Editors’ note: It is difficult to believe that it was ten years ago last month that Hilton Kramer, the founding editor of The New Criterion, died, aged eighty-four. Time really does seem to speed up as one gets older. To mark the occasion, we adapt parts of Roger Kimball’s essay from our special memorial issue about Hilton of May 2012.
Many of the recollections that followed Hilton Kramer’s death dilated on the nature of his prose. “Clarity” usually came towards the top of the list. George Orwell somewhere likened good prose to a transparent windowpane. It revealed what it was about without calling attention to itself. It disappeared in rendering the thing it described. Hilton’s prose displayed that Orwellian clarity. Not only did you always know where you stood reading an essay by Hilton Kramer, you knew exactly where he stood, too. And you knew precisely what he thought about the subject under discussion.
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