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PARTISAN REVIEW
critics for their judgments, we revere them for their arguments, their
capacity to analyze a work of art, their style, and their intelligence,
which comes down almost as a work of literature itself. We don't revere
them for being right or wrong about a particular work of art.
Hilton Kramer:
Surely plenty of art critics have made big mistakes, but
there might be something about theater critics that makes them espe–
cially vulnerable.
Eugene Goodheart:
I agree with much of what you're saying, but I
don't agree with the tone. I find a kind of censoriousness in it. That is,
we're quick to condemn certain works, but at the same time, we admit
that people make mistakes and that, as Jules Olitski says, time will tell.
This means that there should be a certain modesty, a certain hesitation
in judgments. We may be making a lot of mistakes in our judgments of
contemporary artists, and thirty or forty years from now there'll be a
revision, even among some of the people here. Bob, you said that you
changed your view of Arthur Miller and of Eugene O'Neill. So I would
hope for a bit of modesty and self-criticism.
Also, the problem in the university is not democracy, but a lack of
democracy, a lack of openness, of dialogue, of difference of opinion. I
also think that a problem in America is the tradition of anti–
intellectualism, which is not to be identified with the democratic idea.
Tocqueville had a more generous view of democracy than some of us
here. As to the universities, there are over three thousand colleges and
universities in America . Many of the small colleges are giving their stu–
dents excellent educations, teaching the humanities seriously. Some
major universities are also serious about education, such as the Univer–
sity of Chicago. I think one of the problems is that universities like
Duke, Harvard, Yale, and Johns Hopkins have captured the media.
They represent American universities to the world. And it's a misrepre–
sentation . I teach at Brandeis University. My best graduate students
come from these small colleges, and they're very well educated. They
may not have prestigious names, but they are very good.
Jules Olitski:
Mr. Goodheart, in all areas of life we make decisions about
quality. When we go into a restaurant, buy a shirt, get married....
Hilton Kramer:
That's where we make our biggest mistakes .
