoric can deny.