Michael Kammen. The Lively Arts: Gilbert Seldes and the Transformation of Cultural Criticism in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. x + 495 pp. $35.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-19-509868-6.
Reviewed by Christopher Berkeley
Published on H-PCAACA (April, 1997)
How does a historian write a biography of an he recalled a few years before his death, "One of intellectual whose writings at the beginning of his the charming evenings of my life was when I career helped establish The Wasteland and Uly‐ came home and found two letters--one from T.S. sees in the modernist canon, and at the end wrote Eliot and the other from Paul Whiteman." Other a favorable review of The Beverly Hillbillies in TV fgures as diverse as Picasso, Van Wyck Brooks, Guide? Michael Kammen, one of the most gifted Edmund Wilson, Hemingway, Edward R. Murrow, and prolifc historians of the last quarter century, Jimmy Durante, Jack Benny, Charlie Chaplin, Dos shows in this richly detailed and appreciative bi‐ Passos, and Fitzgerald were Seldes' friends and ography that Gilbert Seldes' intellectual journey sometimes adversaries. from Joyce to Jethro is not as strange as it seems Kammen's is a conventional, even old-fash‐ at frst glance. ioned, biography. After giving brief accounts of Seldes (1893-1969) occupies a unique niche in Seldes' upbringing in the communitarian Alliance, the intellectual and cultural history of twentieth- New Jersey, and education at Harvard College, century America. While best known as the frst Kammen focuses almost exclusively on Seldes' "highbrow" intellectual to treat popular culture as public life and writings. After graduation in 1914, a serious subject for cultural criticism, his career Seldes became a journalist, but, unlike his famous also included: stints as managing editor of one of younger brother George, this phase of his career the most famous "little magazines" of the 1920s, lasted just until after the First World War. More The Dial, a theatrical producer, a radio writer and attracted by literature and the theater than to pol‐ producer, the frst director of programming for itics, Seldes soon moved on to criticism. A critical CBS television, and as Dean of the Annenberg turn in his career came when an old Harvard School of Communications. Perhaps Seldes him‐ classmate ofered him a position editing The Dial. self describes best his engagement across the The position ft Seldes' interests perfectly; The spectrum of twentieth-century cultural life when Dial not only was modernist in its literary out‐ H-Net Reviews look, but enthusiastic about popular entertain‐ in his source material, however, that he often ment as well. This experience provided the back‐ slights the larger intellectual and cultural context ground for Seldes' most famous work, The Seven infuencing--and infuenced by--Seldes' writing. Lively Arts, published in 1924. In it, Seldes not For example, while Kammen ably portrays Seldes' only included essays on the theater (along the work on The Dial and the magazine's position vis lines of Heywood Broun or Alexander Woolcott, a vis other literary magazines of the 1920s, he although disagreeing with them often), but flm does not discuss the tensions inherent in Seldes and comic strips as well. and his Dial colleagues' simultaneous embrace of After The Seven Lively Arts established his literary modernism and popular entertainments. reputation as an important critic, Seldes pub‐ Likewise, Kammen leaves unexplored Seldes' lib‐ lished widely: he became a regular flm critic for eral (for their time) racial views, with his opinion The New Republic, a columnist for the New York that "nothing the negro ofers can matter" to civi‐ Evening Journal and The Saturday Evening Post, lization. How Seldes could write such a line while and wrote books of criticism and on American being a noted jazz enthusiast cries out for exami‐ history and current events, and contributed arti‐ nation. cles to nearly every high- and middle-brow maga‐ This dissatisfaction is minor, however, as it zine of the time. As if his writing did not keep him deals with what the book is not rather than what busy enough, he also adapted and staged a highly it is. It would be unfair to demand that Kammen successful (in fnancial terms) Lysistrata in 1930. (in a book already 400 pages long) trace out all the In 1939 he collaborated with Benny Goodman, infuences acting upon Seldes and, in turn, the in‐ Walt Disney, and Agnes Demille in producing a fuence he exercized in his many felds of endeav‐ jazz version of A Midsummer Night's Dream, or. Kammen himself seems to sense that the work called Swingin' the Dream, with an interracial cast defning Seldes' place in twentieth-century intel‐ that included Louis Armstrong, "Moms" Mabley, lectual and cultural history is incomplete. Rather Butterfy McQueen, and Billy Bailey. than ending his book with a grand summation, Another turning point in Seldes' career came Kammen quotes at length from an obituary, and in 1937 when he became Director of Program‐ notes that Seldes was both an "engaging" and "vul‐ ming for CBS Television. He produced some radio nerable" cultural critic. Gilbert Seldes will no scripts during the war, but CBS let him go in 1945. doubt attract more attention from scholars be‐ Nevertheless, Seldes attention as a media critic cause of this book, and Kammen has provided an shifted from flm and radio to television, a shift invaluable starting point for them. exemplifed in The Public Arts, his last major Copyright (c) 1997 by H-Net, all rights re‐ work, published in 1956. With his career in its served. This work may be copied for non-proft waning phase, Seldes accepted the deanship of educational use if proper credit is given to the au‐ the newly established Annenberg School of Com‐ thor and the list. For other permission, please con‐ munications (founded by Walter Annenberg, tact [email protected]. whose TV Guide published a number of Seldes' re‐ views) in 1959, retiring from the post in 1963. Kammen covers this variegated terrain sure- footedly, relying on Seldes' published writings, manuscript collections of his many friends and colleagues, and a private collection of papers held by the Seldes family. Kammen is so well grounded
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Citation: Christopher Berkeley. Review of Kammen, Michael. The Lively Arts: Gilbert Seldes and the Transformation of Cultural Criticism in the United States. H-PCAACA, H-Net Reviews. April, 1997.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=920
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