COVER STORY
Critics
Kurt Andersen and the critic Terry Teachout explore the role criticism plays in the arts today, and how the internet is changing what it means to be a critic.

Adams VS. DeRogatis
Ryan Adams played in Chicago last December, and the Sun-Times' music critic, Jim DeRogatis, panned him. Adams left a heartfelt, enraged message on the writer's voicemail, which DeRogatis then broadcast to all of Chicago when he did his weekly radio show. Mayhem ensues. Produced by Steve Nelson.
Jim's Radio show
Ryan Adams' site
A Link to the full review

Musical Invective
Critics make mistakes all the time. A musicologist named Nicholas Slonimsky collected them - short-sighted, ignorant, or vitriolic reviews of what we now consider masterpieces. We set excerpts from Slonimsky's Lexicon of Musical Invective to music. Produced by Jonathan Mitchell.
Go to The Lexicon of Musical Invective on Amazon.com

Norman Mailer
Norman Mailer never took critics very seriously; 50 years ago he bought a full-page ad quoting their attacks on one of his early novels. He told us about the critic he liked best: Dwight MacDonald, one of the literary heavyweights of mid-century America. MacDonald was anything but dogmatic. Produced by Trey Kay.
Random House website on Norman Mailer
A website on Norman Mailer's Life and Works
A website on Dwight MacDonald

Kids' Books
We asked two prominent book critics the question, How do you write a serious review of a book called Everybody Poops? Produced by Matt Holzman.
Go to the Storyopolis website
Go to the Horn Book Magazine website
Go to reviews of children's books by the New York Times

Diamanda Galas
We asked the avant-garde composer and vocalist Diamanda Galas what she looks for in a critic of her music. Galas is Greek and sings many languages, so she immediately went to the etymology of the matter. Produced by Trey Kay.
Go to Diamanda Galas' website
Go to a review by Edward Batchelder

Jacob Young
Art can attract criticism long before people have even seen it, as was recently the case with Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ. Sometimes, criticism can kill a work of art before it exists. Last year, Jacob Young was asked to make a reality shows for CBS called the Real Beverly Hillbillies. Young was an award-winning filmmaker best known for a serious documentary about Appalachian people, The Dancing Outlaw, and he wanted to make a better kind of reality TV that would portrayed Southern life positively. But when politicians heard about the project, they denounced it from the floor of Congress, and The Real Beverly Hillbillies was canceled before ever hitting the airwaves. Produced by Trey Kay.
Go to the Dancing Outlaw website
Go to the Center for Rural Strategies website

SPECIAL GUEST
Terry Teachout
Terry Teachout is the rare critic who covers music, dance, books, and the visual arts. He is a columnist for the Washington Post, drama critic for the Wall Street Journal, and a music critic for Commentary. The Terry Teachout Reader, a collection of his essays, has just been published by Yale University Press. The Skeptic is Teachout's biography of H.L. Mencken, and he is writing a biography of choreographer George Ballanchine. On the internet, Teachout writes a blog about the arts, updated constantly, called "About Last Night."
Go to books by Terry Teachout
Goto terryteachout.com
Go to maudnewton.com/blog

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Commentary
Bob's Secret
Advertisers use celebrities to hawk their products on TV all the time. But Kurt Andersen is still getting over the shock of seeing a musical legend during the commercial break.

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