Despite being one of the foremost American intellectuals of the
mid-twentieth century, Harold Rosenberg (1906-1978) was utterly
incapable of fitting in--and he liked it that way. Signature cane in one
hand and a cigarette in the other, he cut a distinctive figure on the
New York City culture scene, with his radiant dark eyes and black bushy
brows. A gangly giant at six foot four, he would tower over others as he
forcefully expounded on his latest obsession in an oddly high-pitched,
nasal voice. And people would listen, captivated by his ideas.
With Harold Rosenberg: A Critic's Life, Debra Bricker Balken offers
the first-ever complete biography of this great and eccentric man.
Although he is now known mainly for his role as an art critic at the
New Yorker from 1962 to 1978, Balken weaves together a complete
tapestry of Rosenberg's life and literary production, cast against the
dynamic intellectual and social ferment of his time. She explores his
role in some of the most contentious cultural debates of the Cold War
period, including those over the commodification of art and the erosion
of individuality in favor of celebrity, demonstrated in his famous essay
"The Herd of Independent Minds." An outspoken socialist and advocate for
the political agency of art, he formed deep alliances with figures such
as Hannah Arendt, Saul Bellow, Paul Goodman, Mary McCarthy, Jean-Paul
Sartre, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock, all of whom Balken
portrays with vivid accounts from Rosenberg's life.
Thoroughly researched and captivatingly written, this book tells in full
Rosenberg's brilliant, fiercely independent life and the five decades in
which he played a leading role in US cultural, intellectual, and
political history.
