MASSCULT AND MIDCULT
219
selves disciplined by certain standards of excellence which were
accepted by both the limited public of informed amateurs and
the artists who performed for them. By now in this country, the
demands of the audience, which has changed from a small body
of connoisseurs into a large body of ignoramuses, have become
the chief criteria of success. Only the Little Magazines worry
about standards. The commercial press, including
The Saturday
Review
and
The New York Times Book Review,
consider books
as commodities, rating them according to audience-response. The
newspaper movie columns are extreme examples. There, the
humble effort of the "critic"-and indeed one would have to
put even "reviewer" in quotes-is merely to tell
his
readers
which films they, not he, like.
With the prescience of a snob of genius, Alexander Pope
wrote
The Dunciad
a half-century before the tide of vulg.ar–
ization had begun to gather full force. Grub Street (read:
Madison Avenue or perhaps Sunset Boulevard) was its target
and its anti-heroes were Theobald and Cibber, the former a
lawyer who pretended to scholarship and the latter an actor
whose vanity led him to write serious books. These dunces, who
were getting away with their impostures, symbolized the con–
fusion in the world of letters that the expansion of the audience
had introduced. Two centuries later, when the goddess of Dull–
ness has so extended her realm that one takes it for granted that
most current productions
will
be of her kingdom, one is startled
by Pope's vindictive passion, as in the ending:
She comes! She comes! the sable throne behold
Of night primeval and of chaos old!
Before her, fancy's gilded clouds decay
And all its varying rainbows ,die away.
Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires,
The meteor drops and in a flash expires.
* * *
