What is the difference between a cultural critic and a reviewer? Is one just a more pretentious term? Margo Jefferson, The New York Times Pulitzer Prize writer and this week’s lecturer in the Distinguished Writer series, began her speech Tuesday night by explaining the distinction—and defending her personal choice to call herself a cultural critic.
For Jefferson, it’s an important decision. “As a cultural critic, I examine the questions that are being asked—and sometimes the things that people are not asking—in our culture,” she said.
Etymologically, the word “critic” means “to judge.” And while Jefferson was quick to assert that all people—artists and critics—have limited and inconsistent judgment, she maintained that reviewers provide merely a “consumer guide” while critics examine, feel, recreate and question.
For the past 11 years, Jefferson has critiqued books and theater for The New York Times. Her lecture at Wesleyan was, according to one overheard comment, “one of the more genuine presentations I have seen yet.” Animatedly, with expressive gestures and laughs, in a talk aimed largely at the students and aspiring journalists of the crowd, Jefferson discussed her distinctly un-review-like method of examining and writing the “cultural texts” she studies.
The two elements of criticism that she highlighted are fairness and recreation.
“Fairness is doing justice to all the elements of the text at hand,” she said. “There is no one role you are playing. There is no common reader, no common way of looking at things. Your tone, knowledge and perception all shift.”
Using Mark Twain’s novel “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” as an example, Jefferson discussed the historical progression of thought on the book’s controversial content. A critic must study it with all the information possible before passing judgment, she said. Whereas the novel was first held scandalous by the religious portion of the United States, it later became controversial for its racism. A cultural text, in other words, is never static, and this is a fact that cultural critics must understand.
Similarly, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s famous novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude” has long been considered a classic, a solid part of the literary canon. Now that Oprah recently named it an “Oprah Book Club” selection, the work has been transmitted into popular culture. How does one’s perception of a text change when becomes popularized?
“This constantly changing element of the cultural critic’s work is part of what makes the job so exciting,” Jefferson said. “Whereas scholars immerse themselves in the past, the cultural critic is ‘in the here and now.’”
“You make mistakes [because you are working with contemporary, changing texts],” she said. “But you’re inside the culture, and the mistakes are important too.”
At this point, the recreation aspect of cultural criticism comes into play. What did it feel like to see this performance? How did the bodies look in their movements? How did the language affect you? The most important thing is to “give in to your judgments” about a text, Jefferson said, and only then to analyze them.
“Part of the thrill is to be overwhelmed beyond speech…[criticism] is a hybridity of mind and senses—to be able to judge and feel simultaneously and then give that all a shape.”
After explaining the nature of her work, Jefferson read and commented on a piece she had recently written for the Times. It was a review of a documentary about Emily Dickinson that Jefferson, as one of the poet’s many fans, had disliked. And while the review was certainly negative, she said, she had held off in sections from saying what she really felt because she did not know how to express it then.
By the time she read the piece to the audience, however, she had discovered the words she had formerly lacked. And so she said what she wished she had before, filling in each imperfect section of the review with what she wished she had written. The presentation was disjointed and hard to follow—many times it was unclear whether she was reading the piece as it was printed or commenting on what she would like to have said. But the idea of critically reviewing her own work highlighted the true point of Jefferson’s lecture on Tuesday: to dole out advice to aspiring journalists. Jefferson’s hope seemed to be to give them the analytical tools they need to become critics, and to help them become better writers.
In the question and answer session following the lecture, it was clear that students realized the resource they had in front of them. Virtually every question came from students in ENG163, “Distinguished Writers on Writing,” a course taught by Adjunct Professor of English Anne Greene. One questioned how she changes her tone or her commentary for different audiences, another asked how she researches her critiques, and another simply asked what inspired her about theater.
Though the Chapel was by no means filled that evening, all the audience—students, faculty, and administrators alike—bubbled with comments after Jefferson’s lecture.
“The whole evening was wonderful,” said Joan Jakobson, who sponsored Tuesday’s lecture (her son Nick is a member of the class of 2005). “I know her writing. I follow what she says, and go and see the things she tells me to see.”
Some students were impressed not only by Jefferson’s words but by her lively speaking style as well.
“Her hand gestures were pretty extreme and out there,” said Calvin Cato ’06. “But the points she made were interesting.”
Will Pinson-Rose ’05 called her hand movements “kind of crazy.”
President of the University Doug Bennet, who was smiling and nodding throughout the writer’s lecture, agreed that her presentation was impressive.
“I thought it was a wonderful, fresh presentation,” he said. “Her animation, her choice of words, the grace and power in her writing. To hear her describe how it is done is a wonderful opportunity.”
Margo Jefferson received the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for her work with the New York Times, where she has been on staff since 1993. Her reviews and essays have appeared various prestigious publications such as Newsweek, Vogue, Harper’s and the Village Voice. She is currently working on two books.
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