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going to do, Hilton, we keep agreeing today. I would go along with
what Hilton said, that we come after one of the greatest cultural
movements in human history and we are now at the slough of this,
and we don't know what's happening next. We have a sense of a
vacuum, but it is not a vacuum in literary criticism. Criticism isn't
that important. The problem is in the lives we lead, the culture we
have, and the society in which we live.
BARBARA ROSE: The French are filling the vacuum with Freud. I just
came back from Paris . It's quite amazing.
REUBEN ABEL: There's something about the discussion this afternoon
that makes me feel that it is entirely wide of the mark.
WILLIAM PHILLIPS: We were hoping nobody would notice that. But we
are grateful that you did.
REUBEN ABEL: You can tell us about the economics of publishing, that
the art magazines are now owned by the conglomerates. And we
know that everybody is an artist now, and artists hate critics.
BARBARA ROSE: They don't hate them, they want to hire them!
REUBEN ABEL: We've heard about the political background of what's
gone on . But no one has latched on to the critics' job. What is the
critic primarily responsible for? I suggest that it is some sort of
discrimination, some sort of evaluation or appraisal, some sort of
saying this is good or this is bad. Now, the reason this is difficult to
do is that the critic is expected to give a reason for his judgment.
IRVING HOWE: I was under the impression that I had said something
like that in the course of my talk.
R EUBEN ABEL: Your last reliance was on the word
intelligence.
Now
intelligence is a great thing to have. But it is not enough.
IRVING HOWE: That's true. I said my last reliance was on intelligence,
but I began my paper by talking about intuitive powers. The critic
does have to give reasons for his evaluations . But all the theories that
I know something about don't help us terribly much in the
act
of
making our judgments. I pick up a new novel by a man named
Naipaul, and I've got to try and figure out what I think about the
book. Whatever it is that I do, none of the theories describes it. No
one I know has ever tried to describe it. In terms of my actual job of
work, when I ask myself why I think it's a good book, I have only the
notoriously imprecise language of literary criticism, and there is
only one language perhaps more notoriously imprecise, namely art
criticism. A critical theory at times might enable me to avoid certain
errors, or stimulate me to a keener perception of a given work. But
finally I have to resort to my-I hope-trained sensibility.
