Download Critical Mass: Four Decades of Essays, Reviews, Hand Grenades and Hurrahs AudioBook Free
A career-spanning assortment of critical essays and ethnical journalism from one of the most acute, amusing, and sometimes acerbic (however in a great way) critics in our time. From his early-seventies dispatches as a fledgling critic for The Community Voice on rock 'n' roll, comedy, movies, and television to the literary criticism of the eighties and nineties that made him both feared and famous to his must-read accounts on the ethnical weather for Vanity Fair, James Wolcott has had a job as a freelance critic and a literary intellectual nearly unique inside our time. This collection features the best of Wolcott in whatever guise-connoisseur, intrepid reporter, memoirist, and necessary naysayer-he has chosen to take on. Included in this collection is "O.K. Corral Revisited," a fresh take on the famous Norman Mailer-Gore Vidal dustup for the Dick Cavett Show that launched Wolcott from his Maryland university to NEW YORK (via bus) to start his brilliant job. His prescient overview of Patti Smith's renowned first gig at CBGB leads off a suite of eyewitness and insider accounts of the rise of punk rock, while another group of parts considers the vast cultural affect of the enigmatic Johnny Carson and the scramble of his late-night successors to inherit the "swivel throne." You can find warm tributes to such diverse results as Michael Mann, Sam Peckinpah, Lester Bangs, and Philip Larkin and masterly summings-up of the departed giants of North american literature-John Updike, William Styron, John Cheever, and Mailer and Vidal. Included as well are some renowned takedowns that contain entered into the literary lore in our time. Critical Mass is a treasure trove of gleaming, spiky prose and a remarkable portrait in our lives and ethnical times over the past decades. In an age where a lot of back again scratching and softball pitching pass for criticism, James Wolcott's fearless essays and reviews provide a bracing flavour of the real critical thing.
