Has anyone read the Eggleston review in the New Yorker

[Tuolumne]

I am not anti-intellectual. I AM an intellectual...But I thought this was a load of pretentious, precious, horse manure:

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critic...rld_schjeldahl

/T

[aizan]

i agree. the writing is obnoxious and doesn't really say anything insightful.

[HuubL]

William Eggleston, Peter Schjeldahl, they belong to the same world, in another universe, unapprehensible by laymen like us....

[Carlsen Highway]

The fella that wrote that has his thesaurus too close to his keyboard I think. Some of it is so overblown it doesnt hardly read properly.

"synthetic gorgeousness iconizes pictures that flaunt the nonchalance of snapshots."

I know what he means, but you could use a couple of ten cent words that say it clearer...

[nightfly]

I haven't read the review but I thought that's just par for the course for the New Yorker. I'm definitely in their demographic, liberal, "intellectual" New Yorker but I find a lot of the work in there, besides the investigative type of Seymour Hersh stories, pretty pretentious. And this is coming form someone who reads the New York Review of Books.

There was a great Family Guy where Brian gets a job at the New Yorker and he asks where the bathroom is and discovers that there are no toilets and when he inquires the person in charge says "This is the New Yorker we don't have anuses"

[dave lackey]

I'm not even sure what an "intellectual" is...

I enjoyed reading the article because I know little of Eggleston. But, it did smack me in the face when I read about being born rich in Memphis with all the advantages.

Outside of that, and plowing through the language, I enjoyed the article.

Where is the manure?

[simonSE15]

a ridiculous exercise is name-dropping. Nan Goldin, Catrier-Bresson, Roland Barthes. is there anyone who didnt get a metion?

[peter_n]

I have a subscription but often tend to "speed-read" it. It can be a bit much sometimes I agree.

[dave lackey]

Originally Posted by peter_n

I have a subscription but often tend to "speed-read" it. It can be a bit much sometimes I agree.

Ha! I don't have a subscription because I can speed-read that rag whilst at the dentist's office.

I dunno, why is it that some writers can't just write at the level of the "average" reader? Can you imagine reading a novel with the language used? My head hurt just from reading the single article.

But, I still can't find the manure....

[david b]

My favorite sentence from the reviewer is:
"Synthetic gorgeousness iconizes pictures that flaunt the nonchalance of snapshots."

[david b]

BTW, Cartier Bresson was born rich as well. That's how he afforded the time to capture "the decisive moment".

[M. Valdemar]

I go to the flea market a lot.

Sometimes I buy old photos and slides that I like.

If I found a box of Eggleston photos (and didn't know they were worth something), I would put them in the garbage.

[sooner]

I can't disagree about the pretentiousness of the New Yorker, but being a New Jersey transplant here in Oklahoma I kind of like it. After all, you wouldn't go to see the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall and then complain that nobody walks like that. But as far as I'm concerned, the investigative pieces a la guys like Seymour Hirsch make the magazine invaluable.

[M. Valdemar]

I've never worked a day in my life.

[wlewisiii]

I haven't read the article and don't intend to - I can certainly imagine it easily enough. It's annoying how some people just have to go out of their way to wear their hat on their as*.

There's a review in a recent issue of the New York Times as well, but I've not read that one either as I've never been able to get anything from Eggleston's works. If one of you could give me a pointer to a good (online or printed) overview of his work, I would appreciate it.

William

[M. Valdemar]

I like dog photos. Anyone got any good dog photos? Or naked Japanese girls. I like those too.

[M. Valdemar]

Well, then, why did Eggleston just take pictures of old junk in windows or busted tricycles?

If he's so smart where are his dog photos and Japanese girls?

[M. Valdemar]

That's a Chinese dog. I can't understand what he's saying.

[kevin m]

The New Yorker is perhaps the best general-interest publication in the English language. The fiction I usually give a miss, but the "Reporter at Large" series alone is worth the price of admission. And we haven't even mentioned the cartoons yet.

No one here would demand that a photographer print down to our level; why would anyone demand that a writer do the same?

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Originally Posted by photomoof

Well you foolish man, everyone likes those.

I only have dog photos.

Most dog photos suck, but William Wegman's are pretty cool despite the fact that they depict dogs (I'm a cat person).

[M. Valdemar]

After the mid-1960's the New Yorker cartoons went downhill.

Today, they are simply an embarrassment. Dreadful.

[kevin m]

Today, they are simply an embarrassment. Dreadful.

Your absolute faith in your narrow judgements is amusing.

[M. Valdemar]

Originally Posted by kevin m

Your absolute faith in your narrow judgements is amusing.

Even more amusing because I'm 100% correct.

[sooner]

I approach the New Yorker a little bit like I listen to sermons in church. Some weeks I skip altogether, other times I am enlightened, annoyed, or amused. Sometimes I am struck by a certain beauty without necessarily agreeing with anything. But when that Hirsch article comes along, I am reminded of what our "free" press is supposed to be doing.

[mabelsound]

Jesus, guys, are you nuts? That article is utterly straightforward. Peter Schjedahl is an excellent critic--I like him precisely because he doesn't obfuscate, and brings clarity to complex and subtle subjects. I don't see a single thing in there that's difficult to understand.

He’s an aesthete, not a propagandist. His great subject is the too-muchness of the real. He does regularly suppress one significant element of lived experience: time. His art re-proves Roland Barthes’s influential theory of the punctum—a Proustian quantum of lost time—as intrinsic to photography’s emotional power.

Yes, that's exactly right. It's a succinct description of part of what makes Eggleston great. You don't need to have read Barthes to understand it, you just have to think about it for a second.

The New Yorker isn't pretentious. It's a general-interest magazine. Rise to the challenge, guys. It's not that difficult.