Glen Hirshberg's Blog - Posts Tagged "emily-nussbaum"
Reading and Writing and Enjoying Criticism
The hardest writing to get my students to love--or even to fathom-- isn't poetry, isn't serious fiction, sure as hell isn't the ghost story; it's criticism.
And so, in the furtherance of my ongoing service of the good word, in all its diverse manifestations, I offer this year's Robert Christgau Prize for Critic I Almost Never Agree With But Will Read Forever to....(drum roll....oh, can you feel the tension)...NEW YORKER TV critic Emily Nussbaum.
One day, Em--can I call you Em?--we're really going to have to sit down and talk about what you really should be liking instead of Broadchurch. (Clue REVIEW) But this was the year you came up with this two-sentence masterclass in critical precision, authority, joyful engagement: "These early scenes hint at something caustic, like the cartoon-realist satire sometimes favored by the directors Alexander Payne and Todd Solondz. In such stories, ordinary Americans...are held up for mockery, as if the director were using the lens to sizzle ants." (Olive Kitterage Review)
You're still wrong, Ms. Nussbaum. Almost every time. And you're magnificent.
And so, in the furtherance of my ongoing service of the good word, in all its diverse manifestations, I offer this year's Robert Christgau Prize for Critic I Almost Never Agree With But Will Read Forever to....(drum roll....oh, can you feel the tension)...NEW YORKER TV critic Emily Nussbaum.
One day, Em--can I call you Em?--we're really going to have to sit down and talk about what you really should be liking instead of Broadchurch. (Clue REVIEW) But this was the year you came up with this two-sentence masterclass in critical precision, authority, joyful engagement: "These early scenes hint at something caustic, like the cartoon-realist satire sometimes favored by the directors Alexander Payne and Todd Solondz. In such stories, ordinary Americans...are held up for mockery, as if the director were using the lens to sizzle ants." (Olive Kitterage Review)
You're still wrong, Ms. Nussbaum. Almost every time. And you're magnificent.
