ebook mass review

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A career-spanning collection of critical essays and cultural journalism from one of the most acute, entertaining, and sometimes acerbic (but in a good way) critics of our time

From his early-seventies dispatches as a fledgling critic for The Village Voice on rock ’n’ roll, comedy, movies, and television to the literary criticism of the eighties and nineties that made him both feared and famous to his must-read reports on the cultural weather for Vanity Fair, James Wolcott has had a career as a freelance critic and a literary  intellectual nearly unique in our time. This collection features the best of Wolcott in whatever guise—connoisseur, intrepid reporter, memoirist, and necessary naysayer—he has chosen to take on.
     Included in this collection is “O.K. Corral Revisited,” a fresh take on the famed Norman Mailer–Gore Vidal dustup on The Dick Cavett Show that launched Wolcott from his Maryland college to New York City (via bus) to begin his brilliant career. His prescient review of Patti Smith’s legendary first gig at CBGB leads off a suite of eyewitness and insider accounts of the rise of punk rock, while another set of pieces considers the vast cultural influence of the enigmatic Johnny Carson and the scramble of his late-night successors to inherit the “swivel throne.” There are warm tributes to such diverse figures as Michael Mann, Sam Peckinpah, Lester Bangs, and Philip Larkin and masterly  summings-up of the departed giants of American literature—John Updike, William Styron, John Cheever, and Mailer and Vidal. Included as well are some legendary takedowns that have entered into the literary lore of our time.
     Critical Mass is a treasure trove of sparkling, spiky prose and a fascinating portrait of our lives and cultural times over the past decades. In an age where a great deal of back scratching and softball pitching pass for criticism, James Wolcott’s fearless essays and reviews offer a bracing taste of the real critical thing.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00CGI3E02
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Anchor (October 15, 2013)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 15, 2013
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 4360 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 514 pages
Reviewer: The Shadow
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Forty years of American Cultural History.
Review: James Wolcott has heard so many comedians, read so man books, seen so many movies, and listened to so many musicians that Critical Mass is more than a collection of sparkling critical essays. It is a forty year American cultural history. Because of the current emphasis on math and science education (with a subsequent devaluation of the liberal arts?); a veritable electronic wall of social media; and of course, their youth, many young people have never heard of, for example, Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, or of the controversies they were involved in. Not that it's tragic; it's just that there is more to recent history than war and politics. And Henry Ford notwithstanding, history is not bunk. Critical Mass also provides the older generation--who you talking about, sonny?--the opportunity to re-encounter movies, comedians, music, TV shows, and books, in the form of dazzlingly witty and telling analyses. Other have noted how well Wolcott writes, so I won't go on and on about it. (No more than I already have.) Many readers of the New Yorker will be fascinated to read about its "elusive, yet "legendary" thirty-five year editor William Shawn, who besides publishing "some of the most far-reaching and deep-rippling journalistic prose of the post war era," persuaded Harold Ross, the editor-in-chief before him, "to devote an entire issue to John Hershey's Hiroshima." He had an interesting sex life as well. *** "You concupiscent browser!" "Oh, please." *** Dramatic encounters between talented people with big egos occur throughout the book, amusing, sad, or shocking, as the case may be. Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley, for example, "blew their fuses" while live on TV. "When Vidal called Buckley a `crypto-Nazi' (he meant to say crypto-fascist but words for once failed him), Buckley responded: `Now, listen, you queer! Stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I'll sock you in your goddamn face and you'll stay plastered.'" Steve McQueen tries to hit Sam Peckinpah with a bottle of champagne; Charlton Heston tries to "shish-kebab" Peckinpah with a saber; and of course, Norman Mailer was always getting into scrapes, verbal and physical. *** "My dear sir, this is voyeurism, isn't it?" "Go away." *** Although I enjoyed discussions of familiar artists more than of the unfamiliar, each of the seventy-five essays kept my interest. They were not only well written--oops, I said it again--they were (forgive me) educational. Wolcott places the art or artists in their times: Film noir grew out of German expressionism (low-key black and white films) and hardboiled-detective novels. The chaste Doris Day/Rock Hudson movies lost their glitter with the onset of the sexual revolution. The lone anti-hero vigilante movies (Billy Jack, Dirty Harry, Walking Tall) proliferated during the seventies, a period Wolcott characterizes as "riddled with lost illusions", "seeped" in a sense of lawlessness, urban neighborhoods decaying. At random, here are some of Wolcott's subjects: Bob Dylan, Johnny Carson, Breakfast at Tiffany's, the Kennedy assassination, Guy Lombardo, Colette Blonigan, Kingsley Amis, Ellen Barkin, The Sex Pistols, Vanessa Redgrave, movie directors, oodles of authors (duh), In Cold Blood, Camile Paglia, late night TV comedy shows, The Rat Pack, The X-Files, Twilight Zone--ok, maybe not totally at random--Alfred Hitchcock, Janet Leigh, Jimmy Stewart, and from his own list of critics now deceased: Pauline Kael, Dwight McDonald, Mary McCarthy, Seymore Krim, Marvin Mudrick, Susan Sontag . . . . And, as I've said, more movies, books, music, TV shows, and their artists and creators than you can Twitter your tweets at. Critical Mass is so tightly packed with intelligent and thoughtful (and entertaining!) criticism, that this reviewer is inadequate to the task, but you need be no highfalutin intellectual--dad-gummit--to get a big kick out of it what Wolcott hath wrought. All right, from my perspective, there is one thing wrong with the book. I would have liked to see an index. It still gets a 5.

Reviewer: ilprofessore
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Son of Kael
Review: This is a remarkable collection of truly first-rate writing, particularly good when Wolcott deals with modern cinema. Wolcott was a protege of Pauline Kael and shares with her the same enthusiasm and infectious vernacular style. He is also very funny and incisive about the rabid egos that made up the New York literary scene once upon a time. Wolcott has since become a regular highly-paid contributor to Vanity Fair, and a bit of that magazine's gloss has touched his current writing. It may be more mature but slightly less passionate.Those who wish to remember him when he younger and a bit more dangerous will enjoy these early essays. Blame his current change to growing up. Wolcott at best has the gift of someone like Clive James to write simply and well without all the contrarian posing of Hitchens and annoying school boy showing off of so many of the best and brightest. We need more Americans like him.

Reviewer: Jack Bess
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Excellent critical essays, sharp insights
Review: I enjoyed this collection greatly and read it in a couple days. I've followed James Wolcott's writing since he reviewed TV for the Village Voice in the 1970s. In fact, I have manila file folder of yellowing clips of his Voice columns that I enjoy dipping into, when I can find it in my boxes of papers.This anthology collection introduced me to writing that I hadn't read before, particularly his film reviews for Texas Monthly and Vanity Fair. There are some very good appreciations of Brian DePalma, Sam Peckinpah, Alfred Hitchcock, and the rom-coms of Doris Day and Rock Hudson. Some of the writing I could do without. His coverage of early New York punk bands isn't especially interesting, and the pieces critiquing literary critics critiquing authors is too far removed from literature for me.Wolcott's comments are trenchant and humorous, and I wish he were writing more these days. We could use his eagle eye on the proliferation of TV series, cable news shows (his book "Attack Poodles" really needs a followup), and podcasts. With the rise of Trump an the woke movement, there has been such a realignment of political opinion and popular culture since the period when these essays were written, and I wish there were more writers like Wolcott turning their penetrating gaze on the contemporary era. So many writers now fall neatly into political camps with their predictable platitudes. Wolcott does write a column for a subscription website called Air Mail, which is a Vanity Fair-type publication. Tempting but I'm hesitant to subscribe to another site only to follow one writer.I would liked more of his Voice TV writing and his book reviews for The New Republic in "Critical Mass." But those omissions leave the way clear for a second Wolcott collection, and it hope it happens!

Reviewer: Mark Mosca
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Laser Vision, Rapier Pen, But LessThan Worthy Targets
Review: Woollcott writes brilliantly, originally and I dare you to find a single cliche. The problem: a significant part of the collection is focused on "media studies"' and the media content under his glass is too often out dated - the late 70's and the 80's are given far too much space in this many- hundred page book. This means admittedly skilled and funny deconstructions of Dino and the Rat Pack, Dick Cavett, and what Marianne Moore said about Lillian Hellman on Carson one night. OK if that's your aging meat, but . . . The latter part of the book, on literary subjects of continuing relevance, are of much greater current interest. So, not a bad book at all to choose from, but it could have been edited down to more current and relevant topics.

Reviewer: JF7588
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: no problems with delivery but not the most thrilling or sustained collection