Hilton Kramer, A Man of Arts & Letters

The 25th anniversary season of the New Criterion, a monthly journal devoted to the arts and intellectual life, was the occasion for a dinner in honor of its founder, Hilton Kramer.“More than any other critic of our time – more energetically, more relentlessly, more brilliantly, more courageously – Hilton has stood out against the degradation of modernism in the arts and the symbiotic degradation of liberalism in politics and culture,” Commentary magazine editor-at-large Norman Podhoretz said at the dinner.Friends and colleagues gathered in Midtown to celebrate a magazine that recalls a time – according to the editor’s note in its first issue – “when criticism was more strictly concerned to distinguish achievement from failure, to identify and uphold a standard of quality.” It has sought to “speak plainly and vigorously about the problems that beset the life of the arts and the life of the mind in our society.”Mr. Podhoretz offered an anecdote that epitomized Mr. Kramer’s qualities: The story goes that one night, when Hilton was still chief art critic of the New YorkTimes, he found himself seated next to Woody Allen, who asked him whether he felt embarrassed when he ran into people whose work he had attacked. “No,” Hilton replied without missing a beat,”I expect them to be embarrassed for doing bad work.”Essayist Joseph Epstein sent remarks that New Criterion co-editor Roger Kimball read aloud. In the remarks, Mr. Epstein recalled the late University of Chicago sociologist Edward Shils, who had admired Mr. Kramer, once saying that what philosopher Sidney Hook and Hilton Kramer had in common “was hatred of a lie.”Mr. Epstein first encountered the name Hilton Kramer in 1959 when, stationed at an army base in Little Rock, Ark., he read an attack on the New Yorker magazine that Mr. Kramer wrote in Commentary. He next encountered Mr. Kramer’s work, “when I was associate editor of the New Leader and he was the magazine’s regular art critic. I resented him slightly because, as an editor, he gave me nothing to do, so clean and finished was his copy, though on occasion I was able to remove a set of double dashes and replace them with commas, which he charitably allowed me to do.”Mr. Epstein recalled that in 1962, Mr. Kramer became an associate editor of the New Leader. “His vocabulary delighted me; dressed out in his own special New England accent, it was even better. I had never heard anyone use the word ‘lavish’ with the same comic emphasis,” he said. “When the rather philistine editor of the New Leader once asked him if every piece of art criticism had to contain the word ‘oeuvre,’ Hilton replied that he wasn’t certain, but he could promise that every piece of his would have at least one oeuvre in it.”Speaking of the New Criterion, Judge Bork said only William F. Buckley drove him to the dictionary more frequently: “The shorter OED in two volumes is not sufficient.”Deputy director of the White House office of public liaison, Tim Goeglein, read greetings from President Bush.He also quoted American pragmatist philosopher William James in referring to Mr. Kramer’s achievement: “The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.”The crowd included artists Helen Frankenthaler and Paul Resika; American Spectator editor and New York Sun columnist R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.; Mark Steyn, a New York Sun columnist who went on to receive the Breindel Award the following evening; Midge Decter; Andre Emmerich; Commentary editor Neal Kozodoy; Hudson Institute president Herbert London; attorney and classicist William Warren; critic John Simon; a deputy managing editor at the Atlantic Monthly, Robert Messenger, formerly the deputy managing editor of The New York Sun; and Michael Grebe, president of the Bradley Foundation.Mr. Kimball recalled the first time he met Mr. Kramer. “I was in graduate school at Yale and, doubtless because of that insalubrious influence, I ventured some cheery words about postmodern architecture. Hilton demolished that illusion quicker than you can say ‘Philip Johnson,’ and I never looked back.”They unveiled a portrait of Mr. Kramer, by Claude Buckley, as a token of esteem. As anyone who has seen Mr. Kramer’s library knows, a book would be like bring coals to Newcastle, Mr. Kimball said.“I’ve had a very lucky life,” Mr. Kramer said, stepping to the podium. “What brings us together,” he said, “is we’re all on the right side.”gshapiro@nysun.com

Hilton Kramer, A Man of Arts & Letters

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