David Denby (film critic)
| David Denby | |
|---|---|
 Denby speaking at the Berkeley School of Journalism, January 2009 |
|
| Born | 1943 (age 68–69) New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Occupation | Film critic, journalist |
| Nationality | American |
| Subjects | Film |
|
Influences
|
|
David Denby (born 1943) is an American journalist, best known as a film critic for The New Yorker magazine.[1]
Contents |
[edit] Background and education
Denby grew up in New York City. He received a B.A. from Columbia University in 1965, and a masters from its journalism school in 1966.
[edit] Career
[edit] Journalism
In a modern corporate state, good and evil may not be clear, and many people wander around in a fog of compromise, torn between ambition and guilt.
Denby began writing film criticism while a graduate student at Stanford University's Department of Communication.[3] He began his professional life in the early 1970s as an adherent of the film critic Pauline Kael—one of a group of film writers informally, and sometimes derisively, known as "the Paulettes."[4] Denby wrote for The Atlantic and New York before arriving at The New Yorker in the middle 1990s; at present, Denby splits his film duties with Anthony Lane, trading off week-by-week. The schedule allows both writers to explore a broad range of critical topics in the body of the magazine.
In 2004, Denby contributed $1,250 to John Kerry.[5]
[edit] Books
Denby's Great Books (1996) is a non-fiction account of the Western canon-oriented Core Curriculum at his alma mater, Columbia University. Denby reenrolled after three decades, and the book operates as a kind of double portrait, as well as a sort of great-thinkers brush-up.[citation needed] In The New York Times, the writer Joyce Carol Oates called the book "a lively adventure of the mind," filled with "unqualified enthusiasm."[6]Great Books was a New York Times bestseller. In The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century, Peter Watson called "Great Books," the "most original response to the culture wars."[7] The book has been published in 13 foreign editions.
In 2004, Denby published American Sucker, a memoir which details his investment misadventures in the dot-com stock market bubble, along with his own bust years as a divorcée from writer Cathleen Schine, leading to a major reassessment of his life. Allan Sloan in the New York Times called the author "formidably smart," while noting this paradox: "Mr. Denby is even smart enough to realize how paradoxical it is that he not only has a good, prestigious job, but that he is also in a position to make money by relating how he lost money in the stock market."[8]
Snark, Denby's latest book, is a polemical dissection of public speech.
[edit] Bibliography
-
This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
[edit] Books
[edit] Non-fiction
- Great Books, Simon & Schuster (1996), ISBN 978-0684809755
- Snark: It's Mean, It's Personal, and It's Ruining Our Conversation, Simon & Schuster (2009), ISBN 978-1416599456
[edit] Memoir
- American Sucker (2004), ISBN 0316192945
[edit] Articles
- Denby, David (January 12, 2009). "The Current Cinema: Survivors". The New Yorker 84 (44): 72–73. http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2009/01/12/090112crci_cinema_denby. Retrieved March 27, 2009. Reviews Edwards Zwick's Defiance and Abdellatif Kechiche's The Secret of the Grain.
- Denby, David (June 7, 2010). "Critic's Notebook: The Seat of Power". The New Yorker 86 (16): 9. http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/notebook/2010/06/07/100607gonb_GOAT_notebook_denby. Retrieved October 23, 2011. Reviews Edward F. Cline's Million Dollar Legs (1932).
- Denby, David (October 11, 2010). "Critic's Notebook: Triple Cross". The New Yorker 86 (31): 30. http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/notebook/2010/10/11/101011gonb_GOAT_notebook_denby. Reviews Phil Karlson's Kansas City Confidential (1952).
[edit] References
- ^ "Contributors: David Denby". The New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/bios/david_denby/search?contributorName=david%20denby. Retrieved 13 September 2011.
- ^ Denby, David (December 20, 1982). "Rough Justice". New York (New York Media) 15 (50): 62, 64.
- ^ "Biography: David Denby". World Leaders Forum: Columbia University. http://www.worldleaders.columbia.edu/participants/david-denby.
- ^ Denby, David (October 20, 2003). "My Life As a Paulette". The New Yorker. http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-24768257_ITM.
- ^ Dedman, Bill (July 15, 2007). "The list: Journalists who wrote political checks". MSNBC. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19113455/. Retrieved October 24, 2010.
- ^ Oates, Joyce Carol (September 1, 1996). "Back to School". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0CE4DA1139F932A3575AC0A960958260. Retrieved March 20, 2008.
- ^ Watson, Peter (July 2002). The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century. Harper Perennial. p. 733. ISBN 0060084383.
- ^ Sloan, Allan (January 28, 2004). "O.K., Sharp Film Critic, Not-So-Shrewd Investor". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9907E5DD1538F93BA15752C0A9629C8B63&scp=1&sq=%22american+sucker%22&st=nyt. Retrieved March 20, 2008.
[edit] External links
- David Denby Archive. – New York. – (articles from Jan 1998 to Jan 2001).
- Transcript of February 25, 2004, online chat with David Denby. – Forbes.com Q&A
- David Denby articles at Byliner
- Booknotes interview with Denby on Great Books: My Adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf and Other Indestructible Writers of the Western World, December 22, 1996.
