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How a true critic thinks.
Published: 8/26/2008 11:34 AM
Last Modified: 8/26/2008 11:34 AM

Terry Teachout, the drama critic for the Wall Street Journal and one of this country's best all-round commentators on the fine arts, pointed out this quote from the late John Russell, the former New York Times arts critic who died over the weekend.

"I do not see my role as primarily punitive. There are artists whose work I dread to see yet again, dance-dramas that in my view have set back the American psyche several hundred years, composers whose names drive me from the concert hall, authors whose books I shall never willingly reopen. But it has never seemed to me much of an ambition to go though life snarling and spewing."

Teachout wrote:
"I very much wish I'd said that. It's exactly how I feel about what I do, and now that I've seen it put so lucidly, I mean to try even harder to live up to it."

Amen to all that.

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waynesworld (4 years ago)

James, This is a nice statement of what a critic aspires not to be, and I accept it, but it asks the questions, what does a critic aspire to be? I'd be interested in your musing on that one.

Stick61 (4 years ago)

There was an interesting column recently in Columbia Journalism Review about author responses to stinging reviews - the point being that snarling critics sometimes set off entertaining but dubious exchanges between authors and reviewers. And then there's Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Ford, who once spit on a reviewer (another novelist) at a party in New York.

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ARTS

James D. Watts Jr. has lived in Oklahoma for most his life, even though he still has people saying to him, "Don't sound like you're from around these parts." A University of Oklahoma Phi Beta Kappa graduate, Watts has received the Governor Arts Award, Harwelden Award and the National Conference of Christians and Jews Beth Macklin Award for his writing. Before coming to the Tulsa World, Watts worked for the Tulsa Tribune.

Contact him at (918) 581-8478.

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Past Articles By James D. Watts Jr

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2/10/2013		LBJ chronicler Robert Caro to speak at TU on Tuesday
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