James Wolcott

Fancy that, a talking stag! Wolcott on Lit > TV > Rock > Film. The density of later publications made me a bit wistful for the length restrictions of his Voice/Texas Monthly reviews, but that's a shallow complaint when we're dealing with prose as fine-woven as this. Favorite tendency is his fondness for a parenthetical gag after quoting an author - the opening fragment here following a ludicrous love scene out of Mailer. The closing Lena Dunham essay from TNR was, I think, my real introduction to Wolcott and spurred this impromptu purchase. It's not his best work, but it's a fitting end note; in applying his style to a Millennial celebrity like Dunham, a descendant of the New York arts scene that so sculpted Wolcott's sensibility, he's able to expose how meandering most of the discourse about her work really is, and gets off plenty of jabs at the right targets along the way.… (meer)

Wolcott is a talented writer who knew Mailer and Kael and was in the middle of the mid-'70s CBGBs scene, yet his book is a snooze. Wolcott is fond of long sentences put together in long paragraphs for page after long page; when a bit of dialog appears in this stuffy construction, it's to be savored like a brief breeze in an airless room. The attitude is somewhat witty, but mostly dry. Reading it is like listening to a guy who's not that passionate about what he's saying, yet who can't stop talking.

I get the feeling that if Wolcott got only semi-dirty in the Seventies, it's because he was only semi-involved—always looking on, noting names and eager to get back to where he really wanted to be, at his typewriter.… (meer)