I was curious to see that Circa Issue 131 is entirely devoted to the question of art criticism.<\/p>\n
I was even more curious to recognize something in the first paragraph of Declan Delong’s piece that I’d never contemplated before. (To be honest I’d have employed a red pen and scrubbed parts of this sentence, but it’s the latter bit that interested me)<\/p>\n
December 1987, and for perhaps the twentieth or thirtieth time in one long, languorous, teenage afternoon, I am again eagerly poring over the latest issue of what is, without question, the most important journal of cultural criticism in the world: the weekly music magazine Melody Maker<\/em>.<\/p>\n
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Delong continues on to describe the editorial policy and reflect on the work of individual writers, but what arrested me was the consideration of Melody Maker as a journal of cultural criticism. I’d never thought of the influence of that devoted weekly or was two weekly read. I remember it came out on a Wednesday. I remember wondering how we’d live waiting for the next copy (as you do at age 15\/17 galvanized by what comes out of the radio dial and so on, as if the rest of the world can just go shatter itself). And most importantly, I am struck by why we bought Melody Maker over the NME because I remember it was Melody Maker that was the first choice always. NME followed if you had a bit of extra money. Was there 10p difference in the price?<\/p>\n
Further into this Circa issue Matt Packer’s piece Critical Fantasies contains the following parallel in a bracketed paragraph:<\/p>\n
(Similar in apprehension is CIRCA\u2019<\/em>s approach of asking writers to respond to the issue of criticism in the present issue, after its well known financial difficulties. An approach that is simultaneously a dance of death, and a way of shoring-up CIRCA\u2019<\/em>s performative functions for its own survival)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n