Re: [F_minor] intentionalist fallacy yadda yadda

["Robert Merkin" <bobmerk@earthlink.net>]

paul wiener wrote:

> Four beloved great critics of the 20th century?
>
> Edmund Wilson, Bernard Shaw, James Agee, John Updike.
>
> 19th Century?   Henry James,  John Ruskin, William Dean Howells, Mark Twain.
>
> .....to name a few of hundreds.

============

You're cheating or fudging. Perhaps I should have been more explicit -- critics who were almost exclusively critics, whose primary contribution to the arts was (and remains) criticism. So I'll give you Edmund Wilson and John Ruskin, maybe Howells.

The rest -- it's not their criticism that bought them their ticket to creative permanence. Agee's "A Death in the Family" (also the text for one of Samuel Barber's most beautiful compositions, "Knoxville: Summer of 1915"), his screenplays ("The African Queen," "Night of the Hunter"), and his text for "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" -- this guy was a great critic SECOND. And travelled into the future not for his criticism.

Twain, Shaw, Henry James, Updike likewise. Most well-educated people would ask, "Oh, he was a critic, too?" (I think an American can be considered well-educated and still not subscribe to The New Yorker. You can squeak by with visits to better-stocked doctors' waiting rooms.)

This isn't my choice or preference, it's the world's. At the turnstile to immortality, readers and listeners and art-lovers want your creative work, not your criticism.

Bob



> [Original Message]
> From: paul wiener <pwiener@ms.cc.sunysb.edu>
> To: <bobmerk@earthlink.net>; F_MINOR@EMAIL.RUTGERS.EDU <F_MINOR@email.rutgers.edu>
> Date: 1/14/2008 10:25:22 AM
> Subject: Re: [F_minor] intentionalist fallacy yadda yadda
>
> Four beloved great critics of the 20th century?
>
> Edmund Wilson, Bernard Shaw, James Agee, John Updike.
>
> 19th Century?   Henry James,  John Ruskin, William Dean Howells, Mark Twain.
>
> .....to name a few of hundreds.
>
> Is someone trying to use the intentionalist fallacy to to disprove 
> the value of the Zenph recording?  That would be a little like using 
> it to disprove the value of a digitized copy of the William Morris 
> Canterbury Tales......
>
>
> 
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