A Terry Teachout Reader
By Terry Teachout
Yale University, 438 pp., $35
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. Beauty is real and worth fighting for, and he is ready to accept the challenge of the ''pesto-and-phallocentrism crowd" and others.
The best pieces in this collection of illuminating and often electrifying short essays -- originally published in the New York Times Book Review, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Crisis, New Dance Review, and the National Review -- focus on modern dance and jazz. The essays on Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, Jerome Robbins, Merce Cunningham, and Leonard Bernstein are sensational. Isadora Duncan is a ''top-seeded contender for the title of least intentionally amusing person ever." But Teachout is outspoken about writers and critics as well. He forcefully defends Willa Cather against ''the mills of trendiness [which] grind ceaselessly . . . in the age of feminist criticism." He is unafraid to attack the practitioners of black studies and what he calls their ''fellow literary-theory racketeers." Dashiell Hammett and Lillian Hellman are ''the Nick and Nora of the limousine left." Dance critic Arlene Croce ''made the mistake of being right at the wrong time." Just when you feel at ease with his sharp criticism, he goes soft in the last essay, on singer Nancy LaMott, and breaks your heart.
