Victory Is Assured: Uncollected Writings of Stanley Crouch

Stanley Crouch’s development as a critic is on full display in this standout collection of 58 essays, described by Mott in his preface as a sort of “intellectual autobiography.” “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Dues” is a stunning account of Duke Ellington playing at Disneyland in 1973, while “The King of Constant Repudiation” delivers a takedown of what Crouch considered phony activism: he writes of critic LeRoi Jones that “he has almost completely traded-in a brilliant and complex talent for the most obvious hand-me-down ideas, which he projects in second-rate pool hall braggadocio.” Nor did Crouch sympathize with hollow notions of machismo—he writes in “Miles Davis, Romantic Hero” about finding in Davis’s performances “public visions of tenderness that were, finally, absolute rejections of everything silly about the version of masculinity that might hobble men in either the white or the Black world.” Most of all, it is Crouch’s abiding humanism that comes through, casting a critical eye on “those ‘race men,’ Black or white, who think they love Black people but only as receptacles for theories that use data to remove the mystery from life.” This is an essential collection for fans of Crouch’s writing, or anyone interested in the art of cultural criticism. (Sept.)