Hilton Als is a highly acclaimed theatre, art, and culture critic for The New Yorker. In 1997, he was awarded first prize in both Magazine Critique/Review and Magazine Arts and Entertainment by the New York Association of Black Journalists. He won a Guggenheim for creative writing in 2000. In 2003, he was honored with the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. His book White Girls was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2014. This year, he adds a Pulitzer Prize to his distinguished list of awards.
The committee awards the Pulitzer to Als, “For bold and original reviews that strove to put stage dramas within a real-world cultural context, particularly the shifting landscape of gender, sexuality and race.”
Als is an exhibit curator and collaborator, a professor, and writer. His varied interests and areas of expertise lend themselves to an engaging display of materials, and since he’s one of my favorite writers, I thought I’d put something together for Mechanics’ Institute members to explore. The 3rd floor display highlights the work of Hilton Als. Publications in which his work appears will have a bookmark noting where to find it. The display also highlights his subject matter. You’ll find plays and art that he’s critiqued, music he’s reviewed, and other references that can be found in his work. I’m calling the display “Hilton Als Deep Cuts”; I’ve hunted down work that he’s referred to in the last 3 years in his work for The New Yorker – some of the references are explicit (he reviewed the play based on 2666 by Robert Bolano, so you’ll find the three-volume novel on the display) and some are obscure (he mentioned Black Macho in a review of Madlib’s 2014 album Piñata, so you’ll find Michelle Wallace’s book on the display as well).
In Memoriam for Edward Albee, Als has written: “Writing that gets under your skin, in your bones, will play in your head and memory like nothing else. While painting, photography, and movies can come at you with a very particular force—an in-your-face power that, when done correctly, unearths hitherto unexamined or marginalized feelings—dramatic literature lives in your ear, and, when it’s truly great, shapes how you shape words yourself.”
The same can be said of Als's writing; it gets under your skin, it lives in your ear. If this is the first you're hearing of him, definitely check out the display, check out his work, and who knows – you may end up loving it as much as I do.
Congratulations on a richly deserved Pulitzer Prize to the inimitable Hilton Als.
(image copyright: Brigitte Lacombe, source: The New Yorker staff photo)
