Word: criticals
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...succession of murders, decapitations and other severances in a Devon village involves the rector, a retired major, a composer, a not-too-plodding constable, two detectives, two nymphomaniacs, sundry pig farmers, most of Fleet Street, a blackmailer, a local ancient -and Gervase Fen, an urbane Oxford don and literary critic who, as in previous Crispin novels, discreetly provides the ratiocination that puts all the bods and motives together again. Crispin, 57, may be forgiven for his long vacation from mayhem. In the real world, he maintains an identity as Composer R. Bruce Montgomery, the man who has settled the scores...
...Critic Walter Benjamin had no claims on fame and little influence during his lifetime. He committed suicide in September 1940 at the Franco-Spanish border when his exit visa was not accepted and he feared, as a Jew and socialist intellectual, forced repatriation to Germany. His essays were not collected and published until 1955. Thirteen years later they were translated into English and appeared under the title Illuminations. By that time, Benjamin had become a posthumous culture hero of Europe's new left...
Essays on surrealism, the mimetic faculty, Brecht and the Austrian polemicist Karl Kraus support Hannah Arendt's claim that Benjamin was the most important German critic between the world wars. His romantic attachment to anarchy and violence as messianic salvations may remind some readers of Norman Mailer at his steamiest. Yet at times, Benjamin's insights cast prophetic shadows. On the effect of film and advertising, for example: "Before a child of our time finds his way clear to opening a book, his eyes have been exposed to such a blizzard of changing, colorful, conflicting letters that...
THREE YEARS BACK, or was it four, Bruce Springsteen was seen in Boston by rock critic Jon Landau, who pronounced the now-famous judgment on him: I have seen the future of rock and roll and its name is Bruce Springsteen." That was a pretty tall order for a raggedy-looking dude from Asbury Park, N. J. to fill. That and Time Magazine's talk of him as the new Bob Dylan put a great deal of pressure on Springsteen to produce a suitable follow-up for his smash 1975 album, Born...
...believable outsider person as in rock. But when he tries to assume the stance of someone caught inside, in the work-a-day world, it's hard either to accept or be interested in it. Springsteen is a wonderful painter of the social landscape, but as a social critic he is standing at the wrong easel...