September 8, 2014 Issue

I enjoy GOAT’s capsule movie reviews. Some are originals, e.g., Richard Brody’s beautiful “Night at the Crossroads” in this week’s issue. Others are reductions of pieces that previously appeared in “The Critics.” Regarding this latter type, it’s interesting from a compositional perspective to compare the “Critics” version with the “GOAT” version and note the modifications involved in condensing, say, a 1500-word review to a 180-word miniature.

Two such “capsules” in this week’s issue caught my eye: Pauline Kael’s “Hairspray” and David Denby’s “The Trip to Italy.” Kael’s note (a slightly longer version of which appears in her great 5001 Nights at the Movies) is based on her March 7, 1988 New Yorker review (included in her 1989 collection Hooked). The description that makes this “capsule” notable for me is “pop dadaist musical comedy.” It’s a recasting of “an entertainingly imbecilic musical comedy – a piece of pop dadaism,” in Kael’s original. I prefer the compression of the “capsule” version.

Denby’s “capsule” of The Trip to Italy contains the inspired phrase “hedonistic japery” (“This hedonistic japery is shot through with middle-aged melancholy and the fear of death”), which doesn’t appear in his original review (“Lasting Impressions,” September 1, 2014). The original does contain the word “japes” (“The Trip to Italy, for all its japes, is haunted by mortality …”).

All of which goes to show that even though you’ve read the “Critics’ version of a movie review, it pays to read the “GOAT” version, too – fresh felicities of language are there to be found.

Postscript: I relish John McPhee’s specificity – especially his use of place names. It’s one of the key ingredients of his style. Many of the names in his “Phi Beta Football,” in this week’s issue, are unfamiliar. They’re from a world – Ivy League football – totally foreign to me. But one name he mentions – “Penobscot River” – is pregnant with meaning. It recalls his great “The Survival of the Bark Canoe,” The New Yorker, February 24 & March 3, 1975 (“We drove the last hour into the woods on those roads, and put the canoes into the West Branch of the Penobscot River at six in the evening”), perhaps the finest “Reporter At Large” piece ever to appear in the magazine.