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Manny Farber (1917-2008) was a unique figure among American movie critics.
Champion of what he called "termite art" (focused, often eccentric
virtuosity as opposed to "white elephant" monumentality), master of a
one-of-a-kind prose style whose jazz-like phrasing and incandescent twists
and turns made every review an adventure, he has long been revered by his
peers. Susan Sontag called him "the liveliest, smartest, most original
film critic this country ever produced"; for Peter Bogdanovich, he was
"razor-sharp in his perceptions" and "never less than brilliant as a
writer."
Farber was an early discoverer of many filmmakers later acclaimed as
American masters: Val Lewton, Preston Sturges, Samuel Fuller, Raoul Walsh,
Anthony Mann. A prodigiously gifted painter himself, he brought to his
writing an artist's eye for what was on the screen. Alert to any
filmmaker, no matter how marginal or unsung, who was "doing go-for-broke
art and not caring what comes of it," he was uncompromising in his
contempt for pretension and trendiness-for, as he put it, directors who
"pin the viewer to the wall and slug him with wet towels of artiness and
significance."
The excitement of his criticism, however, has less to do with his
particular likes and dislikes than with the quality of attention he paid
to each film as it unfolds, to the "chains of rapport and intimate
knowledge" in its moment-to-moment reality. To transcribe that knowledge
he created a prose that, in Robert Polito's words, allows for "oddities,
muddles, crises, contradictions, dead ends, multiple alternatives, and
divergent vistas." The result is critical essays that are themselves works
of art.
Farber on Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber (Library
of America) contains this extraordinary body of work in its entirety for
the first time, from his early and previously uncollected weekly reviews
for The New Republic and The Nation to his brilliant later essays (some
written in collaboration with his wife Patricia Patterson) on Godard,
Fassbinder, Herzog, Scorsese, Altman, and others. Featuring an
introduction by editor Robert Polito that examines in detail the stages of
Farber's career and his enduring significance as writer and thinker,
Farber on Film is a landmark volume that will be a classic in
American criticism. For more information about the book or to purchase it, go to The Library of America.
About the Author
Robert Polito, editor, is a poet, biographer, and critic whose books
include Doubles, Hollywood & God, A Reader's Guide to James Merrill's
The Changing Light at Sandover, and Savage Art: A Biography of Jim
Thompson, for which he received the National Book Critics Circle
Award. He directs the Graduate Writing Program at New School University in
New York City.
Farber on Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber is now
available at bookstores everywhere.
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