I used to have a Post-It note on my tube at work with a quote that spoke to a certain kind of journalism, the brand that has hapless reporters “chasing after hype like heat-seeking piffles.”
The observation came from John Leonard, in my mind then, and still, the standard bearer of cultural criticism.
Leonard was a one-man band. He wrote and spoke intelligently on movies, television and books, and did it at one time or another for some of the leading media outlets in the land. As an editor at New York magazine, where he had served as television critic from 1984 until his death on Wednesday, put it, "He was a fiercely intelligent, passionate writer with a truly original voice, and an omni-cultural critic of a kind that we don't see much anymore."
As a writer, Leonard was a one-of-a-kind stylist. Some found him too cleverly original. I loved the way he piled up imagery and telling details in his reviews as a kind of critical cairn, a guidepost made of intelligent stones. At the New York Times Book Review in the 1970s, Leonard gained a reputation for championing women writers like Toni Morrison.
A couple of years ago in New York, I got to spend a few moments chatting with him. All I wanted to do was thank him for all his great work. Leonard was grateful for the comment. He’d just been given a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Critics Circle. He’d been one of the organization’s founders. I came along years later and once served on the board.
His acceptance speech that night was typically humble and stylish. I quote it in part:
"My whole life I have been waving the names of writers, as if we needed rescue. From these writers, for almost 50 years, I have received narrative, witness, companionship, sanctuary, shock, and steely strangeness; good advice, bad news, deep chords, hurtful discrepancy, and amazing grace. At an average of five books a week, not counting all those sighed at and nibbled on before they go to the Strand, I will read 13,000. Then I'm dead. Thirteen thousand in a lifetime, about as many as there are new ones published every month in this country.
"It's not enough, and yet rich to excess. The books we love, love us back. In gratitude, we should promise not to cheat on them -- not to pretend we're better than they are; not to use them as target practice, agit-prop, trampolines, photo ops or stalking horses; not to sell out scruple to that scratch-and-sniff infotainment racket in which we posture in front of experience instead of engaging it, and fidget in our cynical opportunism for an angle, a spin, or a take, instead of consulting compass points of principle, and strike attitudes like matches, to admire our wiseguy profiles in the mirrors of the slicks. We are reading for our lives, not performing like seals for some fresh fish."
I’ve been teaching lately and trying to energize students with a couple of his wild critical rides through pop culture. His essay about Bob Dylan -- the title, "Blowin’ His Nose in the Wind," said it all -- was vintage Leonard: sharp, respectful but fearlessly critical, too.
John Leonard infused deep meaning into the act of reading, the act of watching movies and TV and, especially the act of writing.
And that’s no mere piffle.
-- Steve Paul
Aaron adds:
Long before I had the chance to do it myself, John Leonard on CBS was always my first idea of what a television critic should be. I never could match his Eco-like love of lists and I could never channel my anger into print the way he did. But I loved the fact that he was an unapologetic egghead reviewing popular culture through his distinctive intellectual prism, and the fact that he did it without being a snob, or an old fart. He was demanding but he didn't expect TV to be something it wasn't.
What fascinated me about John was that he reviewed television on television. Nobody did that -- and once Mel Karmazin took over CBS, not even John Leonard did that. If you will read one essay by John the rest of your life, read the one linked below. It tells of his time at CBS and the Times and how he managed to persist with his own deeply contrary voice in an ever more commercialized media culture:
John Leonard: How a Caged Bird Learns to Sing
Obit: John Leonard Dies at 69
Thank you both for the comments on John Leonard's passing. He was the highlight of my Sunday mornings for years, and even before his death, I missed his voice.
Posted by: Amber | November 07, 2008 at 08:07 AM
I was not familiar with John's columns, but I will always remember him on CBS Sunday Morning. He was the highlight of the show for me. His reporting was more varied covering TV and books than other TV media critics of the time. I trusted his opinions.
For several years I've been away from Sunday Morning. I'm coming back to the program. Many new faces but I see some of the old ones I knew earlier. It is sad however John will not be coming back. Doug
Posted by: Doug | November 10, 2008 at 04:34 PM