The Innocence of Anthony West

It was only about a year ago that Granville Hicks, with a large cheering section recruited from the serried ranks of his fellow critics and the tonier slums of Publishers’ Row, lashed out at Anthony West and the New Yorker’s book review section. Perhaps Mr. West was recalling the Hicks attack when he observed in a prefatory note to his collection of New Yorker reviews (Principles & Persuasions, Harcourt, Brace, $4.50) “that one of a modern critic’s duties is to keep the sharp edge on words, and to maintain standards by occasionally exposing the commercial products that pass for contributions to our cultural inheritance to the full weight of aesthetic and ideological criticism. The mind bloats and softens on a diet of pap, and there is good reason for reminding the general reader from time to time that pap is pap and not good red meat.”

Noble sentiments, nobly spoken, although H. L. Mencken would probably have snorted at their do-good tone, and would, you may be sure, have cocked a right bilious eye at such phrases as “our cultural interitance” and “the full weight of aesthetic and ideological criticism.”

JC

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John Abbot Clark

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It was only about a year ago that Granville Hicks, with a large cheering section recruited from the serried ranks of his fellow critics and the tonier slums of Publishers’ Row, lashed out at Anthony West and the New Yorker’s book review section. Perhaps Mr. West was recalling the Hicks attack when he observed in a prefatory note to his collection of New Yorker reviews (Principles & Persuasions, Harcourt, Brace, $4.50) “that one of a modern critic’s duties is to keep the sharp edge on words, and to maintain standards by occasionally exposing the commercial products that pass for contributions to our cultural inheritance to the full weight of aesthetic and ideological criticism. The mind bloats and softens on a diet of pap, and there is good reason for reminding the general reader from time to time that pap is pap and not good red meat.”

Noble sentiments, nobly spoken, although H. L. Mencken would probably have snorted at their do-good tone, and would, you may be sure, have cocked a right bilious eye at such phrases as “our cultural interitance” and “the full weight of aesthetic and ideological criticism.”