Crritic!
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Thursday, 04 October 2007
Rónán McDonald thinks critics are precious. His argument is over my head (he has research interests in Irish literature, modernism, Samuel Beckett, and Darwin’s legacy in the history of ideas) but I think it can be summed up as: "in the gude old days, people listened to critics. Now they think their own opinions have some validity. This is a bad thing."
However, the critic has a vital role to play in culture and one that is under threat.
When Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot was first produced on the London stage in 1955, it was greeted with derision. Catcalls came from the early audiences and half the theatre emptied by the second act. But when favourable reviews appeared in the Sunday papers by the leading theatre critics Kenneth Tynan and Harold Hobson, the play was taken seriously. Waiting for Godot is now regarded as the most important play of the 20th century.
This is probably a super-philistine question, but what is an "important" play? If we’re doing Irish lit, give me Oscar Wilde: "There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book; books are well written or badly written." Once you think otherwise, you start to think that people who don’t share your opinions ought to have their heads chopped off or be buried up to their waists in sand or something. But where were we? Ah Godot.
VLADIMIR:
Moron!
ESTRAGON:
That’s the idea, let’s abuse each other.
They turn, move apart, turn again and face each other.
VLADIMIR:
Moron!
ESTRAGON:
Vermin!
VLADIMIR:
Abortion!
ESTRAGON:
Morpion!
VLADIMIR:
Sewer-rat!
ESTRAGON:
Curate!
VLADIMIR:
Cretin!
ESTRAGON:
(with finality). Crritic!
VLADIMIR:
Oh!
He wilts, vanquished, and turns away.
As Dorothy Parker once said, "You can lead a whore to culture ..."
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