There's a fine line between lyricism and bluster. At least, there is for Stanley Crouch, the iconoclastic culture critic whose latest book rises to Whitmanesque reverie and sinks to the depths of cheap-shot dismissals, often within the same paragraph. Either way, the contrarian seems to enjoy himself immensely.
Crouch's essay collection, despite its lumbering title, is about more than race. The first section, to be sure, considers affirmative action, identity politics, the NAACP, and the strained relationship between blacks and Jews. (For those as tired of the O.J. Simpson trial as this reader, rest assured that there's only one essay about it.)
A good third of the book is reserved for arguments about jazz, a topic on which Crouch's opinions are well known. Between his writing for the Village Voice, his mentoring of Wynton Marsalis and associates, and his leadership of the Jazz at Lincoln Center program, he has achieved an unparalleled authority. Whether you love or hate his neo-conservative nostalgia, it's hard to deny his influence on his art, which recalls Walter Pater's stamp on the fey young painters and poets of 1890s Britain.
Like most everything-but-the-kitchen-sink collections, The All-American Skin Game is a mixed bag. Few writers, however, juxtapose their best and worst qualities as blithely as Crouch. He has a gift for courageous phrases -- tightly alliterated and rhythmically risky -- that ring in the ear like a great horn line. The downside is that he doesn't always distinguish real insight from glib turns of phrase. Throughout the book he argues that American democracy resembles the blues, even going so far as to compare the Constitution's flexibility to a jazz musician's reworking a familiar song. This is a charming idea the first few times you hear it; after a while, though, it starts to sound forced, no matter how delectable the image of Thomas Jefferson working out improvisations to "Cherokee."
And instead of arguing his most controversial points, Crouch sprinkles them throughout his essays as if they were self-evident. Toni Morrison? She produces "bottles of bathtub corn liquor." Prince? He's a "Minneapolis vulgarian and borderline drag queen." Contemporary American society? It's the "Madonna-Def Comedy Jam era." No doubt this guy would be great to grab a beer with. His guts are undeniable, especially since he unsheathes his poison pen at the most polite occasions -- dissing Morrison, for instance, in the middle of a puffy introduction for anti-rock critic Martha Bayles at the New York Institute of the Humanities. As a critic, though, he risks irresponsibility with such shoot-from-the-hip attacks.
Still, if you relish a good argument and don't mind a lot of moralism, Crouch is one of the most energizing critics on the current scene. His list of darlings and dogs is not as idiosyncratic as it seems. Most of his demons swarm from the academy and the alternative press, two milieux in which he spent much of his professional life. He stands up for the following: Ralph Ellison, jazz historian Albert Murray, white-wigged American democracy, bebop-derived jazz, hard work and moxie, Jackie Kennedy, and the film Menace II Society. He's against: hip-hop, Marxists, Afrocentrists and their academic co-conspirators, James Baldwin, decadence, pessimism, and Public Enemy. He also reserves disdain for white rock critics who think they're: (a) bohemians, (b) teenagers, (c) black, thereby dismissing fully half of this reviewer's friends.
Perhaps the book's best essay is "On the Corner: The Sellout of Miles Davis," which, as posterity wrestles with the flamboyant trumpeter's reputation, may well come to seem more and more on the money. Combining crisp language and an uncommonly sensitive ear, Crouch describes how Davis threw his considerable talent away when he abandoned acoustic jazz for the wealth and visibility of fusion. Even diehard Bitches Brew fans may concede the point here. If every piece matched the guts and clarity of the Davis article -- in which the critic proves his points instead of intoning them -- Crouch would be the finest essayist in America.
In the hands of a more controlled writer like Cornel West, this oratorical style, in which the author's voice booms from behind a pulpit at the assembled masses, affords both intimacy and sweep, determination and ambiguity. For the pugilistic Crouch, oratory is the medium of ringing endorsements and rousing dismissals. Those who don't let a little hectoring get in the way of a good time will find much intelligence and verve in this new collection. Whether your taste is highbrow or boho, left or right, black or white, there's plenty to fight over in The All-American Skin Game.
