A Terry Teachout Reader
WARNING
You are viewing an older version of the Yalebooks website. Please visit out new website with more updated information and a better user experience: https://www.yalebooks.com
Terry Teachout
View Inside
Format: ClothPrice: $45.00
Terry Teachout’s thought-provoking observations on everyone from Louis Armstrong to The Sopranos, and on everything from American opera to serials on TV
Terry Teachout, one of our most acute cultural commentators, here turns his sharp eye to every corner of the arts world—music, dance, literature, theater, film, TV, and the visual arts. This collection gathers the best of Teachout’s writings from the past fifteen years. In each essay he offers lucid and balanced judgments that invariably illuminate, sometimes infuriate, and always spark a response—the mark of a critic whose thoughts, however controversial, cannot be ignored.
In a thoughtful introduction to the book, Teachout considers how American culture of the twenty-first century differs from that of the last century and how the information age has altered popular culture. His selected essays chronicle America’s cultural journey over the past decade and a half, and they show us what has been lost—and gained—along the way. With highly informed opinions, an inimitable wit and style, and a genuine devotion to all things cultural, Teachout offers his readers much to delight in and much to ponder.
Terry Teachout was drama critic for the Wall Street Journal, music critic for Commentary, and a contributor to the Washington Post, for which he wrote “Second City,” a column about the arts in New York City.
“Teachout is one of the finest critics on the scene today: tireless, gutsy, trenchant, never stale. His writings indicate a superb, highly developed and (in the best sense) discriminating taste.”—Martha Bayles, author of Hole in Our Soul: The Loss of Beauty and Meaning in American Popular Music
“Teachout’s engaging style and diversity of tastes means there is something for everyone in this book. . . . For those who enjoy criticism, this Reader is a book to savor, get angry with and reflect upon. . . . A Terry Teachout Reader does indeed, as its author intended, take the reader on a tour of America’s cultural divides of the last decade and a half and proffers a rich, compelling and utterly engaging collection of work by a master critic.”—Victoria A. Brownworth, Baltimore Sun
“Teachout—music, dance, drama, and literary critic—is a commentator of rare daring. He is funny, astute, straight-talking, strong-minded. He is eager to tackle hard issues, unafraid to identify himself as a highbrow, willing to make value judgments. . . . Illuminating and often electrifying short essays.”—Barbara Fisher, Boston Sunday Globe
"[A] generous collection of Teachout's writing."—J.A. Gray, First Things
“That the 58 engaging essays in A Terry Teachout Reader, on subjects ranging from Dawn Powell and Louis Armstrong to David Ives and Martha Graham, tell us as much about America as they do about Teachout’s evolving sensibility makes the book an intellectual memoir by way of enthusiasms. His detailed snapshots of bygone cultural moments are introduced by a thoughtful history of our cultural climate over the last half-century.”—Kate Bolick, New York Times Book Review
“This book is an impressive testament to Teachout’s talents, eloquence and integrity.”—Publishers Weekly
“With this collection of essays on everyone from Merce Cunningham to Elvis Presley, Teachout has given art lovers plenty to argue with, and much to ‘savor’.”—The Week
“Teachout, no matter the subject, is always thoughtful, frequently charming, and sometimes as doughty as an Old Testament prophet. To collect a critic between hard covers is to test whether he is more than ephemeral. A Terry Teachout Reader passes that test. In spades.”—Kelly Jane Torrance, The Weekly Standard
Publication Date: March 11, 2004
