A biography for Robert Christgauhasn’t been written yet.
“If you wanna write non-fiction you have to be interested in the world.”
“I'm not happy that death is approaching because I like being alive but I'm glad I've escaped the two-post-a-day economy of contemporary journalism. Good writing takes time.”
“Subject is very important. If you're going to write non-fiction the style means nothing or very little. The content justifies the effort you need to put into the writing itself.”
“Even when I was working at The Village Voice, I only put in about 20 hours at the office.”
“I don't think that most of my peers in rock criticism are from the West Coast. I think most of them are from the East Coast.”
“What helps change bad writing into mediocre writing is editing. Editing is in bad shape in print journalism, and is in virtually nonexistent shape in online journalism.”
“When I grew up, there was a monoculture. Everybody listened to the same music on the radio. I miss monoculture. I think it's good for people to have a shared experience.”
“My wife is more important to me than anything in the world - including music. She's a great editor and companion for all of my work and she's a great writer herself. If you live with somebody who's smart, they'll affect your thinking more than anything.”
“Certainly it's much more important for me to go to a good movie and spend a nice night with my wife than it is to listen to a specific piece of music.”
“I actually think I learned to write concisely working for an encyclopedia company in Chicago.”
“Ultimately, to insist that rock criticism be political is first to insist that the humans who make and enjoy music are embroiled in politics whether they like it or not - and whether they know it or not.”
“Believe me, I think if I stopped writing when I left The Voice I would have quite a legacy. But the fact of the matter was, it never occurred to me to stop.”
“I've always been a jazz fan, but I don't write much about jazz, because I don't have the chops. But it's really, really hard to write about improvised instrumental music when you don't have a good knowledge of harmony and can't identify rhythm signatures very easily either.”
“Forget good for you - art should be good to you.”
“I basically believe that all pop stars create personas and manipulate them. What we relate to are not their real selves; they are projections, which tend to shift in shape.”
“In fact, many rock critics look askance at explicitly political lyrics, which I think is pretty stupid, without denying that some political lyrics are also pretty stupid.”
“I am interested in the highbrow/lowbrow synthesis. My sensibility, I am proud to say, is middlebrow.”
“One way I judge music is whether it compels me to listen to it.”
“Every marriage is different, and it's impossible to understand your own marriage, really, much less anybody else's.”
“As the editor at the Village Voice, I always tried to find writers of colour.”