Does Criticism Improve Literature?
 

a dear friend just shared this clip from the 70s in which we find a lively debate over the merits of Euripides and the function of criticism:

You'll want to start at about 12:58: https://youtu.be/GaQG3-DWBlU?t=776

The clip's amazing for about a million reasons.

And Little Richard is their fountain. What eloquence, what expression, what style!

Oh! That is a good start to the weekend.

I'm intrigued by nice-shoes woman, who seems to be doing invisible finger-weaving.

Sarah-Jane

I think I may have missed the point. I didn't know who any of them were. It felt far too scripted for a "chat show". I found the small loudmouthed man appallingly rude. I felt the well-dressed man on the right was set up as a sort of straight man so that the little one could shout him down and I felt embarrassed on his behalf. The whole thing appeared to be arranged so that the man on the left in the sound-of-music curtains could do a set piece as deus ex machina that was a little under-rehearsed and clumsily timed. It put me suddenly in mind of that scene in the subway where the man was demonstrating his devotion to herbal remedies with shouts of "Louwbre".

I now sit fascinated and a little shell-shocked. Dick Caveat indeed.

I wonder what was advertised in the commercial break.

And I thought Oedipus Rex was by Sophocles...

Left to right:

• Little Richard (surely you've heard his hit "Tutti Frutti")
• Rita Moreno (who played Anita in West Side Story)
• Erich Segal (a Classics professor and author of the screenplay of Love Story, for which I'm sure you know at least the theme song and the wildly inaccurate catchphrase "Love means never having to say you're sorry.")
• Dick Cavett (host of the show, which had lots of famous guests)
• John Simon (a notably nasty critic, infamous for attacking the looks of actors, in addition to their acting ability. The taste of anyone more fixated on Barbra Streisand's nose than her voice is surely questionable! I rather agree with his low opinion of Love Story, though.)

Euripides wrote an Oedipus play, too, but only fragments of it survive. Sophocles' is more famous. I am also baffled as to why Segal chose that as an example.

BTW I attended a lecture by Eric Segal when I was a classics undergraduate at UC Berkeley in the late 1980s. His topic was Ovid. I thought he was extremely patronizing to the women who participated in the question-and-answer session. No worse in that regard than some of my professors, though.

Very off-topic, but when it comes to reviews, can I share this (about an academic book where I co-authored a chapter) as my favourite and funniest badge of honour:

(by Toby Young in The Spectator): "This execrable volume, penned by whining liberal so-called educators (who wouldn't last a day in a 'proper job'), is a pirouetting act of self-serving vanity. All of its contributors deserve to be drowned at sea like unwanted kittens."

Sarah-Jane

Thank you, Julie, for listing who is on screen for Ann and others.

Sarah-Jane, that is quite a nasty review indeed. Congrats on your chapter in that book.

Best,

Aaron

I find the discussion lightly entertaining. Though I am not sure that the examples prove a universal norm. Then again, most of it is eloquent and at least engaging. I do find the three debaters a little stereotypical, though.

That simply means you will be judged as a great writer by critics of the future.

Thank-you Aaron.

It had good reviews, too. As ravingly good as the ravingly bad (I will fish them out if anyone wants proof, but they weren't as funny). There was also an element of truth in the kitten-drowing review.

The rave reviews were from publications that agreed with the editorial position. That's the game (probably not in the very discipline-specific spaces that some people work in here, and which I respect).

I don't want to opt into that game, though. I'm a part of several worthy panels and fora, but I think art/poetry/music is the only answer in the main. It has reach, it makes, rather than responds to space. But only if it can be accessible, not be tied in itself to the subtle hierarchies of money and power that have been involved in arts ed and production for years.

(now I feel I'm hijacking the thread - sorry - will disappear)

Sarah-Jane

Not for my contribution to that book, I won't. Promise. Although I've joined the ed team as a producer of visual images, so if you ever see an unusual animal-headed figure on a worthy educational tome you'll know it's me.

Sarah-Jane

Thanks, Julie. I have learned much. Perhaps I was disadvantaged by only seeing what seems to have been a very small piece of a much longer show.
I have heard Tutti Frutti but haven't read, heard or seen Love Story. I didn't recognise Rita Moreno, though I loved her performance in WSS, and didn't know any of the others.
I suppose I must thank some higher kindness that I was not taught classics by anyone so obnoxious as Mr. Segal, and although I know that much of Euripides's work has been lost, I have never heard the specific title "Oedipus Rex" (or "Tyrannus") attributed to any other than Sophocles, so why was Mr. S bringing it so forcefully into the argument, unless perhaps he was setting his adversary up for a climactic humiliation? If I had known about Barbra Streisand's nose, though, I might have felt less sympathy for the fellow.

And Sarah-Jane, bless you for sharing that; it is indeed an accolade worth treasuring. I, for one, am very glad that you were not drowned. This must prove that you are not a duffer (see A. Ransome, Swallows and Amazons.)