John Leonard (critic)

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John Leonard
Leonard in 1974
Leonard in 1974
Born(1939-02-25)February 25, 1939
Washington, D.C., US
DiedNovember 5, 2008(2008-11-05) (aged 69)
New York City, US
Pen nameCyclops
OccupationCritic, writer, author
SpouseSue
Children2

John Leonard (February 25, 1939 – November 5, 2008)[1] was an American literary, television, film, and cultural critic.

For Life and The New York Times he wrote under the pen name of Cyclops.

Biography

John Leonard grew up in Washington, D.C.,

University of California at Berkeley
.

A political leftist, Leonard had an unlikely early patron in

Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.[2][3]

The paper promoted him to daily book reviewer in 1969 and made him the executive editor of the Times Book Review in 1971 at the age of 31. In 1975, he returned to the role of daily book reviewer, championing the work of women writers such as Maxine Hong Kingston and Mary Gordon. He was the first critic to review Nobel Prize-winner Toni Morrison and the first American critic to review Nobel Prize-winner Gabriel García Márquez. From 1977 to 1980, Leonard wrote "Private Lives," a weekly column for the Times about his family, friends, and experiences.

Leonard was a voracious critical

CBS Sunday Morning for 16 years. Leonard taught creative writing and criticism at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. He told the story of Japanese author Kōbō Abe
in every one of these venues.

Leonard wrote extensively about television in his career – for

New York Magazine
from 1984 to 2008, and in his 1997 book Smoke and Mirrors. In addition, he authored four novels and five collections of essays.

Leonard was co-literary editor of

New York Times Book Review and The New York Review of Books. Leonard rated highest among literary critics in a 2006 Time Out New York survey of writers and publishers.[4] He received the National Book Critics Circle's Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006.[5][6]

Leonard died on November 5, 2008, of lung cancer, aged 69. He was survived by his mother, Ruth, wife Sue, two children from his first marriage – Salon.com columnist Andrew Leonard[7] and Georgetown University history professor Amy Leonard[8] – and a stepdaughter, Jen Nessel,[9] who heads the communications department at the Center for Constitutional Rights, as well as three grandchildren: Tiana and Eli Miller-Leonard and Oscar Ray Arnold-Nessel.

Effect on the literary world

The Columbia Journalism Review called Leonard "our primary progressive, catholic [small "c"] literary critic."[10] Stylistically, he was, as CJR dubbed him, an "enthusiast," known for his wit and wordplay, his liberal use of the semicolon and his impassioned examinations of authors and their works. He wrote definitive career essays on the work of writers ranging from Thomas Pynchon and Joan Didion to Eduardo Galeano, Salman Rushdie, Don DeLillo, Mary Gordon, John Cheever, Toni Morrison and Richard Powers.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote of him: "When I read anything by my longtime friend John Leonard, his voice is that of a total stranger. He is too polite in ordinary conversations, with me at least, to set off the fireworks of all he knows and feels after reading and comparing and responding to, in the course of his long career as a literary critic, a thousand times more books than I have even heard of. Only in print does he light the night sky of my ignorance and intellectual lassitude with sizzles and bangs, and gorgeous blooms of fire. He is a TEACHER! When I start to read John Leonard, it is as though I, while simply looking for the men's room, blundered into a lecture by the smartest man who ever lived."

Studs Terkel called him "a critic from whom I learned about my own books." Terkel told the NBCC's Elizabeth Taylor: "He speaks truth to power with a style that is all his own – Leonardian. He is a throwback to a great tradition. He has been a literary critic in the noblest sense of the word, where you didn't determine whether a book was 'good or bad' but wrote with a point of view of how you should read the book."[11]

In 2013, the

John Leonard Prize, presented as part of the NBCC Awards.[12]

Selected works

Books
External videos
video icon Booknotes interview with Leonard on Lonesome Rangers: Homeless Minds, Promised Lands, Fugitive Cultures, June 30, 2002, C-SPAN
Essays and introductions by Leonard feature in
  • "Why I'll Never Finish My Mystery", Murder, Ink (1977)
  • Friends and Friends of Friends, by Bernard Pierre Wolff (1978)
  • "Dodgerisimus", The Ultimate Baseball Book, by Daniel Okrent and Harris Lewine (1979)
  • Man's Fate by Andre Malraux (1984)
  • SoHo: A Picture Portrait (1985)
  • "Ten (or Twenty) of the Best Books of the Millennium", The Millennium Book by Gail Collins and Dan Collins (1991)
  • A Really Big Show: A Visual History of The Ed Sullivan Show (1992)
  • "Educating Television", Imagining Education: The Media and Schools in America, by Gene I. Maeroff (1988)
  • "Follow the Bouncing Ball: How the Caged Bird Learns to Sing", The Business of Journalism, by William Serrin (2000)
  • These United States (introduction and editor, 2003)
  • The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge: A Desk Reference for the Curious Mind (2004)
  • We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: The Collected Nonfiction of Joan Didion (2006)

References

  1. ^ Fox, Margalit (November 7, 2008). "John Leonard, 69, Cultural Critic, Dies". The New York Times.
  2. ^ "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" January 30, 1968 New York Post
  3. ^ "History of War Tax Resistance – The 1960s". NWTRCC.org.
  4. ^ "Critiquing the Critics – Books". Time Out New York. December 7–13, 2006. Archived from the original on November 5, 2007. Retrieved September 5, 2012.
  5. ^ "All Past National Book Critics Circle Award Winners and Finalists" Archived April 27, 2019, at the Wayback Machine. National Book Critics Circle.
  6. ^ "On Sandrof Winner John Leonard". February 2007. Book Critics Circle. (access by invitation only).
  7. ^ "Andrew Leonard". Salon. Retrieved September 5, 2012.
  8. ^ "Amy Leonard". Georgetown University. Retrieved March 17, 2012.
  9. ^ "Jen Nessel". Center for Constitutional Rights. Retrieved March 17, 2012.
  10. ^ O'Rourke, Meghan (January–February 2007). "The Enthusiast – Why you should trust the literary critic John Leonard on the coarsening of our intellectual culture". CJR.org. Columbia Journalism Review. Archived from the original on April 1, 2007. Retrieved February 22, 2007.
  11. ^ "Studs Terkel on John Leonard". February 2007. Book Critics Circle. (access by invitation only)
  12. ^ "NBCC to Add John Leonard Award to Honor First Books; Named After Founding Member" Archived December 22, 2013, at the Wayback Machine. May 2013. National Book Critics Circle.

Further reading

  • Szalai, Jennifer (January 2009). "Reviews: John Leonard (1939–2008)". Harper's Magazine. 318 (1904): 69.

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to John Leonard (American critic).
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