KAREN WILKIN
A Critic and His Critics: The
Reception of
Clement Greenberg: A Life
by Florence Rubenfeld
Off
and on, over the pas t decade, there have been rumblings in the art world
about an imminent biography of Clement Greenberg. The author,
Florence Rubenfeld, seemed to be getting in touch with just about every–
one who knew the controversial critic (I suppose this is the place to say
that I was one of them, although we stopped speaking the last four years
of his life) and the word during Greenberg's lifetime was that he approved
of the project, at least at first. T he book was eagerly awaited by both friends
and foes, especially after Greenberg died, aged 85, in 1994. Whatever you
felt towards the man-who was a master at alienating even those of us who
admired and respected his work-it was obvious that an intelligent, care–
fully researched Greenberg biography would complement the four
volumes of his coll ected critical writings published between 1986 and
1993. At best, it could provide a context for the evolution of his thought
and, at the very least, it might set the record straight about some of the
more vexed issues of Greenberg's career-and there were plenty of
them-both public and private, all grist for the rumor mill over the years
and in need of clarification (which is not the same as justification or even
explanation) .
Unfortunately, the first thing to be said about Rubenfeld's
Clement
Greenberg: A Life,
which finally appeared this spring, is that it's a wretched
book-confusingly organized, poorly written, and, despite its author's
vaunted years of preparation and long interviews with her subject, surpris–
ingly sloppy. Anyone who knew Greenberg will recognize the mercurial,
sometimes brutal personality and the harsh, pitiless voice evoked by
Rubenfeld's study and find much of the behavior she describes familiar, but
it's hard to see why anyone would pay attention to the complicated, flawed,
abrasive individual who emerges from her pages-if you didn't already
know that he had been in proximity to some of the brightest intellectual
and cultural lights of the recent past. Rubenfeld states at the outset that she
Editor's Note: Clement Greenberg (1909-1994) contributed
art
criticism to
Partisan R eview
from 1939 to 1955.
