John Leonard | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Leonard in 1974 | |
| Born | (1939-02-25)February 25, 1939 Washington, D.C., U.S. |
| Died | November 5, 2008(2008-11-05) (aged 69) New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Pen name | Cyclops |
| Occupation | Critic, writer, author |
| Spouse | Sue |
| Children | 2 |
John Leonard (February 25, 1939 – November 5, 2008)[1] was an Americanliterary,television,film, andcultural critic.
ForLife magazine andThe New York Times, he wrote under thepen nameCyclops.
John Leonard grew up in Washington, D.C.,Jackson Heights, Queens, andLong Beach, California, where he graduated fromWoodrow Wilson High School. Raised by a single mother, Ruth Smith, he made his way toHarvard University, where he immersed himself in the college newspaper,The Harvard Crimson, only to drop out in the spring of his second year. He then attended theUniversity of California at Berkeley.
A political leftist, Leonard had an unlikely early patron inconservative leaderWilliam F. Buckley, who gave him his first job in journalism atNational Review magazine in 1959. There, he worked alongside such young talents asJoan Didion,Garry Wills,Renata Adler andArlene Croce. Leonard went on to be Drama and Literature Director forPacifica Radio flagshipKPFA in Berkeley, where he featured a then-little-knownPauline Kael and served as the house book reviewer, delighting in the torrent of galleys sent him by publishers. He worked as an English teacher inRoxbury, Massachusetts, as aunion organizer of migrant farm workers, and as a community organizer forVietnam Summer before joiningThe New York Times Book Review in 1967. In 1968, he signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.[2][3]
The paper promoted him to daily book reviewer in 1969 and made him the executive editor of theTimes Book Review in 1971 at the age of 31. In 1975, he returned to the role of daily book reviewer, championing the work of women writers such asFran Lebowitz,Elizabeth Hardwick,Maxine Hong Kingston,Mary Gordon, and his formerNational Review colleague Renata Adler. He was the first critic to reviewNobel Prize-winnerToni Morrison and the first American critic to review Nobel Prize-winnerGabriel García Márquez. Leonard and Morrison became friends, and in 1993 she invited him to accompany her to the Nobel Prize ceremony.[4] From 1977 to 1980, Leonard wrote "Private Lives", a weekly column for theTimes about his family, friends, and experiences.
Leonard was a voracious criticalomnivore, writing on culture, politics, television, books and the media in many other venues, includingThe Nation,The New York Review of Books,Harper's Magazine,The Atlantic Monthly,Esquire,Playboy,Penthouse,Vanity Fair,TV Guide,Ms. Magazine,Harper's Bazaar,Vogue,Newsweek,New York Woman,Memories,Tikkun,The Yale Review,The Village Voice, theNew Statesman,The Boston Globe,Washington Post Book World,The Los Angeles Times Book Review,American Heritage, andSalon.com. He reviewed books forNational Public Radio'sFresh Air and wrote a column forNew York Newsday called "Culture Shock." He hosted GBH'sFirst Edition, and reviewed books, TV and movies onCBS Sunday Morning for 16 years. Leonard taught creative writing and criticism at theUniversity of Pennsylvania andColumbia University. He told the story of Japanese authorKōbō Abe in every one of these venues.
Leonard wrote extensively about television in his career – forLife andThe New York Times, both under the pen name Cyclops, forNew York magazine from 1984 to 2008, and in his 1997 bookSmoke and Mirrors. In addition, he authored four novels and five collections of essays.
Leonard was co-literary editor ofThe Nation with his wife, Sue Leonard, from 1995 to 1998, and continued as a contributing editor for the magazine. He wrote a monthly column on new books forHarper's magazine and was a frequent contributor toThe New York Times Book Review andThe New York Review of Books. Leonard rated highest among literary critics in a 2006Time Out New York survey of writers and publishers.[5] He received theNational Book Critics Circle'sIvan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006.[6][7]
Leonard died on November 5, 2008, of lung cancer, aged 69. He was survived by his mother, Ruth, wife Sue, two children from his first marriage –Salon.com columnistAndrew Leonard[8] andGeorgetown University history professor Amy Leonard[9] – and a stepdaughter, Jen Nessel,[10] who heads the communications department at theCenter for Constitutional Rights, as well as three grandchildren: Tiana and Eli Miller-Leonard and Oscar Ray Arnold-Nessel.
TheColumbia Journalism Review called Leonard "our primary progressive, catholic [small "c"] literary critic."[11] Stylistically, he was, asCJR dubbed him, an "enthusiast," known for his wit and wordplay, his liberal use of the semicolon and his impassioned examinations of authors and their works. He wrote career essays on the work of writers ranging fromThomas Pynchon and Joan Didion toEduardo Galeano,Salman Rushdie,Don DeLillo,Mary Gordon,John Cheever, Toni Morrison, andRichard Powers.
Kurt Vonnegut wrote of him: "When I read anything by my longtime friend John Leonard, his voice is that of a total stranger. He is too polite in ordinary conversations, with me at least, to set off the fireworks of all he knows and feels after reading and comparing and responding to, in the course of his long career as a literary critic, a thousand times more books than I have even heard of. Only in print does he light the night sky of my ignorance and intellectual lassitude with sizzles and bangs, and gorgeous blooms of fire. He is a TEACHER! When I start to read John Leonard, it is as though I, while simply looking for the men's room, blundered into a lecture by the smartest man who ever lived."
Studs Terkel called him "a critic from whom I learned about my own books". Terkel told the NBCC's Elizabeth Taylor: "He speaks truth to power with a style that is all his own – Leonardian. He is a throwback to a great tradition. He has been a literary critic in the noblest sense of the word, where you didn't determine whether a book was 'good or bad' but wrote with a point of view of how you should read the book."[12]
In 2013, theNational Book Critics Circle created a "First Book" award in his honor, theJohn Leonard Prize, presented as part of the NBCC Awards.[13]
| External videos | |
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 Booknotes interview with Leonard onLonesome Rangers: Homeless Minds, Promised Lands, Fugitive Cultures, June 30, 2002,C-SPAN |
