Re: lack of schooling
Tim O'Connor (oconnort@nyu.edu)
Tue, 23 Feb 1999 21:44:49 -0500
On Tue, Feb 23, 1999 at 09:45:09AM +0000, Scottie Bowman wrote:
> Beyond all that, I'm interested that my innocuous tease should arouse
> such strong feelings. You & Tim may offer various exceptions to the
> rule (in which, incidentally, le Carre used the word 'mainly') but
> it's something of a cliché that most artists look on critics &
> commentators with contempt.
> I wasn't offering anything new.
>
> But what was it? Was it the word 'failure'?
Not for me. Many artists, as they start out, feel that they are
failures. And it's certainly not anything new; there's the old saw
Woody Allen adapted in "Annie Hall": "those who can't do, teach;
those that can't teach, teach gym; and those who couldn't do anything, I
think, were assigned to our school."
Sure, many artists are condescending to critics. (Consider Hemingway's
withering sketch called, I think, "The Making of a Critic" in A MOVEABLE
FEAST, where he lambasts critics.
But even though I sensed a tease, I couldn't resist objecting to such a
broad generalization as the one le Carre used....
--tim