On the Firing of Owen Gleiberman from Entertainment Weekly

Matt Zoller Seitz mourns the loss and assesses the damage: What really depresses me about Owen’s firing isn’t just that a fine writer got axed from a magazine that he helped define. It’s that the journalism industry, if you can even call it that anymore, is unwilling or unable to support writers like Owen, or Lisa [Schwarzbaum], or… I was about to list other critics … Continue reading On the Firing of Owen Gleiberman from Entertainment Weekly

adminApril 3, 2014April 3, 2014Leave a comment

Classical Critics, Obits

Joseph Kerman

“Most music lovers are apt to know Mr. Kerman’s work primarily from his incendiary first book, Opera as Drama, published in 1956. Drawing on essays he had written in the late 1940s for the Hudson Review, the book proposed a simple yet radical view of opera: that it is the composer whose vision above all shapes the dramatic essence of a work. “Mr. Kerman elaborated … Continue reading Joseph Kerman

adminMarch 20, 2014Leave a comment

Creem, Lester, Obits

Lester & Philip

That night, after I interviewed Hoffman, I went back to my hotel room and had a dream about Lester, something that happens with some regularity. In every dream, he isn’t dead, but instead has been hiding out somewhere. Waiting. This time, I asked him where he had been. He told me Florida. “I’ve just been waiting for you to get it right,” he told me. … Continue reading Lester & Philip

adminFebruary 8, 2014June 11, 2014Leave a comment

Obits

Amiri Baraka

Amiri Baraka, Polarizing Poet and Playwright, Dies at 79. Margalit Fox, L.A. Times. His political awakening was soon manifest in his work. His first major book, “Blues People,” published in 1963, placed black music, from blues to free jazz, in a wider sociohistorical context. Writing in The New York Times Book Review, the folklorist Vance Randolph said, “The book is full of fascinating anecdotes, many … Continue reading Amiri Baraka

adminJanuary 9, 2014January 10, 20143 Comments

Movie Critics, Obits

Calmly Disagreeing: Stanley Kauffmann (1916-2013)

By Phil Dellio When film critic Stanley Kauffmann died a few weeks ago, Scott was in the midst of a series of posts devoted to rock critics who, at some point in their careers, expressed a declining interest in writing about music. Did Kauffmann ever experience something similar, I wondered? He began at The New Republic in 1957, and he was still at it when he … Continue reading Calmly Disagreeing: Stanley Kauffmann (1916-2013)

adminNovember 5, 2013November 5, 20131 Comment

Lou Reed, Obits

Reed Obits

Still coming across a lot of interesting stuff re: Lou Reed, but rather than continue to jam the site with separate Lou Reed posts, I’ll just gather all the interesting ones I can find in this post. (And I’ll ‘bump’ it via the comments box if more get added.) There’s just too many good ones I don’t want to lose track of. If you come … Continue reading Reed Obits

adminOctober 30, 2013October 30, 201310 Comments

Art & Photography, Obits

Arthur C. Danto

“If there was nothing visible in Warhol’s sculpture to distinguish it from an ordinary object, Mr. Danto wondered, what made it art? At a time when more and more artists were creating works lacking traditional artistic qualities, this was an urgent question. “Leaving aside that Warhol’s sculpture was made of silk-screened plywood, not cardboard, the defining feature of the sculptural ‘Brillo Box’ was, in Mr. … Continue reading Arthur C. Danto

adminOctober 29, 2013October 30, 2013Leave a comment

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