A Terry Teachout Reader
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Overview
Terry Teachout, one of our most acute cultural commentators, here turns his sharp eye to every corner of the arts world-music, dance, literature, theater, film, TV, and the visual arts. This collection gathers the best of Teachout's writings from the past fifteen years. In each essay he offers lucid and balanced judgments that invariably illuminate, sometimes infuriate, and always spark a response-the mark of a critic whose thoughts, however controversial, cannot be ignored. In a thoughtful introduction to the book, Teachout considers how American culture of the twenty-first century differs from that of the last century and how the information age has altered popular culture. His selected essays chronicle America's cultural journey over the past decade and a half, and they show us what has been lost-and gained-along the way. With highly informed opinions, an inimitable wit and style, and a genuine devotion to all things cultural, Teachout offers his readers much to delight in and much to ponder.Synopsis
"Teachout is one of the finest critics on the scene today: tireless, gutsy, trenchant, never stale. His writings indicate a superb, highly developed and (in the best sense) discriminating taste."-Martha Bayles, author of Hole in Our Soul: The Loss of Beauty and Meaning in American Popular Music
Author Biography: Terry Teachout is drama critic for the Wall Street Journal, music critic for Commentary, and a contributor to the Washington Post, for which he writes "Second City," a column about the arts in New York City. His most recent book is The Skeptic: A Life of H. L. Mencken.
The New York Times
That the 58 engaging essays in A Terry Teachout Reader, on subjects ranging from Dawn Powell and Louis Armstrong to David Ives and Martha Graham, tell us as much about America as they do about Teachout's evolving sensibility makes the book an intellectual memoir by way of enthusiasms. His detailed snapshots of bygone cultural moments are introduced by a thoughtful history of our cultural climate over the last half-century. — Kate Bolick