Brilliant Writing

When would-be authors ask me what great writing is, I usually ask them what they've read and am invariably distressed to see how little reading they do.

A better response might be to ask them, "Do you read Anthony Lane in the New Yorker? You should. You will learn what great writing is."

Lane is the main reason I maintain a subscription to that magazine since his witty and literate film reviews are gems. Not long ago I found on sale his book of reviews (book as well as movie reviews) called "Nobody's Perfect."   As I skim through these brilliant essays on everything from The Godfather to obituaries in the New York Times to T. S. Eliot, whose work he studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, I delight in the wide range of his interests and tastes, from high to low-brow. He puts just as much attention on the latest Hollywood non-starter as on Nabokov or Shakespeare on film (the topic of one of his longer essays).  And it is obvious that he has honed and polished his sentences to a high gloss, a great gift to any reader.

I read Anthony Lane with (I must admit) a bit of envy at not being a Brit, the kind of highly literate guy who seems to have read everything and seen nearly everything else and who expresses himself with panache.  American critics and actors rarely seem to have the range and depth that make writers like Lane sparkle without being snobbish.

In his most recent review (August 26, 2019), Lane makes a memorable comment about the importance of listening, about how it is the most "delicate of the dramatic arts."  He cites an anecdote from the life of Alec Guinness, who was told by a senior actor doing Shakespeare, "Don't just look at me. Listen. Listen."   What applies to intelligent actors also applies to everyday life. I spent several hours at a dinner party recently across from a couple who were interesting to talk to but whose faces registered no feeling, no interest in who I was; they were not really paying attention to who I was. We shared opinions and experiences but went away as strangers.  They never asked me any questions in an effort to know me. They heard  what I said but never really listened.

That evening, I watched Ingrid Bergman, in close up shots, in Hitchcock's "Notorious" and I saw a woman I could know, a face that registered fear and love and regret and so much more.  She was really listening.

I am grateful to Anthony Lane for mentioning this topic in his typically thoughtful review, and I am grateful to writers like him who make the ordinary (movie review) into something special, a work of art in itself.