On Reviewing

As biographers often write a word about biography that is usually of no interest to anyone until possibly after completing the book and looking for a couple last salacious details, so I would like to say a word about reviewing before I begin this blog, the purpose of which is to review plays. One night a couple years ago, I was sitting on my bed in my apartment on the East Side of Los Angeles, reading from a pile of books that I had picked up at the Central Public Library downtown. I had been reading Charles Bukowski and had then moved on to a book about Susan Sontag and Pauline Kael. It was getting close to when I wanted to turn off the light and I was basically only skimming for salacious details when suddenly I sat up and gave myself some advice: "It is always better to be Sontag than Kael." Kael was the populist, perhaps more courageous in her attitude toward enjoying low culture not as camp but simply as it was meant to be enjoyed, purposely at odds with what she saw as "the trap of condescension" that pervaded much of contemporary American criticism. Sontag was brilliant, ever serious, the purist and it was she who defined the dialogue. Kael is a name increasingly unknown among people my age (b. 1983) and Sontag is a name emblazoned upon the intellectual history of the 20th century. Most people who know both writers will agree that Sontag was a Critic and Kael was a critic. But even as I said those words to myself, I think I knew that the writing was already on the wall. I have never succeeded in defining an insider outlook, or even in agreeing with one. In all likelihood, the majority of this blog will be devoted to exposing the cracks in the paint of the well-reviewed as well as defending trash that everyone else hated. I generally accept this contrarian streak of mine, but it is not without regret that I embark on this endeavor, knowing that it is always better to be Susan Sontag than Pauline Kael (leaving aside for a moment the plight of being Camille Paglia).