Counterpoints: 25 Years of The New Criterion on Culture and the Arts

by Roger Kimball (Editor)

Drawn from twenty-five years of the magazine, this abundant collection contains a generous sampling of the very best writing from The New Criterion, featuring the judgments of our generation's most astute and entertaining observers.

Genres: Essays, Cultural, Politics, Philosophy, Criticism

512 pages, Hardcover

First published April 20, 2007

About the author

American art critic and social commentator. He was educated at Cheverus High School, a Jesuit institution in South Portland, Maine, and then at Bennington College, where he received his BA in philosophy and classical Greek, and at Yale University. He first gained prominence in the early 1990s with the publication of his book, Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Higher Education.

Additionally, he is editor and publisher of The New Criterion magazine and the publisher of Encounter Books. He currently serves on the board of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, the board of Transaction Publishers and as a Visitor of Ralston College, a start-up liberal arts college based in Savannah, Georgia. He also served on the Board of Visitors of St. John's College (Annapolis and Santa Fe). His latest book, The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia, was published by St. Augustine's Press in June of 2012.

Reviews

[Buck · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a man in his thirties who worries that he's drifting into early-onset conservatism, I was cheered to discover that I could still violently disagree with many of the bow-tied little dweebs who write for this rag. And it's not even that I disagree with their ideas so much as I'm revolted by the sniffy, elitist, ungenerous tone in which those ideas are expressed. Their kind of donnish contempt for popular culture - Roger Kimball, the editor, speaks sneeringly of 'demotic inanities' - is enough in itself to get me to throw down my briefcase and pry up the nearest paving stone. When that same Kimball quotes approvingly, in one essay, T.S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis and Evelyn Waugh, well, it doesn't take you long to figure out what particular species of bastard you're dealing with.

To be fair, though, I have to give a shout-out here (if you'll pardon the colloquialism, Roger) to Eric Ormsby and William Logan, the former for his sensitive and scholarly review of Robert Alter's translation of the Pentateuch, and the latter for an appreciation of Robert Frost that was so wise, so plain wonderful, that I wanted to jump up and go read some Frost - which is not a craving that comes over me very often. Thanks, guys, for relieving the gloom and letting in some air.