Cheap New Criterion Review
A monthly journal (10 issues annually) established almost 25 years ago, THE NEW CRITERION has covered the world of the cultured arts with a keenly critical eye, disposed towards high artistic standards and sound moral judgments. Delightfully un-PC, its critical stance remains unmitigatedly harsh towards the often flaccid and self-satisfied artistic endeavors of “post-modernity” and the sanctimonious aires of radicalized professors blighting the universities. Yet, for all of the (largely justified) editorial spleen, THE NEW CRITERION’s virtues are located in the variety of outstanding contributors. In the literary field alone, luminaries such Joseph Epstein, John Simon, Guy Davenport and Christopher Ricks have graced the pages of THE NEW CRITERION ( whose title alludes to, and takes up the mantle of, T.S. Eliot’s “CRITERION”, 1920-39 ).
There is an admirable aesthetic evident in THE NEW CRITERION’s visual layout, unchanged for many years, the cover featuring the journal title with the date and table of contents of the particular issue located directly below. Mercifully, the font used for essays is both pleasing to, and easy on, the eyes.
Based in a bustlingly artistic city (Manhattan), THE NEW CRITERION takes advantage of its location to survey the world of theater, art and music. Particular critics are deployed in the aforementioned “departments”, a move that allows one to glean consistency in point of view (agree or disagree as one may). Mark Steyn is often devastatingly funny in his theater reviews (one can easily imagine impresario’s cringing at the prospect of his notices) and classical music critic Jay Nordlinger (”New York Chronicle”) is admirably forthright in rendering opinions devoid of equivocation. Poetry, from famous and unknown writers, is regularly featured in THE NEW CRITERION (new executive editor, David Yezzi, is a well respected poet and critic). Symposiums on various cultural/political issues, with contributions from learned panelists, are arranged once or twice a year. Book reviews, undertaken by various (commissioned) writers, are reliably informative, often a spur to read more than just the subject under review.
Despite its “conservative” label, most of THE NEW CRITERION’s contributors display little of their political beliefs. In fact, many contributors could quite easily be referred to as “liberal”, in one or another of the aspects that protean word admits ( such permutations are just as easily applicable to “conservative”, lately quite a supple term, readily conducive to metamorphosis according to agenda ). However, the editorial perspectives of Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball do, lamentably, fit within a general pattern of thought one could label “neo-conservatism”, especially as regards their support of the Bush administration and its “war on terror”. It pains me to mention this Achilles Heel, especially out of the respect due to Mr. Kimball, whose wide-ranging essays have displayed moral as well as literary acumen. How can an admirer of George Santayana and T.S. Eliot be so blind to the hubristic foolishness ( nay, immorality ) of this foreign policy disaster? When Mr. Kimball (no fan of the Jacobin or Bolshevik revolutions) defends the Bush administration, he endorses ideological premises clearly related to those diabolic social experiments: military adventurism in the name of global democratic revolution ( freeing the world from tyranny; igniting “fire in the minds of men” ). Evidently, Mr. Kimball associates opposition to this war with the counter-cultural movement of the 1960’s. While anyone of sense would deplore the excesses of that epoch, it is clear that the problems which have ignited the current conflagration have roots in something more substantial than Ginsberg, Haight-Ashbury and “soixante-huitards”. To be fair, THE NEW CRITERION, more than any truly neo-conservative publication, does invite writers (Roger Scruton, RJ Stove, et al) with differing perspectives; this redeems the journal from the monomaniacal, stultifying tendencies exhibited in COMMENTARY or THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
Nevertheless, mistakes and all, THE NEW CRITERION, in terms of sheer quality and comprehensiveness, remains a vital and impassioned advocate of high culture. In doing so, it does honor to the memory of the journal ( and *its* editor ) that inspired it. High criteria indeed.
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