THE STATE OF CRITICISM
193
be met head on.
If
there is anything at all in the condition of criticism
at the moment that is lively, it is this underlying social drama, which is
far more vital than the ideas through which it is being played out.
IRVING
HOWE: Mark Shechner referred to what we call myoid gang. I
never felt part of it, but now that it no longer exists, I seem to become
more and more fused with it. That's part of the necessary distortion
of history; that there was a notable lack of self-reflection is partly
true, but only in regard to a theory of criticism. There, we made no
contributions. But there was a very great deal of self-criticism, of self–
tormenting, nail-biting, questioning, arguing, fighting, error, judg–
ment; because we-whoever that might be, I guess by now it's
William and me-didn 't think of ourselves primarily as critics, but
as writers who sometimes did criticism. This does not make one
better or worse, but it's a difference. We became engaged in issues
and problems, and the question of how to respond to and how to
analyze and describe, for example, Stalinism, or the big controversy
over Hannah Arendt's book on Eichmann which, were it not for us,
the rest of the country would have found a very stimulating book and
then gone back to sleep. We became engaged with problems like
Vietnam, the New Left, all kinds of other political, cultural, and
social things. We were different, you see, from those who do theories
of criticism. Now, about not fending off the avant-garde (the French
avant-garde, etc.), here I can only speak for myself.
It
doesn't interest
me much. That's a simple fact. Maybe I'm wrong in feeling that, or
it's a sign of getting older. But I have now lived through several
dominant critical theories which I was told were absolutely essential
to my understanding. There was once a great critic in Chicago
named Leo Aristotle, and if one didn't get clear what he was up to it
was thought to be impossible to proceed one step further.
BARBARA
ROSE: Does anybody here read any art criticism?
IRVING
HOWE: I do.
I
read Hilton Kramer every week. I have many
differences with Hilton on political and social matters. But I was
deeply interested and stirred by his essay on Picasso, because he did
something for me which is the job of the critic. He took certain
impressions, unformulated responses that I've had somewhere in the
back of my consciousness and hadn't been able to formulate because
I lack the skill in art. He is not necessarily right in any particular
judgment, but he did a service for me at that particular moment.
