Song of a Reformed Headhunter

It is astonishing to me how consistent John Berger was in over 30 years of art criticism. His judgment of an artist could become more developed and refined, more elaborated, but the underlying sense of the artist's purpose and value remained the same. This consistency of seeing came from a coherent philosophy of art criticism. As Berger puts it in his "Introduction" to Permanent Red , which is also aptly the introductory essay of this Selected Essays edited by Geoff Dyer, the art critic must first answer the question: What can art serve here and now? For Berger, the answer that drove his looking was another question: Does this work help or encourage men to know and claim their social rights? Berger was not looking for Socialist propaganda, but saw his answer/question as the logic of his historical situation. In the second half of the twentieth century, the most important historical movements were the fights for national independence, civil rights, gender equality, and ...

Who Wants To Know The Answer? I’m reading John Berger on Magritte. On the radio, a young man has a question about his Toyota Corolla Hatchback. You’re from Eugene? the auto expert asks. Eugene, Oregon. There’s a liquid leaking from his dashboard. Is it greasy? the auto expert asks. Yes, it’s greasy. A phone shrills in the studio. Why isn’t anyone attending to it? That’s a problem, the auto expert says, when you’re out on a date. Yeah, it’s a real problem. It was leaking all over the floor, all over my good shoes. I tried soaking it up with newspapers, but it was hopeless, it was leaking so much. The phone shrills and shrills. Oh, it’s not in the studio but nagging behind me, in the kitchen of the house where I’m staying, a wallphone hooked up above the microwave. Should I answer it? It’s not for me. It’s an unexpected call. Nobody’s home. Would John Berger answer it? The phone shrills on. Finally, the auto ...

from Paula Marantz Cohen's review (TLS Sep 5 2008) of books on Alfred Hitchcock: [Hitchcock] was flamboyantly modest or, perhaps better, a self-deprecating exhibitionist. His understated preening is evident in his famous interview with Truffaut and in the cameo appearances he insisted on making in all his films. * He had an unerring grasp of the cinematic--on the technical level of understanding lenses and camera angles, and on the conceptual level of visual storytelling. He was able to make suspense into a metaphor for life and to use the theme of mistaken identity as a source of rich existential meaning. He understood the popular audience, was a master of studio politics and a genius at publicity, and yet he managed to hold on to his own vision. *** from Richard Marggraf Turley's Commentary piece (TLS Sep 5 2008) on "Barry Cornwall" (the pseudonym of Bryan Waller Procter) and Keats: . . . we reject Cornwall for not offering the layered complexities our long admirati...