364
PARTISAN REVIEW
and you were constantly kind of apologizing for having listened to
the Third Programme, I think, or something of that nature. Now I
wonder if that doesn't illustrate one of the problems that we have
over here. I think it's true we have to get back to a kind of political
basis for criticism and it's exactly that that we're missing now. We're
also missing any sense of what a critic does and why he does it.
Edmund Wilson in the twenties criticized popular culture and he
wrote some very, very fine pieces on it-on vaudeville, on film, on
jazz. Nonetheless, the distinction between "High" and what I
suppose we might call the "Low" culture was a very clear distinction
in his mind. Not only was it a clear distinction in his mind, he was a
product of High Culture without apology. What I found rather
fascinating in your talk was the idea that it's the High Culture which
judges the Low Culture. What you were really saying, it seems to me,
what I was, gathering from you-as my students might say, your
"vibes," God help us!-is that it is the Ldw Culture now which
today judges the High Culture. And judges not only the High
Culture, and this is where the danger is, but judges the High
Culture's right to exist. It is not that the Low Culture any longer has
to justify itself to
Partisan Review,
but that
Partisan Review,
and
what
Partisan
stands for, now has to justify itself to
Time Magazine,
and that's the danger that we're facing. When you think about High
and Low Culture, when you speak about High and Low Culture, if
you ignore that point, then you ignore what seems to me
to
be
essential to any argument of culture today.
WOOD: That wasn't what I thought I'd said. My impression was, that
what I'd said was that High Culture seems to me obsessively a matter
of judging and that Low Culture has no judgments at all. And I'm
suggesting if we're to judge sensibly, we need simply more agility
and, and fewer battle lines.
PHILLIPS: There's a point at which a critic has to simply look at TV
and say zilch is zilch because that's what it is. It's zilch.
WOOD:
If
it is, it is, yes; but, you have to look to see.
RIVERS: How many art galleries have you gone to where you've come
out with the same feeling?
WOOD: How many poems have you read, read of the most serious and
elegant and learned kind that are absolutely junk.
PHILLIPS: No, but he's making a different point. He's saying the
category is junk and the category of poetry is not junk, Michael. I'm
not defending him, but I'm trying to repeat what he's saying.
WOOD: I'm not being as clear as I shou ld be. I'm simply saying I don't
