{"id":16596,"date":"2019-08-28T17:13:38","date_gmt":"2019-08-28T21:13:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=16596"},"modified":"2019-08-28T17:13:38","modified_gmt":"2019-08-28T21:13:38","slug":"critics-smoking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/critics-smoking\/","title":{"rendered":"Critics Smoking"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: none; width: 100%; height: 500px;\" src=\"\/\/e.issuu.com\/embed.html?backgroundColor=%23f5f5f5&amp;backgroundColorFullscreen=%23f5f5f5&amp;d=september_2019_pm_flipbook&amp;hideIssuuLogo=true&amp;hideShareButton=true&amp;pageNumber=99&amp;u=portlandmagazine\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><strong><span class=\"s1\">By Dan Domench<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-16610\" src=\"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/philip-guston-fiction-sept19-300x188.jpg\" alt=\"philip guston fiction sept19\" width=\"300\" height=\"188\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/philip-guston-fiction-sept19-300x188.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/philip-guston-fiction-sept19-200x125.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/philip-guston-fiction-sept19-559x350.jpg 559w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/philip-guston-fiction-sept19.jpg 618w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>Di<\/span><span class=\"s1\">rectors must satisfy an audience\u2019s expectation of spectacle using crude tools: guns, cars, make-up, sex, dance, romance, melodrama; but only the great auteurs acknowledge this anticipation directly honoring what we know in our guts to be true, that we are watching animation\u2014a cartoon.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">I was 19 when I wrote that line in one of a series of movie reviews published in the student newspaper of the college I attended in California. Somehow these alcohol-fueled arrogant articles resulted in my sitting across from a famous art critic in the dark living room of his home in the Oakland hills as he read that sentence out loud.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">He exhaled cigarette smoke showing teeth and leaned back in the leather couch, his long body more coiled than relaxed. The sedation from the pint of Southern Comfort I nearly finished driving up the hills to his Spanish-style house was no longer tamping my anxiety. I lit a cigarette of my own. I had prepared for this by reading his most recent book, underlining phrases to break down his paragraph-long sentences. I stuffed his last two essays from\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"s1\"><em>ARTnews<\/em><i>\u00a0<\/i><\/span><span class=\"s1\">and the <em>New York Re<\/em><\/span><span class=\"s1\"><em>view of Books<\/em> into my mind. His intense writing seemed to communicate something important about society that I could not always follow, but it was clear the work of the artists he analyzed was secondary to his larger truths. This hot summer afternoon he was interviewing me for a paid fellowship at UC Berkeley in art criticism, and we were two hours into the conversation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cYour reviews strive to entertain,\u201d he said, \u201cand this effort encourages me to like you. But what if you focused on just one of the ideas you throw around, no matter how absurd? Apply the idea to literature, painting, any art form. Then research and write a book raising yourself above the fray, telling readers why your idea matters, how it illustrates the mess we live in today. How far, for example, could you push your idea that great directors are con men manipulating society for money and status to no good end?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cI never said directors are con men,\u201d I said. \u201cI think it\u2019s clear I love film. I just want it to be good.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cLove,\u201d he said, \u201cand wanting. And here you are. You\u2019ve made no effort to mention my work or try to convince me that you\u2019re interested in being a colleague or even a friend. You want me to think you are simple in your thoughts, but twice you used phrases from my last book and looked at me to see if I recognized them. And you drank alcohol in your car in my driveway where you knew I could see you and stood close enough so that I could smell it on you which only dramatizes a weakness serving as an excuse for future betrayal. You present yourself as an innocent and that makes you dangerous. I\u2019m sure you\u2019ll write about me and this interview and my ridiculousness.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cI won\u2019t do that,\u201d I said, \u201cand I won\u2019t pursue this further.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cNonsense,\u201d he said. \u201cLet\u2019s have a scotch. I\u2019m recommending you for the fellowship.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Critics Smoking, Fiction by Dan Domench<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16611,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[440,23,127,160],"class_list":["post-16596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-dan-domench","tag-fiction","tag-maine","tag-portland-maine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16596"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16617,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16596\/revisions\/16617"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}