David Denby (film critic)

David Denby
Denby speaking at the Berkeley School of Journalism, January 2009
Born	1943 (age 67–68) New York City, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Film critic, journalist
Nationality	American
Subjects	Film
Influences Pauline Kael

David Denby (born 1943) is an American journalist, best known as a film critic for The New Yorker magazine.^[1]

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.

Career

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.

David Denby
In a December 20, 1982 review of the 1982 film The Verdict directed by Sidney Lumet.^[2]

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]

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. He criticizes, among others, the political blog Wonkette. Wonkette responded to Denby's criticism by noting some serious factual errors in his account of the blog's work. Wonkette called out this passage in particular, a reference to a Wonkette post about Chelsea Clinton.^[9]

"But it also sounds like jealousy. Wonkette is written by young women who may have hated Chelsea’s bland words as she went around the country supporting her mother’s candidacy. When a piece of snark doesn’t make sense, some hidden fury may be screwing up the writing."

The post in question was written by one of Wonkette's two male editors (a third is female), and is clearly bylined as such. The Wonkette blog noted that Denby's incorrect assumption that the post was driven by female jealousy and fury could be seen as sexist, as well as an indication of a lack of basic research or fact-checking.^[9] Adam Sternbergh panned the book in a New York magazine review, calling snark "necessary, for reasons that Denby either ignores or fails to comprehend."^[10] Sternbergh's review led to a lengthy defense of Denby's book from writer Edward Champion.^[11]

Bibliography

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Books

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

Memoir

• American Sucker (2004), ISBN 0316192945

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).

References

1. ^ "Contributors: David Denby". The New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/bios/david_denby/search?contributorName=david%20denby. Retrieved 13 September 2011. 
2. ^ Denby, David (December 20, 1982). "Rough Justice". New York (New York Media) 15 (50): 62, 64. 
3. ^ "Biography: David Denby". World Leaders Forum: Columbia University. http://www.worldleaders.columbia.edu/participants/david-denby. 
4. ^ Denby, David (October 20, 2003). "My Life As a Paulette". The New Yorker. http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-24768257_ITM. 
5. ^ Dedman, Bill (July 15, 2007). "The list: Journalists who wrote political checks". MSNBC. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19113455/. Retrieved October 24, 2010. 
6. ^ 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. 
7. ^ Watson, Peter (July 2002). The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century. Harper Perennial. p. 733. ISBN 0060084383. 
8. ^ 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. 
9. ^ ^{a b} The ‘Wonkette Part’ Of David Denby’s Book Really Just A Bunch Of Major, If Not Libelous, Errors, Wonkette, Jan 31, 2009
10. ^ Sternbergh, Adam (December 28, 2008). "Snark Attack". New York. http://nymag.com/arts/books/reviews/53159/. Retrieved January 31, 2009. 
11. ^ Champion, Edward (January 2, 2009). "In Defense of David Denby". Reluctant Habits. http://www.edrants.com/in-defense-of-david-denby/. Retrieved January 31, 2009. 

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

Persondata
Name	Denby, David
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1943
Place of birth	New York City, New York, U.S.
Date of death
Place of death