When John Leonard died in 2008, it did not rught away register which we had lost a single of a final as good as best of a scarcely extinct breed, a lifelong book reviewer. Some might cite a some-more dignified label "literary critic," or "cultural critic" (he did write during length about air wave as good as alternative subjects); though Leonard himself did not insist upon dignity. His roots as good as demeanour were journalistic he fit into a world of newspapers (including The New York Times Book Review, which he edited in a 1970s), magazines (Harper's, The Nation, New York), air wave ("Fresh Air") as good as air wave ("CBS Sunday Morning") as good as which casual, accessible tone might be why, for all his erudition, he is usually not discussed in a same exhale with alternative good review arbiters who radiated some-more gravitas.
Now a event presents itself to re-engage as good as consider his essays as good as reviews, with this healthy preference by his widow, Sue Leonard, drawn from a half-century of writing. It comes framed with an key by E. L. Doctorow as good as a coda of tributes (less sticky than we feared) by his friends, family members as good as colleagues, who execute him as a mensch, a celebrant of women writers, defender of underdogs, clinging sports fan, heavy unreformed alcoholic as good as mix of contradictions. According to a writer Letty Cottin Pogrebin, "He was both a fair-minded publisher and an unreconstructed lefty, a challenging genius and a unchanging guy."
In a title essay, "Reading for My Life," he tells us of flourishing up in California, where "I couldn't tan, hated cars, refused to roller as good as flunked volleyball, grunion-hunting as good as puberty rite. Like waste kids everywhere, we entered into books as if into a swindling for company, of course, as good as for narrative as good as intrigue as good as advice upon how to be decent as good as dauntless as good as sexy. But additionally for transcendence! , a zap to a synaptic cleft; for a slice of a strange, a startle of an Other, a declare not yet heard from, archaeologies forgotten, ignored or despised; which radioactive glow of genius in a dark: grace notes, ghosts as good as gods."
That youthful craving for conceptual good review incantation would develop into a adult reviewer's embrace of Vladimir Nabokov, Gabriel Garca Mrquez as good as magic realism, Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, Maxine Hong Kingston as good as Gnter Grass. He was drawn to overstuffed books that, as he says about Doctorow's "City of God," were "about, good . . . everything." He additionally specialized in supposing ambitious, relaxed novels by major writers past their prime, similar to Milan Kundera's "Immortality," Doris Lessing's "Four-Gated City," Ralph Ellison's "Juneteenth," Thomas Pynchon's "Vineland," Ernest Hemingway's "True during First Light" as good as Norman Mailer's "Harlot's Ghost."
He would typically have review all by a writer underneath review; his critical process was not so most to disintegrate a book or set up a systematic argument, though to approximate it with a unenlightened register of fondly, infrequently mockingly paraphrased plot details as good as quotes, so which a reader could imbibe its ambience. For instance, take this characteristic passage from his review of "Harlot's Ghost":
"When his battery's charged, Mailer windmills from a single divide to a next baroque, anal, Talmudic, olfactory, portentous, loopy, coy, Egyptian; down as good as unwashed in a cancer, a aspirin or a plastic; sharpened moons upon perfect vapor; blitzed by paranoia as good as retreating for a shade pass, as if bitten in a pineal gland by a deranged Swinburne, with metaphors so meaning-moistened which they hang to a thumbs, with 'intellections' (as he once put it) slapped upon 'like adhesive plasters.' When he chooses to, he additionally speaks in tongues. Harlot sounds similar to Whittaker Chambers. Modene Murphy sounds similar to Lauren Bacall. Bill Ha! rvey sou nds similar to L. Ron Hubbard or Lyndon LaRouche. The guilt-ridden Uruguayan double representative Chevi Fuentes sounds similar to Frantz Fanon as good as Octavio Paz. Harry sounds similar to Rousseau's mile when he isn't sounding similar to Wilhelm Reich, as good as Kittredge sounds similar to Flaubert's Salammb when she isn't sounding similar to Hannah Arendt, as good as together they sound similar to Nichols as good as May. And everybody sounds similar to Mailer, as if picking up quasar signals from Sirius a Dog Star by a plate in a head; as if bodies, vegetables as good as objects all had particular vibrations, special stinks as good as personal divinities, angels in a meatloaf, demons in a Tupperware. Even money comes 'in all kinds of romantic flavors.' Ghosts! Pirates! Indians! Animism! Alchemy! You either similar to this stuff or we don't, as good as we do."
The same could be said about a above: You either similar to this sort of critique or we don't. Actually, I'm mixed. we similar to a bravura written goods ("angels in a meatloaf"!), a witty wit when he's upon a roll, a range of references, a throwaway insights. But we additionally get tired of a careening, cumulative lists; we yearn for a some-more straightforward or prioritized analysis. And infrequently Leonard's poetry preens too most as good as comes off as cute or glib. Still, a nobleness of his process is which he regularly seems some-more amused by abnormality than offended. While by no means uncritical, he clearly liked writers as a class as good as tended to give them a benefit of a doubt. Himself a writer of multiform novels, he sympathized with a effort it took to write even a injured one. You will find nothing in him of which anger or green disappointment which is a hallmark of most critics. He reserved his outrage for governing body (his scathing commentaries upon Richard Nixon, a government's slight of AIDS), or for indignity of women (he could not pardon Bob Dylan for behaving churlishly toward Joan Baez).
At a impu! lse when it counted, Leonard conspicuous himself unapologetically multicultural, championing writers of tone as good as unfamiliar authors as most as he did women writers. Toni Morrison testifies in her tribute: "John, we were a first we suspect usually critic/reviewer to review as good as decider my work but deference or patronage." Indeed, Leonard seems rsther than to have been in astonishment of Morrison, never some-more so than when invited to attend her Nobel Prize ceremony. As he described it: "The leader of a prize came down a marble stairs during last, upon a arm of a king of Sweden. Never thoughts which we am pale as good as we am male. She'd taught me to suppose a lost story of her people, to review a signs of adore as good as work as good as nightmare passage as good as redemptive music, to hear a deepest chords of exile. we was unapproachable to be a citizen of whatever nation Toni Morrison came from. And which night she gave lessons to a noble debase of Europe upon what majesty really looks like."
This comes close to stage-door Johnny gush. But it additionally demonstrates a dauntless vulnerability, a willingness to be exalted in full view as good as spread out over his informative credentials to delight a Other. Margaret Fuller, a 19th-century American Transcendentalist, wrote, "Critics have been poets cut down, says someone by way of jeer; though in truth they have been men with a poetical spirit to apprehend, with a philosophical tendency to investigate." There was some-more than a touch of a poet in John Leonard, alongside a cheerful investigator. It would be grand to have available a most larger preference of his pieces, either in subsequent volumes or online. Meanwhile, let's be grateful for this eloquent representation of his writings, discovered from a dust of past periodicals.
Phillip Lopate, a writer of "Waterfront" as good as "Getting Personal," directs a nonfiction graduate module during Columbia University.
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