Adam Gopnik's Curious Condescension

Clive James (Photo by Richard Baker)

Adam Gopnik, in his “Clive James Got It Right” (newyorker.com, November 30, 2019), says many kind things about James. He calls him “the most beautifully equipped critic of his time.” He says, “Appetite was his great engine, but appraisal was his greatest gift. He got it right, again and again.” But he also makes an annoying distinction between “real writers” and “mere critics and journalists.” He says real writers are willing “to look ridiculous in pursuit of a passion.” He classifies James as a “real writer” because of his over-the-top (“embarrassing in its breathlessness”) elegy to Princess Diana (“Mourning My Friend, Princess Diana,” The New Yorker, September 15, 1997).

In my view, James was a real writer because he wrote great criticism – where greatness means vivid, perceptive, analytical, practical, argumentative, creative, humorous, precise. Here, for example, is the opening paragraph of his brilliant “Thrones of Blood” (The New Yorker, April 18, 2016):

Binge-watching is a night out, even when you spend the whole day in. It’s a way of being. We begin to esteem this way of being at its true worth when we realize that the creators of the brain food that we’re wolfing down are at least as involved in it, at the level of imagination, as we are. From Homer until now, and onward to wherever the creaking fleet of “Battlestar Galactica” may go in the future, there never was, and never will be, a successful entertainment fuelled by pure cynicism. And, when we click on Play All and settle back to watch every season of “The Wire” all over again, we should try to find a moment, in the midst of such complete absorption, to reflect that the imagined world being revealed to us for our delight really is an astounding achievement, even though we will always feel that we need an excuse for doing nothing else except watch it.

That “From Homer until now, and onward to wherever the creaking fleet of ‘Battlestar Galactica’ may go in the future, there never was, and never will be, a successful entertainment fuelled by pure cynicism” is inspired! The whole piece is inspired!

Gopnik has condescended to criticism before. In his “Postscript: Robert Hughes” (newyorker.com, August 7, 2012), he says, “Criticism serves a lower end than art does, and has little effect on it.” I wish he’d cut it out. Is Janet Malcolm not a real writer? Is James Wood not a real writer? Is Peter Schjeldahl not a real writer? Come on!