New York Review of Books

The 50 Year Argument
Directed by: Martin Scorsese and
David Tedeschi

"All writing is political." Susan Sontag's words, as we can hear them in an interview scene in the documentary Regarding Susan Sontag (2014), could have described the magazine where for a number of years she was among the most prominent contributors. The New York Review of Books was from the beginning more than just a literary journal – although the name may have suggested the opposite to the uninitiated: With an always critical look, raised above the work itself, the journal saw it as its task to take an alternative position towards society. Thus, they also departed from the notion of literary criticism as pure consumer guidance.

The creation of the magazine was then also politically motivated. It all started when critic Elizabeth Hardwick in 1959 published the leading essay "The Decline of Book Reviewing" in Harper's Magazine, with Robert Silvers co-editor. Hardwick expressed a general dissatisfaction with contemporary literary criticism, resulting in Silvers, Hardwick and a group of friends meeting to discuss the future and potential of the criticism. When the nearly four-month printing strike hit New York in 1963, conditions were sufficient to allow Silvers, along with co-editor Barbara Epstein, to introduce The New York Review of Books to an audience starved for print.

Down to earth and mythical. Martin Scorsese is among those who have been a staunch supporter of The New York Review of Books, and on the occasion of the magazine's 50th anniversary, he was contacted by editor Silvers and asked to make a documentary about the literary institution. Together with his partner David Tedeschi, he has made a film that testifies to his own – and most others' – enthusiasm for the magazine. By combining footage from the busy office – the walls covered with books, the desks filled with piles of paper – with historical archival images along with read-out excerpts from the essays, Tedeschi and Scorsese present the magazine as a simultaneously down-to-earth and mythical institution. These aspects are united in the mention of the documentary's actual protagonist, founder and editor Robert Silvers – or Bob, as he is consistently called – who with his clear intention and friendly guidance still manages to wring the texts he wants out of his writers.

The power of language. The enthusiasm is also not difficult to understand. Some of the greatest thinkers and writers of our time have been contributors to the journal: Noam Chomsky, Susan Sontag, Joan Didion, Hannah Arendt, Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, and Saul Bellow, to name but a handful. The documentary's frequent use of archival photographs of these writers helps to further strengthen the impression of the film's almost mythologizing admiration for its subject. Especially in the scenes where the actors engage in debate with each other, one gets the impression that the film plays up to a kind of intellectual Clash of the Titans, which adds some very entertaining sequences to the film.

One example of this is when Gore Vidal is confronted by a strongly indignant Norman Mailer in a TV studio. Mailer has read Vidal's words about him in The New York Review of Books, where he is characterized by his many misogynistic statements as a logical precursor to the serial killer Charles Manson. He now urges Vidal to withdraw the characteristic. Mailer's offended face is pleasing, reminiscent of William F. Buckley's similar reaction to Vidal's harsh statements in a similar scene from last year's documentary., Best of Enemies, who portrayed the two polemics in heated political debate. In both of these scenes, it is the language itself that forms the core of the debate, and the actors' fear and respect for the language's natural ability to categorize and define.

The New York Review of Books could be introduced to an audience hungry for printed matter.

This aspect also emerges in another scene, where Susan Sontag asks Mailer to think through the implications of the term "lady writer". "Words count, we're all writers, we know that," she says, bringing in a point that (unfortunately) feels just as relevant today – last brought up in Chris Rock's Oscar speech about the lack of logic in divide the price categories for female and male actors: «It's not track and field; you do not have to separate them. » If writing is political, this also says something about the properties of language, as well as about the importance of being aware of the relationship between the society we live in and the language it both uses and reveals itself through.

Homage. Joan Didion, who was approaching 80 years old when the film was shot, is among the writers who have really come to terms with the language's ability to manipulate and create false narratives. When New York was shaken by the so-called Central Park jogger case in 1989, in which a woman was brutally abused and left to die in Central Park, Didion chose to take a critical position with the essay "Sentimental Journeys". Five young, destitute men were convicted of the assault, but by referring to the language's intervention in and manipulation of the facts of the case, Didion raised doubts about the question of guilt – a doubt that was justified in 2002, when the actual perpetrator appeared.

Didion's willingness to follow the narratives of the court and the media resonates well with the documentary's message that a good journalist should go below the surface of what is generally accepted, the official statements.

More problematic, however, is that a film that is so preoccupied with celebrating the critical gaze and the dissenting opinion, acts so uncritically in the treatment of its own material.

In the aforementioned article that prompted the idea of ​​The New York Review of Books, Hardwick's "The Decline of Book Reviewing," she asks the question "who reviews the reviewers?" The strange weakness of The 50 Year Argument is that the film's implicit answer is "none": a magazine that has at all times been so preoccupied with exploring the scope of thought and its own function, deserves – let alone claims – something more than an uncritical festival magazine. The explanation for this one-track celebration probably still lies in the occasion: In Scorsian terms, this is probably more than anything else The New York Review of Books' version of The Last Waltz: A final tribute to an institution that is nearing its end, if Silver's age indicates that an end is in the works for the journal as we know it today. And there may be good reason to believe that.