Kate Bolick reviewed A Terry Teachout Reader in yesterday’s New York Times Book Review:
Cultural critics may lack the depth of knowledge that comes with specialization, but Terry Teachout’s self-issued carte blanche to submerge himself in whatever he wants (he is the music critic of Commentary, the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal, and ”critic-for-hire” on everything from opera to television for many other publications) has left him with an unusual and singular perspective on the last 15 years of American cultural activity. Now that the country has crossed its ”great cultural and technological divide,” Teachout writes, as well as finally left postmodernism behind, he hopes his collection will ”have some value as a chronicle, a road map of how we got from there to here.” 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.
If you haven’t yet ordered a copy, go here and do so.