RTP-area local music and culture

["5er (martin)" <mdhall005 AT yahoo.com>]

seems so folks (namely other critics - fuddy duddies)
are a bit up an arms over the Pulizter's decision:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/08/arts/08PULI.html


Some Highish Brows Furrow as a Car Critic Gets a
Pulitzer
By DAVID CARR

Published: April 8, 2004


o some in the critical community who encounter
automobiles only when they take taxis, the awarding
this week of the Pulitzer Prize for criticism to
someone who writes about cars was enough to fog the
opera glasses.

"If you write about cars, it is reportage," said John
Simon, theater critic of New York magazine. "It is not
criticism, even though it postures as criticism. Cars
are utilitarian things. You might as well be a critic
of kitchen utensils."

By winning the top prize for newspaper critics, Dan
Neil of The Los Angeles Times — who once found himself
out of a newspaper job after writing a column about
nonmarital relations in the back of a Ford truck —
earned $10,000 and the envy of all those who array
discernment over theater, books, opera, films and a
host of other fine arts.

In serving as a vehicle for Mr. Neil's award, cars
have extended their dominion over yet one more
component of the cultural dialogue. The Pulitzer
arbiters of critical excellence, normally preoccupied
with those who define the merits of Off Broadway
theater or building design, had suddenly legitimized
the critical annotation of sheet metal on four wheels.

In announcing the selection, the Pulitzer board lauded
Mr. Neil's "one-of-a-kind reviews of automobiles,
blending technical expertise with offbeat humor and
astute cultural criticism." The award was for a weekly
column, "Rumble Seat," that Mr. Neil began writing for
The Los Angeles Times only last September, although he
has been writing about cars for years.

Donald H. Forst, editor in chief of The Village Voice
and a member of the Pulitzer jury that reviewed the
criticism submissions, found Mr. Neil's work not only
outstanding, but also irresistible.

"Once his stuff is put in front of you, you couldn't
help but laugh," he said. "He made very good points
about the cars, but the culture as well." Mr. Neil,
44, said he did not have an opinion on whether his
award represented a moment of arrival for the
automobile or an inflection point in the history of
criticism. 

>From where he sits, which is usually behind the
windshield of whatever car he happens to be road
testing, cars are a persistent and worthy obsession.

"Los Angeles is a society that has a lover's death
grip with the car, and it becomes a thing that
literally suffocates you," he said, referring to the
smog that sometimes blankets the city. "It really
isn't even a good city to drive in, but people are
willing to buy into cars as an object of prestige, a
status symbol in the mechanical caste system. For them
and others, cars are an object d'art.

"Criticism is about expectation and the fulfillment of
expectation," he added. "I write about what kind of
expectations are created and whether something meets
those expectations. That's the job of a critic."

Mr. Neil writes, for example, of the banalities of an
Acura sedan. "The 2004 Acura TL will raise no one's
blood lust, nor will it send anyone into an
eye-lolling frenzy. The TL is Botox for the brain
box." 

And he sighs at the glories of a 552-horsepower
Bentley. "At the drag strip, this regal and elegant,
expressive and exclusive grand touring coupe eats
Porsches like Emeril eats shrimp."

With his gorgeous language and hilarious asides, Mr.
Neil is a literary embodiment of Benjamin Franklin's
maxim about moderation in all things, including
moderation.

"I see myself primarily as an entertainer," Mr. Neil
said. "You can't tell anybody anything unless you get
them to read. People have noted my rhetorical
excesses, and I just see it as a way to keep people
involved long enough to tell them what I want to tell
them."

Some critics, including some who have fought the
battle to establish the seriousness of their own
disciplines, greeted Mr. Neil's ascension into the
front ranks of American critical writing as logical,
if a little surprising.

"I have as little interest in cars as one can have and
still live in this society," said Robert Christgau,
who helped muscle rock writing into critical
legitimacy four decades ago, mostly writing for The
Village Voice. "In principle, criticism is about
cultural objects or phenomena, and I think cars
qualify on both counts. There is a lot of great
writing about architecture, and how different, really,
are cars from buildings?"

Kim France, the editor in chief of Lucky — a magazine
that obsesses over many things, though not cars — also
found the Pulitzer board's choice refreshing.

"Cars are literally what connects the city of Los
Angeles," said Ms. France, who spent significant parts
of her career writing seriously about rock music and
other cultural topics. "I'm sure some people will
clench their fists and decry the award as the end of
our culture, but it seems like a completely reasonable
choice to me."

Speaking not for attribution — one would not want to
antagonize the arbiters of journalism's brass ring —
several critics noted that the Pulitzer board has
demonstrated a historic bias toward the more physical
expression of the arts. The very first Pulitzer in
criticism went, in 1970, to Ada Louise Huxtable, the
architecture critic of The New York Times. The
runners-up in this year's competition wrote about
architecture as well. 

The only previous criticism winner who did not write
about the arts, television or architecture was David
Shaw, the media critic of The Los Angeles Times. 

Adam Gopnik, a staff writer at The New Yorker,
suggested that a critic's subject was less important
than having a mastery of it.

"The worst thing in the world is to confuse values and
categories," he said. "If someone who is writing about
cars embodies all of the values of good criticism,
then it doesn't matter what category it falls into. We
often find literary value in the strangest places,
which is what makes reading interesting and exciting
to begin with."

As carmakers have used idiosyncratic design to drill
into various niches — think of everything from the
Mini Cooper to the Hummer — the task of teasing apart
the intention and functionality of those efforts has
taken on gravitas. 

"Because people in New York don't drive, they have no
idea that cars are a huge cultural phenomena," said
Steve Spence, managing editor of Car and Driver. "A
car is the second-biggest purchase next to a house,
and I think it's surprising that the Pulitzer's never
looked before at critics of things automotive."

-5er

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