Tasty Reading: Shatz on Gopnik on Teachout on Duke

Here’s the LRB‘s wise and worldly Adam Shatz with a corrective take on Adam Gopnik‘s lazy New Yorker review of Terry Teachout‘s regrettable biography of Duke Ellington. “How Not to Write about Duke Ellington” is a fine readers’ guide and the way in to one of the feeling-est arguments out there this winter — on pretty much everything, including white folks’ commentary on black genius and all the covert dimensions of race and criticism in American art. More good stuff here.