A O Scott, we've been told, is a seriously endearing guy. But Limited Inc has really not been endeared. Reader, we have tried. We read the dissing of David Foster Wallace last year in the NYRB, and lame came to mind -- teenspeak always seems appropriate for the NYRB approach to American fiction, which is bloodless unto death, and twitters with the ghost of Gore Vidal, whose essays in the seventies about fiction for the magazine had the cranky brilliance usually associated with some man proving that Shakespeare was really the Earl of Oxford -- missing the point was never so strewn with epigrams. Scott, of course, doesn't bring Vidal's career with him to the essay, which is why he can't quite convince us that his dismissal of Infinite Jest is even ... important. Then we come upon bits like today's, in the NYT Magazine: Beauty is back. Although we know the titles of articles are chosen by editors hurrying to get to the bar before happy hour ends, there is something appropriate about the silliness of that title. It is at once anti-fashionable and an appeal to fashion. A headline congealing in its own resentment, in other words, like an old issue of the New Criterion. Then shift through the entrails of this piece (since it is all entrails, it isn't hard to find em there, slimy and wet) trying to imagine the cultural mandarin A.O. will be in ten years, and the signs are bad. Watch out for death by drowning in your own intellectual drool is the vibe we get from our fave entrail shifter, Madame Sosostris. Here, for instance, is a two-fer graf that a cultural mandarin of the caliber of Dwight MacDonald would stare at in disbelief:

"Artists from Francis Bacon to Damien Hirst, with their grisly subject matter; filmmakers from Godard to the Dogma 95 school, with their assaults on the audience�s expectation of pleasure; musicians from Sch�nberg to Johnny Rotten, with their dissonant squalls: the recent art that has received the most attention has been that which challenges traditional canons of beauty � and which, at times, challenges its audience�s ability not to flinch.

This kind of confrontation may now have reached the end of the line. In ��Venus in Exile,�� a provocative book published last summer, Wendy Steiner discerns something of a return to beauty, citing the reassessment of previously unfashionable artists like Bonnard and Rockwell ..."

Yes, that is Bonnard and Rockwell in the same sentence, being "reassessed" by critics. Like the guys in gas stations who align the tires on your car , these critics are standing by for reassessment, just bring in your favorite class noun (beauty, truth, justice) and we will oblige. I don't know how to express the ghastliness of the 'and' that connects Bonnard with an illustrator of the Saturday Evening Post, but if ever there were a conjunction to sound the death knell for beauty, this is it. Beauty, here, is not the thing it was for the ancients, or for the Renaissance, or even for the Moderns (A.O. assures us in a previous graf that the moderns turned against beauty in Paris in the 1850s -- which, of course, they didn't. There were two lines in modernism, one which resented the ugliness of modernity, and did its best to bring into relief that ugliness in art as a criticism of the lack of beauty in modern society (Flaubert); one of which sought a beauty particular to modernity (Baudelaire). Now you, my reader, who passed eighth grade, know this, and I presume Mr. Scott knows it, but why dicker with details? Here's a great critic who would have known his Bonnard from his Rockwell:

"Qu'�tait-ce que cette grande tradition, si ce n'est l'idealisation ordinaire et accoutum�e de la vie ancienne; vie robuste et guerri�re, �tat de d�fensive de chaque individu qui lui donnait l'habitude des mouvements s�rieux, des attitudes majestueuses ou violentes. Ajoutez � cela la pompe publique qui se r�fl�chissait dans la vie priv�e. La vie ancienne repr�sentait beaucoup; elle �tait faite surtout pour le plaisir des yeux, et ce paganisme journalier a merveilleusement servi les arts.

Avant de rechercher quel peut �tre le c�t� �pique de la vie moderne, et de prouver par des exemples que notre �poque n'est pas moins f�conde que les anciennes en motifs sublimes, on peut affirmer que puisque tous les si�cles et tous les peuples ont eu leur beaut�, nous avons in�vitablement la n�tre. Cela est dans l'ordre.

Toutes les beaut�s contiennent, comme tous les ph�nom�nes possibles, quelque chose d'�ternel et quelque chose de transitoire, - d'absolu et de particulier. La beaut� absolue et �ternelle n'existe pas, ou plut�t elle n'est qu'une abstraction �cr�m�e � la surface g�n�rale des beaut�s diverses. L'�l�ment particulier de chaque beaut� vient des passions, et comme nous avons nos passions particuli�res, nous avons notre beaut�."

I won't translate this tonight -- I'm too tired. But the particular beauty of this epoch seems to escape Mr. Scott. I must quote him in fine flourish one more time:

"As didactic texts of postmodernism give way to less dogmatic textures � to cloth and ceramic, lush pixel painting and digital collage � the pleasures of medium are beginning to displace the duties of message."

Wow. The lush pixel painting is excellent, since lush, there, must mean something else to Mr. Scott than it does to the common run of humanity, but I love, just love, the closing phrase. You can't end better than on a generalization in search of a truth. Of course, there isn't a truth to be found in this micro-essay. Shall we propose banning, for a while, the "As... give way to" structure in cultural journalism? What it means is, I'd like to definitely say, x is a trend, but I'm a little afraid that I'll be held responsible if x doesn't turn out to be a trend. In fact, it is only a trend because last night I saw a lot of things that reminded me of x. So I will instead describe x as if I'm scientifically confining myself to a process. Oh yes, a transition, better. And if the pixel painting scene (what pixel paintings do you suppose Mr. Scott is referring to, by the way?) implodes, I never said it wouldn't. I just said it had these less dogmatic textures, see.
Hmm, I wonder about these dogmatic textures - are ribbed condoms more dogmatic than the other kind? Or less?