Word: sheed
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Stacked up against these losers from the NSFC, Wilfred Sheed's virtues look better and better. First, he at least has some goal for the kind of art he likes: he hopes it will preserve vital distinctions in human consciousness. If it is a claim less grandiose than that of Kael or Simon, he applies it to more different kinds of subject matter. Second, he has what it takes to know when to tub-thump hard, and when to leave well enough alone. It's called "Balance". Third, he's a better writer than even the smoothest of the slick...
...Finally, Sheed is also a novelist, privy to the nuances of atmosphere and feeling that only he can touch. His most famous (and respected) novel, Max Jamison tells of the gradual decline of an honest critic. Jamison continually embodies the critical faculty as an active presence, beset by New York critical politics and mass taste. He has no great philosophic commitment--which may be why, in Sheed's world, he is only a critic, and Sheed only a minor novelist. He does have a steadfast curiosity, a determined belief in the sublime and the perfect...
...Morning After is a compilation (by no means complete) of Sheed's own film, theater, book reviews and social comment; also, autobiographical essays and further writings on the situations of writers and reviewers themselves. Sheed is very contemporary in appreciating forms which are fragmented, or artworks specialized in their aim (though he may not--with good reason--give the latter wholehearted support). But he is most interested in analyzing the few experiences he deals with--be they artworks or political powerplays--which contain a grain of original truth in their reflection of contemporary life-trials. Even when reminiscing...
...Jamison, by Wilfrid Sheed. A scalpel-sharp dissection of a critic criticizing himself...
...Author Wilfrid Sheed, in the recently published Max Jamison, commented most appropriately when he said: "I am not against youth as such. They are wonderfully teachable. But that they should be teaching us; that we should invest them with oracular powers, read into their shrugs and moans some great gnostic wisdom-this is an American superstition so crass that one scarcely knows where to begin with...