The New Criterion
Encyclopedia
The New Criterion is a New York
-based monthly literary magazine
and journal of artistic and cultural critic
ism, edited by Hilton Kramer
and Roger Kimball
. It has sections for criticism of poetry, theater, art, music, the media, and books. It was founded in 1982 by Kramer and Samuel Lipman, a music critic; the name is a reference to The Criterion
, a British literary magazine edited by T. S. Eliot
from 1922 to 1939.
The magazine is small but highly influential, and describes itself as a "monthly review of the arts and intellectual life...in the forefront both of championing what is best and most humanely vital in our cultural inheritance and in exposing what is mendacious, corrosive, and spurious." It evinces an artistic classicism
and political conservatism
that is rare among other publications of its type.
It regularly publishes "special pamphlets," or compilations of published material organized into themes. Some past examples have been Corrupt Humanitarianism; Religion, Manners and Morals in the U.S. and Great Britain; and Reflections on Anti-Americanism.
TNC has been running The New Criterion Poetry Prize, a poetry contest with a cash prize, since 1999. In 2004, New Criterion contributors began publishing a blog
, known as ArmaVirumque.
art critic Hilton Kramer
. He cited his reasons for leaving the paper to start TNC as "the disgusting and deleterious doctrines with which the most popular of our Reviews disgraces its pages," as well as "the dishonesties and hypocrisies and disfiguring ideologies that nowadays afflict the criticism of the arts, [which] are deeply rooted in both our commercial and our academic culture [...]"
"It is therefore all the more urgent," he went on to say, "that a dissenting critical voice be heard, and it is for the purpose of providing such a voice that The New Criterion has been created."
The choice of Kramer to leave the New York Times, where he had been the newspaper's chief art critic, and start a magazine devoted to ideas and the arts "surprised a lot of people and was a statement in itself," according to Erich Eichmann.
Noted contributors to the journal include Mark Steyn
, as well as articles by Roger Scruton
, David Pryce-Jones
, Theodore Dalrymple, and others.
In its first issue, dated September 1982, the magazine set out "to speak plainly and vigorously about the problems that beset the life of the artists and the life of the mind in our society" while resisting "a more general cultural drift" that had in many cases "condemned true seriousness to a fugitive existence."
Writer Jeet Heer has argued that the journal is mistaken in attempting to draw such a strong distinction between high culture and popular culture, and that the unreasonable nature of this proposition is partly demonstrated by the fact that a number of NC contributors write enthusiastically about aspects of popular culture in other publications.
According to the New York Sun
, for a quarter of a century the New Criterion "has helped its readers distinguish achievement from failure in painting, music, dance, literature, theater, and other arts. The magazine, whose circulation is 6,500, has taken a leading role in the culture wars, publishing articles whose titles are an intellectual call to arms."
Former associate editor of the New Criterion, Christopher Carduff, said to the New York Sun: "I think that what initially made it a sensation — and, in certain quarters, a scandal, was its courage to make judgments about contemporary art, to separate the sheep from the goats. Or, more to the point, to separate the sheep from the pigs in sheep's clothing."
the magazine has been awarding its poetry prize to a poet for "a book-length manuscript of poems that pay close attention to form".
These poets have won the prize; all have been published by Ivan R. Dee of Chicago:
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
-based monthly literary magazine
Literary magazine
A literary magazine is a periodical devoted to literature in a broad sense. Literary magazines usually publish short stories, poetry and essays along with literary criticism, book reviews, biographical profiles of authors, interviews and letters...
and journal of artistic and cultural critic
Cultural critic
A cultural critic is a critic of a given culture, usually as a whole and typically on a radical basis. There is significant overlap with social and cultural theory.-Terminology:...
ism, edited by Hilton Kramer
Hilton Kramer
Hilton Kramer is a U.S. art critic and cultural commentator.Kramer was educated at Syracuse University, Columbia University, Harvard University, Indiana University and the New School for Social Research. He worked as the editor of Arts Magazine, art critic for The Nation, and from 1965 to 1982,...
and Roger Kimball
Roger Kimball
Roger Kimball is a conservative U.S. art critic and social commentator. He was educated at Cheverus High School, a Jesuit institution in South Portland, Maine, and then at Bennington College, where he took a BA in philosophy and classical Greek, and Yale University...
. It has sections for criticism of poetry, theater, art, music, the media, and books. It was founded in 1982 by Kramer and Samuel Lipman, a music critic; the name is a reference to The Criterion
The Criterion (magazine)
The Criterion was a British literary magazine published from October 1922 to January 1939. The Criterion was, for most of its run, a quarterly journal, although for a period in 1927-28 it was published monthly. It was created by the poet, dramatist, and literary critic T. S...
, a British literary magazine edited by T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
from 1922 to 1939.
The magazine is small but highly influential, and describes itself as a "monthly review of the arts and intellectual life...in the forefront both of championing what is best and most humanely vital in our cultural inheritance and in exposing what is mendacious, corrosive, and spurious." It evinces an artistic classicism
Classicism
Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for classical antiquity, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. The art of classicism typically seeks to be formal and restrained: of the Discobolus Sir Kenneth Clark observed, "if we object to his restraint...
and political conservatism
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
that is rare among other publications of its type.
It regularly publishes "special pamphlets," or compilations of published material organized into themes. Some past examples have been Corrupt Humanitarianism; Religion, Manners and Morals in the U.S. and Great Britain; and Reflections on Anti-Americanism.
TNC has been running The New Criterion Poetry Prize, a poetry contest with a cash prize, since 1999. In 2004, New Criterion contributors began publishing a blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
, known as ArmaVirumque.
Origin
The New Criterion was founded in 1982 by The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
art critic Hilton Kramer
Hilton Kramer
Hilton Kramer is a U.S. art critic and cultural commentator.Kramer was educated at Syracuse University, Columbia University, Harvard University, Indiana University and the New School for Social Research. He worked as the editor of Arts Magazine, art critic for The Nation, and from 1965 to 1982,...
. He cited his reasons for leaving the paper to start TNC as "the disgusting and deleterious doctrines with which the most popular of our Reviews disgraces its pages," as well as "the dishonesties and hypocrisies and disfiguring ideologies that nowadays afflict the criticism of the arts, [which] are deeply rooted in both our commercial and our academic culture [...]"
"It is therefore all the more urgent," he went on to say, "that a dissenting critical voice be heard, and it is for the purpose of providing such a voice that The New Criterion has been created."
The choice of Kramer to leave the New York Times, where he had been the newspaper's chief art critic, and start a magazine devoted to ideas and the arts "surprised a lot of people and was a statement in itself," according to Erich Eichmann.
Noted contributors to the journal include Mark Steyn
Mark Steyn
Mark Steyn is a Canadian-born writer, conservative-leaning political commentator, and cultural critic. He has written five books, including America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It, a New York Times bestseller...
, as well as articles by Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
Roger Vernon Scruton is a conservative English philosopher and writer. He is the author of over 30 books, including Art and Imagination , Sexual Desire , The Aesthetics of Music , and A Political Philosophy: Arguments For Conservatism...
, David Pryce-Jones
David Pryce-Jones
David Eugene Henry Pryce-Jones FRSL is a conservative British author and commentator.- Career :He was educated at Eton and read History at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied under A.J.P...
, Theodore Dalrymple, and others.
In its first issue, dated September 1982, the magazine set out "to speak plainly and vigorously about the problems that beset the life of the artists and the life of the mind in our society" while resisting "a more general cultural drift" that had in many cases "condemned true seriousness to a fugitive existence."
Reception
The New Criterion has been highly influential in the way that conservatives think about culture.Writer Jeet Heer has argued that the journal is mistaken in attempting to draw such a strong distinction between high culture and popular culture, and that the unreasonable nature of this proposition is partly demonstrated by the fact that a number of NC contributors write enthusiastically about aspects of popular culture in other publications.
According to the New York Sun
New York Sun
The New York Sun was a weekday daily newspaper published in New York City from 2002 to 2008. When it debuted on April 16, 2002, adopting the name, motto, and masthead of an otherwise unrelated earlier New York paper, The Sun , it became the first general-interest broadsheet newspaper to be started...
, for a quarter of a century the New Criterion "has helped its readers distinguish achievement from failure in painting, music, dance, literature, theater, and other arts. The magazine, whose circulation is 6,500, has taken a leading role in the culture wars, publishing articles whose titles are an intellectual call to arms."
Former associate editor of the New Criterion, Christopher Carduff, said to the New York Sun: "I think that what initially made it a sensation — and, in certain quarters, a scandal, was its courage to make judgments about contemporary art, to separate the sheep from the goats. Or, more to the point, to separate the sheep from the pigs in sheep's clothing."
New Criterion anthologies
- Counterpoints: 25 Years of The New Criterion on Culture and the Arts, edited by Roger Kimball and Hilton Kramer; Ivan R. Dee, 512 pages, (2007). ISBN 1566637066 ISBN 978-1566637060
- Against the Grain: The New Criterion on Art and Intellect at the End of the 20th Century, edited by Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball; Ivan R. Dee, 477 pages (1995). ISBN 156663069X ISBN 978-1566630696
- The New Criterion Reader: The First Five Years, edited by Hilton Kramer; Free Press, 429 pages (1988). ISBN 0029176417 ISBN 978-0029176412
New Criterion books
- Lengthened Shadows: America and Its Institutions in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Roger Kimball and Hilton Kramer; Encounter Books, 266 pages (2004). ISBN 1594030545 ISBN 978-1594030543
- The Survival of Culture: Permanent Values in a Virtual Age, edited by Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball; Ivan R. Dee, 256 pages (2002). ISBN 1566634660, ISBN 978-1566634663
- The Betrayal of Liberalism: How the Disciples of Freedom and Equality Helped Foster the Illiberal Politics of Coercion and Control edited by Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball; Ivan R. Dee, 256 pages (1999). ISBN 1566632579, ISBN 978-1566632577
- The Future of the European Past edited by Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball; Ivan R. Dee, 251 pages (1997). ISBN 1566631785, ISBN 978-1566631785
The New Criterion Poetry Prize
Since 20002000 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Griffin Poetry Prize is established, with one award given each year for the best work by a Canadian poet and one award given for best work in the English language internationally.* February —...
the magazine has been awarding its poetry prize to a poet for "a book-length manuscript of poems that pay close attention to form".
These poets have won the prize; all have been published by Ivan R. Dee of Chicago:
- 20102010 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* January 19 - For the first time since 1949, an anonymous black-clad man, known as the Poe Toaster, failed to show up at the tomb of Edgar Allan Poe at the Westminster Hall and Burying Ground, early...
: Ashley Anna McHugh, Into These Knots (ISBN 156663878X) - 20092009 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* January 5 – The Turkish government announces it will posthumously restore the citizenship it had stripped from influential poet Nazim Hikmet, a Marxist who died in 1963 as an exile in the Soviet...
: William Virgil DavisWilliam Virgil DavisWilliam Virgil Davis is an American poet.He has published poems in Poetry, The Nation, The Hudson Review, The Georgia Review, The Hopkins Review, The Gettysburg Review, The New Criterion, The Sewanee Review, The Atlantic Monthly, Denver Quarterly, and Shenandoah, among others...
, Landscape and Journey (ISBN 1566638399) - 20082008 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* June — the release in the United Kingdom of a new film, The Edge of Love, Dylan Thomas' relationship with two women, starring Keira Knightley, Sienna Miller, Cillian Murphy and Matthew Rhys *...
: Daniel BrownDaniel BrownDaniel, Dan, or Danny Brown is the name of:* Daniel Q. Brown , American Old Catholic bishop* Daniel Russell Brown , American politician, governor of Rhode Island...
, Taking the Occasion (ISBN 1566638011), - 20072007 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* March 5: a car bomb was exploded on Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad. More than 30 people were killed and more than 100 were wounded. This locale is the historic center of Baghdad bookselling, a winding...
: J. Allyn RosserJ. Allyn RosserJill Allyn Rosser , who published under J. Allyn Rosser, is a contemporary American poet.-Life:She grew up in Sparta, New Jersey....
, Foiled Again (ISBN 1566638089); Judges: David BarberDavid BarberDavid Barber is a British television actor, known for his numerous roles in ChuckleVision.- Filmography :*ChuckleVision*Steel River Blues*Merseybeat*The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc *Harry Enfield and Chums...
, Roger KimballRoger KimballRoger Kimball is a conservative U.S. art critic and social commentator. He was educated at Cheverus High School, a Jesuit institution in South Portland, Maine, and then at Bennington College, where he took a BA in philosophy and classical Greek, and Yale University...
, Hilton KramerHilton KramerHilton Kramer is a U.S. art critic and cultural commentator.Kramer was educated at Syracuse University, Columbia University, Harvard University, Indiana University and the New School for Social Research. He worked as the editor of Arts Magazine, art critic for The Nation, and from 1965 to 1982,...
, Rachel HadasRachel HadasRachel Hadas is an American poet, teacher, essayist, and translator. Her most recent essay collection is Classics: Essays , and her most recent poetry collection is The Ache of Appetite . Her honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, Ingram Merrill Foundation Grants, the O.B...
and David YezziDavid YezziDavid Dalton Yezzi is an American poet, actor and executive editor of The New Criterion.Yezzi is a former associate editor of Parnassus: Poetry in Review and a former poetry editor at The New Criterion.... - 20062006 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* French public notary Patrick Huet unveils Pieces of Hope to the Echo of the World in Lyon...
: Bill CoyleBill CoyleWilliam Claude Coyle was a pitcher in Major League Baseball for the 1893 Boston Beaneaters. He then played in the minors through 1897. After his playing career ended, he was briefly a manager in 1897 in the Interstate League.-External links:...
, The God of this World to His Prophet (ISBN 1566637104) - 20052005 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* October 7 — Celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the first reading of Allen Ginsberg's poem Howl were staged in San Francisco, New York City, and in Leeds in the UK...
: Geoffrey BrockGeoffrey BrockGeoffrey Brock is an American poet and translator.-Education:He received a Masters in Fine Arts from the University of Florida in 1998...
, Weighing Light (ISBN 1566636671); Judges: W. S. Di PieroW. S. Di PieroWilliam S. Di Piero is an American poet, translator, and essayist.-Life:He grew up in an Italian working class neighborhood. He attended St. Joseph's College in Philadelphia and received a Master's degree from San Francisco State University in 1971.He taught at Louisiana State University, and...
, Roger KimballRoger KimballRoger Kimball is a conservative U.S. art critic and social commentator. He was educated at Cheverus High School, a Jesuit institution in South Portland, Maine, and then at Bennington College, where he took a BA in philosophy and classical Greek, and Yale University...
, Hilton KramerHilton KramerHilton Kramer is a U.S. art critic and cultural commentator.Kramer was educated at Syracuse University, Columbia University, Harvard University, Indiana University and the New School for Social Research. He worked as the editor of Arts Magazine, art critic for The Nation, and from 1965 to 1982,...
, Rachel WetzsteonRachel Wetzsteon-Life:Born in New York City, New York, the daughter of editor Ross Wetzsteon , she graduated from Yale University in 1989, where she studied with Marie Borroff, and John Hollander....
and David YezziDavid YezziDavid Dalton Yezzi is an American poet, actor and executive editor of The New Criterion.Yezzi is a former associate editor of Parnassus: Poetry in Review and a former poetry editor at The New Criterion.... - 20032003 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* The Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry was opened at Queens University, Belfast, this year. It houses the Heaney Media Archive, a unique record of Heaney's entire oeuvre, as well as a full catalogue of...
: Deborah WarrenDeborah WarrenDeborah Warren is an American poet.She graduated from Harvard University, with a BA in English.She worked as a teacher of Latin and English, and a software engineer....
, Zero Meridian (ISBN 1566635969) - 20022002 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* After Ghazi al-Gosaibi, the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Britain, publishes a poem praising a suicide bomber who had killed himself and two Israelis after blowing himself up in a supermarket; the...
: Charles TomlinsonCharles TomlinsonAlfred Charles Tomlinson, CBE is a British poet and translator, and also an academic and artist. He was born and raised in Penkhull in the city of Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire.-Life:...
, Skywriting and other poems (ISBN 1566635411) - 20012001 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Immediately after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, W. H...
: Adam KirschAdam KirschAdam Kirsch is an American poet and literary critic.-Early life and education:Kirsch is the son of lawyer, author, and biblical scholar Jonathan Kirsch, and a 1997 graduate of Harvard College.-Career:...
, The Thousand Wells (ISBN 1566634512) - 20002000 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Griffin Poetry Prize is established, with one award given each year for the best work by a Canadian poet and one award given for best work in the English language internationally.* February —...
: Donald Petersen*, Early and Late: Selected poems (ISBN 1566633974)
External links
- Official website
- Armavirumque, New Criterion blog