Dwight Macdonald (1906–1982)

Quintessential mid-century curmudgeon of an essayist. We could use more provocateurs of Macdonald's ilk these days - our criticism is by and large one of permissiveness, consensus, and mutual back-patting.

Highlight essay for me was the review (evisceration?) of Webster's 3rd, which could be read as a kind of prologue to David Foster Wallace's much more famous "Authority and American Usage" a classic essay in its own right.

Don't think I've chuckled this much reading essays almost all 50 show more years old, and I doubt I will again unless I seek out more of Macdonald's oeuvre. show less

"Say it, not knowing what." — Beckett, The Unnameable

On "Ratcult"

There's a popular saying among physicians, "For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the standard of care." The left-wing partisan treats his comrades the same way, but in the opposite sense — reserving his most excessive punishments for close friends. From the objects of his ire, you can tell Dwight Macdonald is a Fellow Traveler (despite his retrogressive defense of a cultural élite of belles lettres long since show more passed). For certain people, there's nothing more offensive than frank praise of the mediocre, a feeling enhanced the more such mediocrity happens to resembles oneself. Macdonald's polemic against Hemingway is largely correct: we recognize Hemingway's pared-down prose as a particular, fixed stylization without the necessary endurance for the novel. (Macdonald's criticism of Wolfe, however, is premature. Wolfe not yet having written The Bonfire of the Vanities, which I have (highly) praised as "not useless", though written in the style that Macdonald condemns as "parajournalism".) Hemingway also, famously, had little currency with Nabokov, who placed him in far fewer words as a writer of "books for boys". This succinct phrase suggests that the ferocity of Macdonald's essay, in typical left-wing fashion, may come from a quality they have in common. Perhaps Macdonald chafes so hard against Hemingway because his polemical essays, often strongly worded to excess, are what I would call "literary criticism for boys".

"Mid" is making a comeback as derogatory term, though Dwight Macdonald has little to do with it. (My understanding is the term has something to do with cannabis.) Frankly, the short duration of "midcult" as a term of cultural criticism is a bit surprising, given that MacDonald happens to be writing for perhaps the flagship Middlebrow publication — The New Yorker — and that it has always been cool to be a little against the movement of which one is a part. From reading some reviews on this site, it appears that Macdonald's criticism is still helpful for in-group formation among a certain cadre of literate boys. Perhaps this is analogous to the group formation that happens among tween girls, as Eileen Myles elaborates: "Rats. That’s what we called the people who wouldn’t go to college, who were essentially breeders, not 'Harvs.' Which was us—kids who hung out at Harvard Square, who were cool. Just a few years ago we had all been rats" (Myles, Cool for You). If "Midcult", the effusive praise of the products of consumer culture, is bad because it only apes the movements of a High Brow art it knows nothing about, then this is, in the words of Beckett, "[saying] it, not knowing what". Macdonald may perceive this phenomenon but doesn't appear to appreciate the danger inherent in his polemic against it. In fact, our author, and others like him, are the forebearers of what one might call "Ratcult": the effusive criticism of consumer culture that only apes the movements of a real critique. If "Midcult" is liking something because you saw it on TV, "Ratcult" is disliking something because you read an article about it in The New Yorker. (One might, in fact, extend this to the entire media ecosystem of "hate clicks".) We know Macdonald is outdated because, though we are living in the age of "Ratcult", his Baroque essays never mention anything like it. Certainly, if he ever thought about it, he would execrate it more than anything. "Midcult", for Macdonald, might be the pulp fiction paperback at the end of the hall, but "Ratcult" is sharing a byline in the same magazine. And there's nothing that a "Harv" like Macdonald hates more than a "Rat", even though — and especially because — they were both the same girls last year. show less

I have loved this book until it has fallen into tatters. It is now held together by a rubber band. The pages are the texture of last November's leaves (and this is August!). A number are, unforgiveably, missing. At least the essay on 8 1/2, one of the greatest film appreciations ever written, is still intact. As is the page that compares a viewing of Ben-Hur to watching a 4-hour long train pass by.

Dwight Macdonald entered my world as a film critic, but I was delighted to discover he was a critic of the larger scene at the time. This collection of essays expresses that the idea of "American Culture" did exist, but it was a subset of the larger world of European culture, and should be measured by the same international standards. His particular mindset was "One should not say that X was a pretty good idea for an American", but measure it against the best idea or music or drama known and show more set it in its place in the larger frame. Yes, Herman Wouk should be set in the scales against, say Alexandre Dumas, why not. Also he was a good man at a wisecrack. The essays are still readable and had a future in the reprint world. show less