SALON

Wednesday, Feb 25, 1998 8:00 PM UTC

Always In Pursuit

David Futrelle reviews 'Always in Pursuit' by Stanley Crouch.

By

Topics: Books,

Stanley Crouch has made his reputation as a sort of literary bruiser, both literally and figuratively. He’s known for his savage, slashing assaults on celebrities both highbrow and low — particularly those fellow African-Americans who, in Crouch’s view, take too seriously the pieties of political correctness and multiculturalism. And, like many New York intellectuals of old, Crouch doesn’t always make a clear distinction between writin’ and fightin’. In the jazz world — where Crouch’s often controversial opinions carry a great deal of weight — more than a few of his remarks have led to fisticuffs.

It’s not hard to understand why. Crouch is, if nothing else, blunt in his insults. In the past, he’s dismissed critic bell hooks as a “terrier” and compared novelist Toni Morrison to P.T. Barnum. In his latest collection of essays, “Always in Pursuit,” Crouch — a contributing editor at the New Republic and a columnist for the New York Daily News — takes on everyone and everything from the bland pop of Michael Jackson (“The King of Narcissism”) to the raw comedy of Richard Pryor and Def Comedy Jam (“minstrelsy with dirty words, Uncle Tom cursing his way to the bank”); from Phil Donahue (“irritating … smug … sanctimonious”) to Malcolm X (a “saber-rattling black nationalist … rabble rouser”).

Crouch’s critics on the left have tended to dismiss him as little more than a neocon Uncle Tom, winning plaudits from the establishment for espousing the sort of “political incorrectness” that plays all too well in Peoria. They have a point: Does anyone imagine that it takes much in the way of guts to denounce rap music as “garbage” or to conclude that nuttily Afrocentric City College of New York professor Leonard Jeffries is a “buffoon”? Or that it takes real courage for Crouch to denounce “liberal racism” at a conference sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute? (One of his essays was originally delivered as a talk there.)

Still, Crouch is something more than a neocon hit man. While he generally prefers to attack with a right hook, landing his hardest blows on unsuspecting liberal icons and purveyors of pop culture “garbage,” his ideological affinities are unpredictable, to say the least. “Always in Pursuit” contains loving paeans to the late Ron Brown, former Clinton administration wheeler-dealer, and (even more strangely) to defense attorney Johnnie Cochran, whom one might have expected Crouch to dismiss as a race-baiting conspiracy-monger.

Crouch’s greatest crimes, though, come in the realm of style. Though he has a certain flair with the sound bite, most of Crouch’s sentences are baggy, formless concoctions that only loosely adhere to conventional rules of grammar; his book is a chore to traverse. Take this sentence, a commentary on last year’s summer blockbuster “Twister,” which Crouch seems to think contains some profound lessons on life in postmodern America: “This American Mars and Diana who, far more than a century ago, became the pioneer man and woman on our frontier and have now been remade yet again to speak for the rallying point of the sexes in the face of our shifting redefinitions of each other and of the frontier that is now at least partially about how we shall use our technology to better human life.”

No, it doesn’t take much courage to toss another log on the fire of political correctness. But it does take a certain amount of chutzpah to push a sentence like that into print.

David Futrelle, a regular Sneak Peeks contributor, has written for The Nation, Newsday, and Lingua Franca. More David Futrelle.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations