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95-425: Robert Thomas Christgau ( / ˈ k r ɪ s t ɡ aʊ / KRIST -gow ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most well-known and influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and later became an early proponent of musical movements such as hip hop , riot grrrl , and the import of African popular music in
190-558: A freelance writer after a story he wrote about the death of a woman in New Jersey was published by New York magazine. He was among the first dedicated rock critics. He was asked to take over the dormant music column at Esquire , which he began writing in June 1967. He also contributed to Cheetah magazine at the time. He then became a leading voice in the formation of a musical–political aesthetic combining New Left politics and
285-949: A B+ or higher to be a personal recommendation. He noted that in practice, grades below a C− were rare. In 1990, Christgau changed the format of the "Consumer Guide" to focus more on the albums he liked. B+ records that Christgau deemed "unworthy of a full review" were mostly given brief comments and star marks ranging from three down to one, denoting an honorable mention ", records which Christgau believed may be of interest to their own target audience. Lesser albums were filed under categories such as "Neither" (which may impress at first with "coherent craft or an arresting track or two", before failing to make an impression again) and "Duds" (which indicated bad records and were listed without further comment). Christgau did give full reviews and traditional grades to records he pans in an annual November "Turkey Shoot" column in The Village Voice , until he left
380-662: A B.A. degree in English . At college, his musical interests turned to jazz , but he quickly returned to rock after moving back to New York. He has said that Miles Davis 's 1960 album Sketches of Spain initiated "one phase of the disillusionment (in him) with jazz that resulted in my return to rock and roll." He was deeply influenced by New Journalism writers including Gay Talese and Tom Wolfe . "My ambitions when I went into journalism were always, to an extent, literary", Christgau said later. I am interested in those places where popular culture and avant-garde culture intersect. As
475-472: A New Journalist. In an article entitled "The Personal Voice and the Impersonal Eye", Dan Wakefield acclaimed the nonfiction of Capote and Wolfe as elevating reporting to the level of literature, terming that work and some of Norman Mailer 's nonfiction a journalistic breakthrough: reporting "charged with the energy of art". A review by Jack Newfield of Dick Schaap 's Turned On saw the book as
570-713: A bona fide American institution. For music writers, his year-end essays and extensive 'Dean's List' are like watching the big ball drop in Times Square ." These are Christgau's choices for the number-one album of the year, including the point score he assigned for the poll. Pazz & Jop's rules provided that each item in a top ten could be allotted between 5 and 30 points, with all ten items totaling 100, allowing critics to weight certain albums more heavily if they chose to do so. In some years, he often gave an equal number of points to his first- and second-ranked albums, but they were nevertheless ranked as first and second, not as
665-439: A closet ' American Woman ' fan" (from Christgau's review of the 1983 Police album Synchronicity ). "Calling Neil Tennant a bored wimp is like accusing Jackson Pollock of making a mess" (reviewing the 1987 Pet Shop Boys album Actually ); and " Mick Jagger should fold up his penis and go home" (in a review of Prince 's 1980 album Dirty Mind ). In 1978, Lou Reed recorded a tirade against Christgau and his column on
760-459: A contributing editor at Rolling Stone (which first published his review of Moby Grape 's Wow in 1968). Late in 2007, Christgau was fired by Rolling Stone , although he continued to work for the magazine for another three months. Beginning with the March 2008 issue, he joined Blender , where he was listed as "senior critic" for three issues and then "contributing editor". Christgau had been
855-470: A critic, I want to achieve a new understanding of culture in both its aesthetic and political aspects; as a journalist, I want to suggest whatever I figure out to an audience in an entertaining and provocative way. —Christgau (1977) Christgau wrote short stories, before giving up fiction in 1964 to become a sportswriter and later, a police reporter for the Newark Star-Ledger . He became
950-461: A custom car extravaganza in Los Angeles, in 1963. Finding he could not do justice to the subject in magazine article format, he wrote a letter to his editor, Byron Dobell, which grew into a 49-page report detailing the custom car world, complete with scene construction, dialogue and flamboyant description. Esquire ran the letter, striking out "Dear Byron." and it became Wolfe's maiden effort as
1045-522: A depth of reporting and an attention to the most minute facts and details that most newspapermen, even the most experienced, have never dreamed of. In his "Birth of the New Journalism" in New York , Wolfe returned to the subject, which he here described as a depth of information never before demanded in newspaper work. The New Journalist, he said, must stay with his subject for days and weeks at
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#17327797081521140-693: A forum for discussion of journalistic and social activism. In another 1971 article under the same title, Ridgeway called the counterculture magazines such as The New Republic and Ramparts and the American underground press New Journalism. Another version of subjectivism in reporting is what is sometimes called participatory reporting. Robert Stein, in Media Power , defines New Journalism as "A form of participatory reporting that evolved in parallel with participatory politics ..." The above interpretations of New Journalism view it as an attitude toward
1235-473: A good example of budding tradition in American journalism which rejected many of the constraints of conventional reporting: This new genre defines itself by claiming many of the techniques that were once the unchallenged terrain of the novelist: tension, symbol, cadence, irony, prosody, imagination. A 1968 review of Wolfe's The Pump House Gang and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test said Wolfe and Mailer were applying "the imaginative resources of fiction" to
1330-418: A little interest in pop music, they're a treasure." While regarding the early columns as "a model of cogent, witty criticism", Dave Marsh in 1976 said "the tone of the writing is now snotty–it lacks compassion, not to mention empathy, with current rock." Fans of Christgau's "Consumer Guide" like to share lines from their favorite reviews. Wolk wrote, " Sting wears his sexual resentment on his chord changes like
1425-671: A long time he's been called the 'dean of American rock critics'", wrote New York Times literary critic Dwight Garner in 2015. "It's a line that started out as an offhanded joke. These days, few dispute it." Christgau married fellow critic and writer Carola Dibbell in 1974 and they have an adopted daughter, Nina, born in Honduras in 1986. He said that he grew up in a " born-again church" in Queens but has since become an atheist . Christgau has been long, albeit argumentative friends with critics Tom Hull , Dave Marsh , Greil Marcus and
1520-468: A lot of white guys in their 60s waving the flag for Lil Wayne 's Da Drought 3 , especially not in the same column as they wave the flag for a Willie Nelson / Merle Haggard / Ray Price trio album, an anthology of new Chinese pop, Vampire Weekend , and Wussy ..." Christgau reflected in 2004: "Rock criticism was certainly more fun in the old days, no matter how cool the tyros opining for chump change in netzines like PopMatters and Pitchfork think it
1615-437: A new art form which he labelled the "nonfiction novel". I've always had the theory that reportage is the great unexplored art form... I've had this theory that a factual piece of work could explore whole new dimensions in writing that would have a double effect fiction does not have—the very fact of its being true, every word of it's true, would add a double contribution of strength and impact Capote continued to stress that he
1710-461: A panel discussion reported in Writer's Digest , merely reporting what people did and said. Wolfe identified the four main devices New Journalists borrowed from literary fiction : Despite these elements, New Journalism is not fiction. It maintains elements of reporting including strict adherence to factual accuracy and the writer being the primary source. To get "inside the head" of a character,
1805-798: A personal list of his favorite releases called the "Dean's List". Only his top ten count toward his vote in the poll, but his full lists of favorites usually numbered far more than that. These lists–or at least Christgau's top tens–were typically published in The Village Voice along with the Pazz & Jop results. After Christgau was dismissed from the Voice , he continued publishing his annual lists on his own website and at The Barnes & Noble Review . While Pazz & Jop's aggregate critics' poll are its main draw, Christgau's Deans' Lists are noteworthy in their own right. Henry Hauser from Consequence of Sound said Christgau's "annual 'Pazz & Jop' poll has been
1900-539: A precedent which Mailer would later build on in his 1968 convention coverage ( Miami and the Siege of Chicago ) and in other nonfiction as well. Wolfe wrote that his first acquaintance with a new style of reporting came in a 1962 Esquire article about Joe Louis by Gay Talese . " 'Joe Louis at Fifty' wasn't like a magazine article at all. It was like a short story. It began with a scene, an intimate confrontation between Louis and his third wife..." Wolfe said Talese
1995-635: A press event for the 5th Dimension in the early 1970s. According to Rosen, "Christgau was in his late 20s at the time – not exactly an éminence grise –so maybe it was the booze talking, or maybe he was just a very arrogant young man. In any case, as the years passed, the quip became a fact." When asked about it years later, Christgau said that the title "seemed to push people's buttons, so I stuck with it. There's obviously no official hierarchy within rock criticism–only real academies can do that. But if you mean to ask whether I think some rock critics are better than others, you're damn straight I do. Don't you?" "For
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#17327797081522090-442: A regular contributor to Blender before he joined Rolling Stone . He continued to write for Blender until the magazine ceased publication in March 2009. In 1987, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in the field of "folklore and popular culture" to study the history of popular music. Christgau has also written frequently for Playboy , Spin , and Creem . He appears in the 2011 rockumentary Color Me Obsessed , about
2185-466: A stretch. In Wolfe's Esquire piece, saturation became the "Locker Room Genre" of intensive digging into the lives and personalities of one's subject, in contrast to the aloof and genteel tradition of the essayists and "The Literary Gentlemen in the Grandstand". For Talese, intensive reportage took the form of interior monologue to discover from his subjects what they were thinking, not, he said in
2280-467: A three-volume book series, the first of which was published in 1981 as Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies ; it was followed by Christgau's Record Guide: The '80s (1990) and Christgau's Consumer Guide: Albums of the '90s (2000). In his original grading system from 1969 to 1990, albums were given a grade ranging from A+ to E−. Under this system, Christgau generally considered
2375-446: A tie for first. The list shows only his number-one picks. No one in this time and place has the time to sit and listen uninterrupted for sixty minutes to anybody's music. I think Robert Christgau is the last record reviewer on earth who listens to eight records a day twice before giving his opinion on it ... Christgau is the last true-blue record critic on earth. He gave us an A-plus. That's pretty much who I make my records for. He's like
2470-457: Is "hard" to write about in an "impressionistic way", that he is "not at all well-schooled in the jazz albums of the '50s and '60s", and that he has neither the "language nor the frame of reference to write readily about them." This was even while critiquing jazz artists like Miles Davis , Ornette Coleman , and Sonny Rollins ; he said "finding the words involves either considerable effort or a stroke of luck". Christgau has also admitted to disliking
2565-425: Is a style of news writing and journalism , developed in the 1960s and 1970s, that uses literary techniques unconventional at the time. It is characterized by a subjective perspective, a literary style reminiscent of long-form non-fiction. Using extensive imagery, reporters interpolate subjective language within facts whilst immersing themselves in the stories as they reported and wrote them. In traditional journalism,
2660-469: Is an artistic, creative, literary reporting form with three basic traits: dramatic literary techniques; intensive reporting; and reporting of generally acknowledged subjectivity. Pervading many of the specific interpretations of New Journalism is a posture of subjectivity. Subjectivism is thus a common element among many (though not all) of its definitions. In contrast to a conventional journalistic striving for an objectivity, subjective journalism allows for
2755-421: Is arguably one of the two most important American mass-culture critics of the second half of the 20th century... All rock critics working today, at least the ones who want to do more than rewrite PR copy, are in some sense Christgauians." Spin magazine said in 2015, "You probably wouldn't be reading this publication if Robert Christgau didn't largely invent rock criticism as we know it." Douglas Wolk said
2850-410: Is hard to isolate from a number of the more generic meanings. The new nonfiction were sometimes taken for advocacy of subjective journalism. A 1972 article by Dennis Chase defines New Journalism as a subjective journalism emphasizing "truth" over "facts" but uses major nonfiction stylists as its example. Although much of the critical literature discussed the use of literary or fictional techniques as
2945-432: Is inconsistent with objectivity or accuracy. However, others have argued that total immersion enhances accuracy. As Wolfe put the case: I am the first to agree that the New Journalism should be as accurate as traditional journalism. In fact my claims for the New Journalism, and my demands upon it, go far beyond that. I contend that it has already proven itself more accurate than traditional journalism—which unfortunately
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3040-527: Is now." In a broad sense, Christgau says he responds to qualities of "tone, spirit, [and] music", disregarding, for instance, scholarly analysis of artists such as Bob Dylan . He readily admits to having prejudices and generally dislikes genres such as heavy metal , salsa , dance , art rock , progressive rock , bluegrass , gospel , Irish folk , jazz fusion , and classical music . "I admire metal's integrity, brutality, and obsessiveness", Christgau wrote in 1986, "but I can't stand its delusions of grandeur,
3135-542: Is perhaps best known for his "Consumer Guide" columns, which have been published more-or-less monthly since July 10, 1969, in the Village Voice , as well as a brief period in Creem . In its original format, each edition of the "Consumer Guide" consisted of approximately 20 single-paragraph album reviews, each given a letter grade ranging from A+ to E−. The reviews were later collected, expanded, and extensively revised in
3230-553: Is possible through the mere compilation of verifiable facts, the use of direct quotations, and adherence to the rigid organizational style of the older form. Seymour Krim 's Shake It for the World, Smartass , which appeared in 1970, contained "An Open Letter to Norman Mailer" which defined New Journalism as "a free nonfictional prose that uses every resource of the best fiction." In "The Newspaper As Literature/Literature As Leadership", he called journalism "the de facto literature" of
3325-626: Is saying but so much... Wolfe coined "saturation reporting" in his Bulletin of the American Society of Newspaper Editors article. After citing the opening paragraphs of Talese's Joe Louis piece, he confessed believing that Talese had "piped" or faked the story, only later to be convinced, after learning that Talese so deeply delved into the subject, that he could report entire scenes and dialogues. The basic units of reporting are no longer who-what-when-where-how and why but whole scenes and stretches of dialogue. The New Journalism involves
3420-538: Is still really intellectually active? It is tremendously flattering and gratifying that there are people who are ready to help support me." Between 1968 and 1970, Christgau submitted ballots in Jazz & Pop magazine's annual critics' poll. He selected Bob Dylan's John Wesley Harding (released late in 1967), The Who 's Tommy (1969), and Randy Newman 's 12 Songs (1970) as the best pop albums of their respective years, and Miles Davis 's Bitches Brew (1970) as
3515-410: The Voice dismissed Christgau after the paper's acquisition by New Times Media . He continued to write reviews in the "Consumer Guide" format for MSN Music , Cuepoint , and Noisey – Vice ' s music section–where they were published in his "Expert Witness" column until July 2019. In September of the same year, he launched a paid-subscription newsletter called And It Don't Stop , published on
3610-485: The counterculture . After Esquire discontinued the column, Christgau moved to The Village Voice in 1969, and he also worked as a college professor. From early on in his emergence as a critic, Christgau was conscious of his lack of formal knowledge of music. In a 1968 piece he commented: I don't know anything about music, which ought to be a damaging admission but isn't... The fact is that pop writers in general shy away from such arcana as key signature and beats to
3705-464: The muck-raking Stead, and declared that, under this editor, "the P.M.G., whatever may be its merits, is fast ceasing to be literature." Stead himself called his brand of journalism ' Government by Journalism '. How and when the term New Journalism began to refer to a genre is not clear. Tom Wolfe , a practitioner and principal advocate of the form, wrote in at least two articles in 1972 that he had no idea of where it began. Trying to shed light on
3800-559: The murder of John Lennon : "Why is it always Bobby Kennedy or John Lennon? Why isn't it Richard Nixon or Paul McCartney ?" Similar criticism came from Sonic Youth in their song " Kill Yr Idols ". Christgau responded by saying "Idolization is for rock stars, even rock stars manqué like these impotent bohos –critics just want a little respect. So if it's not too hypersensitive of me, I wasn't flattered to hear my name pronounced right, not on this particular title track." Christgau has named Louis Armstrong , Thelonious Monk , Chuck Berry ,
3895-558: The 'New Journalism. ' " John Hohenberg, in The Professional Journalist (1960), called the interpretive reporting which developed after World War II a "new journalism which not only seeks to explain as well as to inform; it even dares to teach, to measure, to evaluate." During the 1960s and 1970s, the term enjoyed widespread popularity, often with meanings bearing manifestly little or no connection with one another. Although James E. Murphy noted that "...most uses of
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3990-492: The 1830s as "new journalism". Likewise, the appearance of the yellow press —papers such as Joseph Pulitzer 's New York World in the 1880s—led journalists and historians to proclaim that a "New Journalism" had been created. Ault and Emery, for instance, said "[i]ndustrialization and urbanization changed the face of America during the latter half of the Nineteenth century, and its newspapers entered an era known as that of
4085-470: The 1978 live album, Take No Prisoners : "What does Robert Christgau do in bed? I mean, is he a toe fucker? [...] Can you imagine working for a fucking year, and you get a B+ from some asshole in The Village Voice ?" Christgau rated the album C+ and wrote in his review, "I thank Lou for pronouncing my name right." In December 1980, Christgau provoked angry responses from Voice readers when his column approvingly quoted his wife Carola Dibbell 's reaction to
4180-533: The Beatles , and the New York Dolls as being his top five artists of all time. In a 1998 obituary, he called Frank Sinatra "the greatest singer of the 20th century". He considers Billie Holiday "probably [his] favorite singer". In his 2000 Consumer Guide book, Christgau said his favorite rock album was either The Clash (1977) or New York Dolls (1973), while his favorite record in general
4275-472: The July 2010 installment would be the last on MSN. On November 22, he launched a blog on MSN, called "Expert Witness", which featured reviews only of albums that he had graded B+ or higher, since those albums "are the gut and backbone of my musical pleasure"; the writing of reviews for which are "so rewarding psychologically that I'm happy to do it at blogger's rates". He began corresponding with dedicated readers of
4370-402: The New Journalism , a collection edited and introduced by Everette E. Dennis, came up with six categories, labelled new nonfiction (reportage), alternative journalism ("modern muckraking"), advocacy journalism, underground journalism and precision journalism. Michael Johnson's The New Journalism addresses itself to three phenomena: the underground press, the artists of nonfiction, and changes in
4465-504: The New Journalism style tended not to be found in newspapers, but in magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly , Harper's , CoEvolution Quarterly , Esquire , New York , The New Yorker , Rolling Stone , and for a short while in the early 1970s, Scanlan's Monthly . Contemporary journalists and writers questioned the "currency" of New Journalism and its qualification as a distinct genre. The subjective nature of New Journalism received extensive exploration: one critic suggested
4560-516: The New Journalism?" wondered Thomas Powers in a 1975 issue of Commonweal . In 1981, Joe Nocera published a postmortem in Washington Monthly blaming its demise on the journalistic liberties taken by Hunter S. Thompson. Regardless of the culprit, less than a decade after Wolfe's 1973 New Journalism anthology, the consensus was that New Journalism was dead. As a literary genre, New Journalism has certain technical characteristics. It
4655-708: The Replacements . He previously taught during the formative years of the California Institute of the Arts . As of 2007, he was an adjunct professor in the Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music at New York University . In August 2013, Christgau revealed in an article written for Barnes & Noble 's website that he was writing a memoir. On July 15, 2014, Christgau debuted a monthly column on Billboard ' s website. Christgau
4750-525: The West. He was the chief music critic and senior editor for The Village Voice for 37 years, during which time he created and oversaw the annual Pazz & Jop critics poll. He has also covered popular music for Esquire , Creem , Newsday , Playboy , Rolling Stone , Billboard , NPR , Blender , and MSN Music ; he was a visiting arts teacher at New York University . CNN senior writer Jamie Allen has called Christgau "the E. F. Hutton of
4845-460: The basis for a New Journalism, critics also referred to the form as stemming from intensive reporting. Stein, for instance, found the key to New Journalism not its fictionlike form but the " saturation reporting" which precedes it, the result of the writer's immersion in his subject. Consequently, Stein concluded, the writer is as much part of his story as is the subject and he thus linked saturation reporting with subjectivity. For him, New Journalism
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#17327797081524940-402: The best jazz album of its year. Jazz & Pop discontinued publication in 1971. In 1971, Christgau inaugurated the annual Pazz & Jop music poll, named in tribute to Jazz & Pop . The poll surveyed music critics on their favorite releases of the year. The poll results were published in the Village Voice every February after compiling "top ten" lists submitted by music critics across
5035-406: The best rock is treated condescendingly unless it conforms to Christgau's passion for leftist politics (particularly feminism ) and bohemian culture." Marsh named another prejudice of Christgau's to be " apolitical or middle-class performers" of rock music. Christgau has been widely known as the "dean of American rock critics", a designation he originally gave to himself while slightly drunk at
5130-532: The blogging platform Medium . In August 2015, he was hired by Vice to write the column for the magazine's music section, Noisey . In July 2019, the final edition of "Expert Witness" was published. In September 2019, at the encouragement of friend and colleague Joe Levy, Christgau began publishing the newsletter "And It Don't Stop" on the newsletter-subscription platform Substack . Charging subscribers $ 5 per month, it has his monthly "Consumer Guide" column, podcasts , and free weekly content like book reviews. He
5225-443: The column, named as "The Witnesses" after the column. On September 20, 2013, Christgau announced in the comments section that "Expert Witness" would cease to be published by October 1, 2013, writing, "As I understand it, Microsoft is shutting down the entire MSN freelance arts operation at that time ..." On September 10, 2014, Christgau debuted a new version of "Expert Witness" on Cuepoint , an online music magazine published on
5320-463: The datum or piece of information but the scene. Scene is what underlies "the sophisticated strategies of prose". The first of the new breed of nonfiction writers to receive wide notoriety was Truman Capote , whose 1965 best-seller, In Cold Blood , was a detailed narrative of the murder of a Kansas farm family. Capote culled material from some 6,000 pages of notes. The book brought its author instant celebrity. Capote announced that he had created
5415-498: The earliest "Consumer Guide" columns were generally brief and detailed, but "within a few years... he developed his particular gift for 'power, wit and economy', a phrase he used to describe the Ramones in a dead-on 37-word review of Leave Home ". In his opinion, the "Consumer Guide" reviews were "an enormous pleasure to read slowly, as writing, even if you have no particular interest in pop music... if you do happen to have more than
5510-673: The editors E.W Johnson and Tom Wolfe, include George Plimpton for Paper Lion , Life writer James Mills and Robert Christgau , et cetera, in the corps. Christgau, however, stated in a 2001 interview that he does not see himself as a New Journalist. The editors Clay Felker, Normand Poirier and Harold Hayes also contributed to the rise of New Journalism. While many praised the New Journalist's style of writing, Wolfe et al., also received severe criticism from contemporary journalists and writers. Essentially two different charges were leveled against New Journalism: criticism against it as
5605-652: The email-newsletter platform Substack and featuring a monthly "Consumer Guide" column, among other writings. Christgau was born in Greenwich Village in Manhattan , New York City, on April 18, 1942. He grew up in Queens , the son of a fireman. He has said he became a rock and roll fan when disc jockey Alan Freed moved to the city in 1954. After attending public school in New York City , Christgau attended Dartmouth College graduating in 1962 with
5700-534: The essay to stream-of-consciousness... In the eighties, the use of New Journalism saw a decline, several of the old trailblazers still used fiction techniques in their nonfiction books. However, younger writers in Esquire and Rolling Stone , where the style had flourished in the two earlier decades, shifted away from the New Journalism. Fiction techniques had not been abandoned by these writers, but they were used sparingly and less flamboyantly. "Whatever happened to
5795-420: The established media. Matthew Arnold is credited with coining the term "New Journalism" in 1887, which went on to define an entire genre of newspaper history, particularly Lord Northcliffe's turn-of-the-century press empire. However, at the time, the target of Arnold's irritation was not Northcliffe, but the sensational journalism of Pall Mall Gazette editor W. T. Stead . He strongly disapproved of
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#17327797081525890-457: The existential threat of mass-extinction into public-consciousness for the first time for most of their contemporary readers. Much of the criticism favorable to this New Journalism came from the writers themselves. Talese and Wolfe, in a panel discussion cited earlier, asserted that, although what they wrote may look like fiction, it was indeed reporting: "Fact reporting, leg work", Talese called it. Wolfe, in Esquire for December, 1972, hailed
5985-487: The genre "New Art Journalism", which allowed him to test it both as art and as journalism. He concluded that the new literary form was useful only in the hands of literary artists of great talent. In the first of two pieces by Wolfe in New York detailing the growth of the new nonfiction and its techniques, Wolfe returned to the fortuitous circumstances surrounding the construction of Kandy-Kolored and added: Its virtue
6080-471: The genre's practitioners functioned more as sociologists and psychoanalysts than as journalists. Criticism has been leveled at numerous individual writers in the genre, as well. Various people and tendencies throughout the history of American journalism have been labeled "new journalism". Robert E. Park , for instance, in his Natural History of the Newspaper , referred to the advent of the penny press in
6175-729: The journalist asks the subject what they were thinking or how they felt. There is little consensus on which writers can be definitively categorized as New Journalists. In The New Journalism: A Critical Perspective , Murphy writes that New Journalism "involves a more or less well defined group of writers," who are "stylistically unique" but share "common formal elements". Among the most prominent New Journalists, Murphy lists: Jimmy Breslin, Truman Capote, Joan Didion, David Halberstam , Pete Hamill, Larry L. King , Norman Mailer, Joe McGinniss , Rex Reed , Mike Royko, John Sack , Dick Schaap, Terry Southern , Gail Sheehy, Gay Talese, Hunter S. Thompson, Dan Wakefield and Tom Wolfe. In The New Journalism ,
6270-404: The journalist is "invisible"; facts are meant to be reported objectively. The term was codified with its current meaning by Tom Wolfe in a 1973 collection of journalism articles he published as The New Journalism , which included works by himself, Truman Capote , Hunter S. Thompson , Norman Mailer , Joan Didion , Terry Southern , Robert Christgau , Gay Talese and others. Articles in
6365-586: The last of that whole Lester Bangs generation of record reviewers, and I still heed his words. He gets my vision, and I'm cool with that. But half these people, they read Pitchfork , and they base half their opinion and quotes on that. — Questlove , 2008 "Christgau's blurbs", writes Slate music critic Jody Rosen , "are like no one else's–dense with ideas and allusions, first-person confessions and invective, highbrow references and slang". Rosen describes Christgau's writing as being "often maddening, always thought-provoking... With Pauline Kael , Christgau
6460-564: The late Ellen Willis whom he dated from 1966 to 1969. He has mentored younger critics Ann Powers and Chuck Eddy . Rock critic Too Many Requests If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below. Request from 172.68.168.226 via cp1108 cp1108, Varnish XID 220924394 Upstream caches: cp1108 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Thu, 28 Nov 2024 07:41:48 GMT New Journalism New Journalism
6555-484: The majority, a synthesis of journalism and literature that the book's postscript called "journalit". In 1972, in "An Enemy of the Novel", Krim identified his own fictional roots and declared that the needs of the time compelled him to move beyond fiction to a more "direct" communication to which he promised to bring all of fiction's resources. David McHam, in an article titled "The Authentic New Journalists", distinguished
6650-412: The manifold incidental details to round out character (i.e., descriptive incidentals). The result: ... is a form that is not merely like a novel . It consumes devices that happen to have originated with the novel and mixes them with every other device known to prose. And all the while, quite beyond matters of technique, it enjoys an advantage so obvious, so built-in, one almost forgets what power it has:
6745-425: The matter, literary critic Seymour Krim offered his explanation in 1973. I'm certain that [Pete] Hamill first used the expression. In about April of 1965 he called me at Nugget Magazine, where I was editorial director, and told me he wanted to write an article about new New Journalism. It was to be about the exciting things being done in the old reporting genre by Talese, Wolfe and Jimmy Breslin . He never wrote
6840-413: The measure ... I used to confide my worries about this to friends in the record industry, who reassured me. They didn't know anything about music either. The technical stuff didn't matter, I was told. You just gotta dig it. In early 1972, Christgau accepted a full-time job as music critic for Newsday . He returned to The Village Voice in 1974 as music editor. In a 1976 piece for the newspaper, he coined
6935-669: The music world–when he talks, people listen." Christgau is best known for his terse, letter-graded capsule album reviews, composed in a concentrated, fragmented prose style featuring layered clauses , caustic wit, one-liner jokes , political digressions, and allusions ranging from common knowledge to the esoteric. Informed by leftist politics (particularly feminism and secular humanism ), his reviews have generally favored song-oriented musical forms and qualities of wit and formal rigor, as well as musicianship from uncommon sources. Originally published in his "Consumer Guide" columns during his tenure at The Village Voice from 1969 to 2006,
7030-436: The nation. Throughout his career at the Voice , every poll was accompanied by a lengthy Christgau essay analyzing the results and pondering the year's overall musical output. The Voice continued the feature after Christgau's dismissal. Although he no longer oversaw the poll, Christgau continued to vote and, since the 2015 poll, also contributed essays to the results. Each year that Pazz & Jop has run, Christgau has created
7125-488: The newspaper in 2006. In 2001, robertchristgau.com–an online archive of Christgau's "Consumer Guide" reviews and other writings from his career – was set up as a co-operative project between Christgau and longtime friend Tom Hull ; the two had met in 1975 shortly after Hull queried Christgau as The Village Voice ' s regional editor for St. Louis. The website was created after the September 11, 2001, attacks when Hull
7220-465: The nonfiction reportage of Capote, Wolfe and others from other, more generic interpretations of New Journalism. Also in 1971, William L. Rivers disparaged the former and embraced the latter, concluding, "In some hands, they add a flavor and a humanity to journalistic writing that push it into the realm of art." Charles Brown in 1972 reviewed much that had been written as New Journalism and about New Journalism by Capote, Wolfe, Mailer and others and labelled
7315-476: The piece, so far as I know, but I began using the expression in conversation and writing. It was picked up and stuck. But wherever and whenever the term arose, there is evidence of some literary experimentation in the early 1960s, as in 1960 when Norman Mailer broke away from fiction to write " Superman Comes to the Supermarket ". A report of John F. Kennedy 's nomination that year, the piece established
7410-450: The practice of journalism. But a significant portion of the critical literature deals with form and technique. Critical comment dealing with New Journalism as a literary-journalistic genre (a distinct type of category of literary work grouped according to similar and technical characteristics ) treats it as the new nonfiction . Its traits are extracted from the criticism written by those who claim to practice it and by others. Admittedly it
7505-539: The records of Jeff Buckley and Nina Simone , noting that the latter's classical background, "default gravity and depressive tendencies are qualities I'm seldom attracted to in any kind of art." Writing in a two-part feature on music critics for Rolling Stone in 1976, Dave Marsh bemoaned Christgau as a "classic, sad example" of how "many critics... superimpos[ed] their own, frequently arbitrary, standards upon performers." Marsh accused him of becoming "arrogant and humorless–the raves are reserved for jazz artists, while even
7600-418: The replacement of the novel by the New Journalism as literature's "main event" and detailed the points of similarity and contrast between the New Journalism and the novel. The four techniques of realism that he and the other New Journalists employed, he wrote, had been the sole province of novelists and other literati . They are scene-by-scene construction, full record of dialogue, third-person point of view and
7695-414: The reviews were collected in book form across three decade-ending volumes– Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981), Christgau's Record Guide: The '80s (1990), and Christgau's Consumer Guide: Albums of the '90s (2000). Multiple collections of his essays have been published in book form, and a website published in his name since 2001 has freely hosted most of his work. In 2006,
7790-402: The simple fact that the reader knows all this actually happened . The disclaimers have been erased. The screen is gone. The writer is one step closer to the absolute involvement of the reader that Henry James and James Joyce dreamed of but never achieved. The essential difference between the new nonfiction and conventional reporting is, he said, that the basic unit of reporting was no longer
7885-539: The style eventually infected other magazines and then books. Rarely mentioned, perhaps because they are somewhat less playfully countercultural in tone, as early and eminent exemplars of the new form are: Hannah Arendt's " Eichmann in Jerusalem "(1963) and John Hersey's " Hiroshima " (1946), and Rachel Carson's " Silent Spring "(1962); articles which introduced, respectively, the Holocaust , nuclear war and
7980-465: The term "Rock Critic Establishment" to describe the growth in influence of American music critics. His article carried the parenthesized subtitle "But Is That Bad for Rock?" He listed Dave Marsh , John Rockwell , Paul Nelson , Jon Landau and himself as members of this "establishment". Christgau remained at The Village Voice until August 2006, when he was fired shortly after the paper's acquisition by New Times Media . Two months later, Christgau became
8075-446: The term seem to refer to something no more specific than vague new directions in journalism", Curtis D. MacDougal devoted the preface of the sixth edition of his Interpretative Reporting to New Journalism and cataloged many of the contemporary definitions: "Activist, advocacy, participatory, tell-it-as-you-see-it, sensitivity, investigative, saturation, humanistic, reformist and a few more." The Magic Writing Machine—Student Probes of
8170-416: The way it apes and misapprehends reactionary notions of nobility". In a 2015 interview, he described heavy metal as "symphonic bombast without the intelligence and complexity, although there's a lot of virtuosity.[...] That music is so masculine in a really retrograde way; I don't like that at all. It seems to me to have a very 19th-century notion of power." He said in 2018 that he rarely writes about jazz as it
8265-402: The web site, especially its high searchability and small interest in graphics, are his idea of what a useful music site should be". In December 2006, Christgau began writing his "Consumer Guide" columns for MSN Music , initially appearing every other month, before switching to a monthly schedule in June 2007. On July 1, 2010, he announced in the introduction to his "Consumer Guide" column that
8360-408: The world around them and termed such creative journalism "hystory" to connote their involvement in what they reported. Talese in 1970, in his Author's Note to Fame and Obscurity , a collection of his pieces from the 1960s, wrote: The new journalism, though often reading like fiction, is not fiction. It is, or should be, as reliable as the most reliable reportage although it seeks a larger truth than
8455-610: The writer's opinion, ideas or involvement to creep into the story. Much of the critical literature concerns itself with a strain of subjectivism which may be called activism in news reporting. In 1970, Gerald Grant wrote disparagingly in Columbia Journalism Review of a "New Journalism of passion and advocacy" and in the Saturday Review Hohenberg discussed "The Journalist As Missionary" For Masterson in 1971, "The New Journalism" provided
8550-635: Was Monk's 1958 Misterioso . In July 2013, during an interview with Esquire magazine's Peter Gerstenzang, Christgau criticized the voters at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame , saying that "they're pretty stupid" for not voting in the New York Dolls. When asked about Beatles albums, he said he most often listens to The Beatles' Second Album –which he purchased in 1965–and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band . Wolk wrote: "When he says he's 'encyclopedic' about popular music, he means it. There are not
8645-443: Was a literary artist, not a journalist, but critics hailed the book as a classic example of New Journalism. Wolfe's The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby , whose introduction and title story, according to James E. Murphy, "emerged as a manifesto of sorts for the nonfiction genre," was published the same year. In his introduction, Wolfe wrote that he encountered trouble fashioning an Esquire article out of material on
8740-406: Was precisely in showing me the possibility of there being something "new" in journalism. What interested me was not simply the discovery that it was possible to write accurate nonfiction with techniques usually associated with novels and short stories. It was that—plus. It was the discovery that it was possible in nonfiction, in journalism, to use any literary device, from the traditional dialogisms of
8835-468: Was skeptical of the platform at first: "Basically I told Joe that if I didn't have enough subscribers to pay what I made at Noisey by Christmas I was going to quit. I wasn't going to do it for less than that money. I had that many subscribers inside of three days." By May 2020, "And It Don't Stop" had more than 1,000 subscribers. Christgau was ambivalent about the platform at first, but has since found it "immensely gratifying" explaining that, "A man my age, who
8930-482: Was stuck in New York while visiting from his native Wichita . While Christgau spent many nights preparing past Village Voice writings for the website, by 2002 much of the older "Consumer Guide" columns had been inputted by Hull and a small coterie of fans. According to Christgau, Hull is "a computer genius as well as an excellent and very knowledgeable music critic, but he'd never done much web site work. The design of
9025-517: Was the first to apply fiction techniques to reporting. Esquire claimed credit as the seedbed for these new techniques. Esquire editor Harold Hayes later wrote that "in the Sixties, events seemed to move too swiftly to allow the osmotic process of art to keep abreast, and when we found a good novelist we immediately sought to seduce him with the sweet mysteries of current events." Soon others, notably New York , followed Esquire ' s lead, and
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