Theater of Cruelty

July 14, 2014
This collection presents 28 articles—reviews of films, books, and art exhibits as well as some travelogues, originally published in the New York Review of Books—by Dutch critic Buruma. As the title suggests, the theme of art and war apply to most selections and WWII looms large. Buruma is happily eclectic in his interests yet, as he notes, also preoccupied with the moral character of individuals under extreme circumstances and (from a secular point of view) the problem of evil. This emphasis leads to some provocative arguments. A prominent one, flagged in the opening chapter’s exploration of the “joys and perils of victimhood” and in a later chapter’s review of Anne Frank and her various biographers, lambastes identity politics as “our modern form of sentimentalism.” Throughout, Buruma’s liberal and cosmopolitan worldview colors his curiosity about figures, mainly artists—Leni Riefenstahl, R. Crumb, Werner Herzog, George Grosz, Mishima Yukio, and David Bowie, among others—whose work and lives give shape to the times, by their opposition, complicity, or both. Some essays feel perfunctory, but the scope of the collection has a force of its own. Agent: Sarah Chalfant, Wylie Agency.

Starred review from July 1, 2014
Buruma (Human Rights and Journalism/Bard Coll.; Year Zero: A History of 1945, 2013, etc.) presents a series of essays on a variety of cultural subjects- simmering below all: war and destruction.The essays all originally appeared in the New York Review of Books between 1987 and 2013, though the majority are from recent years. (A couple appear under different titles.) Although there is a sensible organization-clusters of essays about film, World War II, pop culture, art and Asian affairs-it is not patent from the table of contents, which simply lists titles. As Buruma's regular readers know, his is a comprehensive and even polymathic intelligence. Able to write with apparent ease and grace about a wide variety of subjects-the work of R. Crumb (Buruma calls him "undoubtedly a great artist"), the diary and global image of Anne Frank, the horrors of Hiroshima, the WWII films of Clint Eastwood, the work of Satyajit Ray and Alan Bennett, the career of David Bowie, the art of George Grosz, the architecture of Tokyo-Buruma displays a generosity of spirit that is often absent in the work of other cultural critics. Although he does take a potshot at Maya Angelou and has some dark words for others (most, like Hitler, are deeply deserving), the author generally focuses on strengths of artistic works and maintains a hopeful view of history, though he seems to find it increasingly hard to do so. Some of the pieces are reflections on exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art; some end with sad details about the death of an artist (Grosz choked to death on his own drunken vomit); others end with brave and/or wistful declarations-e.g., "truth is not just a point of view," he writes in his essay on victimhood.A unique intelligence encounters the uniqueness of art and culture, and readers are the beneficiaries.

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October 1, 2014
Journalist, critic, and professor Buruma (Year Zero, 2013) is focused on human rights and the all-too-many occasions in which the bloodthirsty seize power. He also has an appetite for artthat reflects carnage. All 28 of the pieces in this collection of art, film, book, and cultural criticism originally appeared in The New York Review of Books. Like historian Tony Judt (Thinking the Twentieth Century, 2012), another luminary who lit up the pages of the NYRB until his untimely death, Buruma is enthusiastic and skeptical and unapologetic about his diverse passions. He writes very well about identity politics, admires the great Bengali filmmaker Satyajit Ray, is intrigued by David Bowie, and takes up The Afterlife of Anne Frank and The Circus of Max Beckmann. One review ends: Cultural sophistication, alas, is no prophylactic against the allure of terrible ideas. Though he writes of those who leapt before they looked, as a critic Buruma is always firmly grounded.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)