Editor’s note: Publications are rife with lists of people who have notched impressive achievements before reaching certain milestone ages. If you miss out on 20 Under 30, you can hold out hope for 40 Under 40. After 40, though, sorry: You’re on your own. And we don’t think you should be. So, this month, we’re spotlighting local notables who are making inspiring contributions to our community — and who happen to be over the age of 70. Because precociousness is great, but so is perspective.
photograph by jamie harmon
My whole life, whatever paths it may have taken divergently, has been about reading and writing,” says Fredric Koeppel.
Koeppel’s father was a piano tuner who moved the family to Memphis to escape Rochester, New York’s brutal winters, and give his children affordable educations here. By the age of 12, it was already obvious to his parents that Fredric was a writer. “They gave me this ancient Royal typewriter that was the size of an upright piano, and that’s how I learned to type,” he says. “I still type with two fingers.”
After Koeppel graduated with an English degree from then Memphis State University, he earned a master’s degree from the University of Iowa, and entered the academic world. Meanwhile, he was freelancing for magazines, including this one, writing about anything that caught his fancy, including wine.
“I decided in 1983 to start reading more about wine,” he says, “and learning more about wine, because wine is an aspirational product, something you learn about and that elevates you culturally and socially. And intellectually, perhaps.”
In July 1984, The Commercial Appeal picked up his wine column, and soon had him reviewing restaurants and art as well. “It had never occurred to me that I could be a full-time journalist,” he says. “I showed up on August 11, 1986 — tweed jacket, bow tie. I had no telephone, no computer. I had to literally sit at the edge of somebody’s desk, and use their telephone to do an interview. Somebody would say, ‘I’m going out for an hour. You want to use my computer?’ It was like that for a couple of years.”
“There is a sense in which none of us can escape being part of the general thing, but real genius is solitary. It works by itself, and accomplishes what it accomplishes sort of in the shadows. You can’t worry about the audience. You create art for yourself.” — Fredric Koeppel
If you were a Memphis restaurateur, artist, or writer from the 1980s to the 2010s, Fredric Koeppel was who you needed to impress. “I became the art critic, and then the restaurant reviewer and the book page editor,” he says. “Sometimes, I’d review movies, theater, dance, and things. It all accrued to me just because I could write about all that stuff.”
Koeppel traveled regularly to review art shows in New York, and went to China for Memphis in May and to Italy for the Wonders exhibition series. “It gave The Commercial Appeal a national voice,” he says. At the same time, “I tried to review everything I could at every possible sort of venue, whether it was the Brooks or the Dixon or in a coffee shop — even though I always told artists, ‘Don’t show your work in coffee shops, because the lighting’s not good. But if you’re going to do that, then I want to be there.”
Critics sometimes get a bad rap, but Koeppel says good criticism is vital for a healthy arts community. “You need objective, impartial, non-judgmental opinions and writing,” he says. “Especially in restaurant reviewing, it can be too easy to be funny, to be sarcastic, to put down a place and make the reviewer look superior. You have to be able to give criticism without sounding like a smart-ass.”
After being laid off from The Commercial Appeal in 2009, and retiring from freelance work in 2017, Koeppel continues to write about wine online on his Substack newsletter, “Bigger Than Your Head.” He says his years as a critic taught him some vital lessons about creativity.
“I think what makes artists great is that they are not part of trends,” he says. “There is a sense in which none of us can escape being part of the general thing, but real genius is solitary. It works by itself, and accomplishes what it accomplishes sort of in the shadows. You can’t worry about the audience. You create art for yourself. You want to succeed. You ought to put it out there. But truly great artists have to create their audience because they’re ahead of the audience and they have to pull the audience along with them. … Basically that’s what it takes. You have to have the time, the patience, the discipline, the perseverance, and just keep going.”
