the late great John Leonard, collection, & Pynchon in Positively 4th Street

[Mark Kohut]

Speaking of dancing, only the late critic John Leonard, whose thoughts dart from one precisely placed allusion to another, and then to a third, fourth and fifth—usually within the same sentence—could describe a biography (David Hajdu’s Positively 4th Street: the Life and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina, and Richard Farina) as “A Little Night Music scored for dulcimer and motorcycle. Or a pas de quatre, with wind chimes, love beads, and a guest-appearance entrechat by Thomas Pynchon.” It’s dead on, and great fun to read. Sure, sometimes you yearn for more exposition, but Leonard commands love and devotion, much like that required of a parent taking care of an ADHD child. As E.L. Doctorow observes in his introduction, Leonard was “a political animal,” and his television and media criticism rank among the most catholic ever (with a lowercase C). Not enough of them are included in this posthumous collection, which spans 50
 years. But Leonard’s first love was literature, and he lavished attention on Maxine Hong Kingston, Norman Mailer, Toni Morrison, and Michael Chabon, just to name a few, which ought to make clear his delicious taste.