Occasionally, I mention that one piece or another in a given issue of The New Yorker has particularly struck me. In general, though I try to avoid doing so, mostly because the magazine appeals to me so consistently that if I did not deliberately choose to exclude it from my blogging, I’d be repeating myself weekly.

This week, however, in addition to the previously remarked upon first-ever presidential endorsement, several other worthwhile pieces were published. Richard Avedon’s election year portfolio (not online, alas), the photography series that he was working on at the time of his death, looked to me like images of Americans at the dawn of photography, the keepsake photographs of Union and Confederate soldiers. I found the photographs deeply touching and nearly unbearably sad. A surprisingly flattering profile of Paul Wolfowitz and John Updike’s engaging reflections upon the language of the Bible rub shoulders.

But the pieces that prompt this entry are two works of critical appreciation. First, New Yorkers, please go to the Guggenheim to see “The Aztec Empire,” reviewed and – I am amazed – apparently grokked by Peter Schjeldahl. I am a profound, long-time admirer of pre-Colombian Mesoamerican art, from the earliest known works produced by those we call the Olmec to the work highlighted in this show and associated with the Aztec empire. Yet that art (even the Olmec, despite Schjeldahl’s assertion that the earlier work is less blood-soaked) is profoundly hard to grasp for persons who are products of a Western sensibility. The ideas and religion that produce the metaphorical armature the art operates within are predicated upon the concept and practice of human sacrifice.

Schjeldahl faces this squarely in his review, and draws a direct line between the Aztec and our world.

“Oddly, the alien and alienating viciousness of Aztec culture makes it more accessible than that of other bygone and tribal nations. It provides dramatic focus. Confronting such things as a blackly humorous skull mask, made from a real skull, we know exactly where we stand with the Aztecs: aghast. The supreme quality of their supple, sensitive, elegant arts may be the scariest thing about them, because it testifies that a civilization based on slaughter steadied and inspired human genius.”

He concludes by implying that he’s talking about some unpleasant current events in the Middle East. The review is carefully written, though. It’s clear that he’s also discussing the ways and means of empire, the cost of imperial scale.

One page later, a loving celebration of the Clash, penned by Sasha Frere-Jones sails into view, headed for port. The occasion is the $30 release of a deluxe edition of London Calling, long the rock critics’ canonical choice as the high point of the band’s career. The record, of course, is all about the costs of empire. In so far as many people have reviewed the record in prior incarnations, Jones’ choice is unremarkable. However, deciding to review a record which your peers universally acknowledge as a definitive masterwork presents a particular challenge. A critic must feel that they have something new to say about a piece to make the writing worth doing, and in the case of a masterwork, you can say one of two things, essentially. You can disagree and have fun with the project of willfully defining your stance in opposition to your peers’ consensus. Or you can agree, and attempt to craft the definitive encomium on the work in question.

It’s far easier to pursue the first option. It’s much less about the work under consideration, though, and more about building personal reputation. As such, the subject of the review is not the artist’s work; rather it’s the reviewer’s artistry.

Jones decided to take on the harder option. I’m thinking it was a success. I have read a fair amount of praise for the Clash, and a fair amount of praise for this album. This album is not my favorite Clash record (that’s Give ‘Em Enough Rope). Despite this, Jones somehow captures the sweep and energy of a great Clash song. I found myself nodding, muttering “Yeah!” and “Yes!”

“And what can you call this generous mountain of music, this sound that levitates around its own grievances like a plane on fire?”

By the end of the essay I was anticipating references and points of argument, in the manner that one anticipates a cymbal splash or drum fill at the bridge of a song. If it were possible to have been playing air pen, I would have been scribbling furiously in midair. Jones does this, in part, by citing lyrics from three of the record’s best songs in three out of four of the essay’s closing paragraphs. By citing the music directly in the expectation that the reader knows and loves the record, he effectively samples the music, and sets his words to theirs, and to our emotional experience of the music in question.

One hopes he chooses to continue the exploration. A book by Jones about the Clash along the lines of Marcus’ Mystery Train on Dylan would be welcome reading indeed.