Perspectives on Ideas. April 16, 2007.

Criticism
Criticism 205 Emerson on Hawthorne: “N. Hawthorne’s reputation as a writer...is a very pleasing fact, because his writing is not good for anything, and this is a tribute to the man.” Mellow, Hawthorne in His Times.

Criticism 280 Poe claimed that … was ‘grossly uneducated’ and that he could not write ‘three consecutive sentences of grammatical English.’ Mellow, Hawthorne in His Times.

Criticism 281 Hawthorne was clearly tainted with the didactic impulse Poe considered the major failing of New England writers. Mellow, Hawthorne in His Times.

Criticism 315 E.P. Whipple: “…bears on every page the evidence of a mind thoroughly alive….” Mellow, Hawthorne in His Times.

Criticism 521 The great failure of The Marble Faun is his separation of plot and scenery. Mellow, Hawthorne in His Times.

Criticism 521 The Marble Faun is the same high allegory on the “fortunate fall,” the loss of innocence, the bitter wisdom of sin, that Hawthorne had written before in many of his tales and romances; like “Young Goodman Brown,” or The Scarlet Letter, it could as easily have taken place in the New England forest as in the Borghese Gardens. Mellow, Hawthorne in His Times.

Criticism 527 Hawthorne: “It is odd enough, moreover, that my own individual taste is for quite another class of works than those which I myself am able to write.” Mellow, Hawthorne in His Times.

Criticism 527 Hawthorne confessed to Fields [his publisher] that if he read such books as his own, written by some other writer, he doubted that he would be able to get through them. Mellow, Hawthorne in His Times.

Criticism 582 Curtis: Although Hawthorne could produce ‘harrowing allegories' of the theme of sin in Salem Village, he 'did not see a Carolina slave-pen….' Mellow, Hawthorne in His Times.

Criticism 292 Editor: “It’s cute, but is it science?” Christianson, Fox at the Wood’s Edge: Loren Eiseley

Criticism 292 Loomis: “I think the author’s real value is in his ability to make us aware, to shake up our egotistic complacency, of the unfathomable mystery of life and the wonder of the world.” Christianson, Fox at the Wood’s Edge: Loren Eiseley

Criticism 296 “…each page cries out to be quoted.” Christianson, Fox at the Wood’s Edge: Loren Eiseley

Criticism 307 His is the myth of the loner gazing down from the mountain slope, of the solitary hiker in the woods, of man against society giving permanent form to Thoreau’s dream of turning his back on an impoverished world of polluted skies and teeming cities. Christianson, Fox at the Wood’s Edge: Loren Eiseley

Criticism 318 Hiram Haydn’s criticism of a poem: “...for in all honesty I don’t think it a good poem, but I do feel the thought and feeling behind it good and also a number of individual lines and phrases.” Christianson, Fox at the Wood’s Edge: Loren Eiseley

Criticism 223 [Thoreau]…a banal writer who somehow managed to produce a classic work of literature. Eiseley, The Star Thrower

Criticism 278 On Thomas E. Dewey: “The boy orator of the platitude”; “intellectual halitosis.” Blum, V Was for Victory.

Criticism 689 E. M. Dealey: “We need a man on horseback to lead this nation, and many people in Texas and the Southwest think you [Kennedy] are riding Caroline’s bicycle.” Schlesinger, A Thousand Days

Criticism 348 He [Kennedy] could find and fret over one paragraph of criticism deep in ten paragraphs of praise. Sorenson, Kennedy

Criticism 598 Liberals denounced [the Peace Corps] as a gimmick…conservatives dismissed it as a nonsensical haven for beatniks and visionaries…Communist nations denounced it as an espionage front…and its own backers threatened to dissipate its momentum by talking, even before it started, of a UN Peace Corps and a domestic Peace Corps and a dozen other diversions. Sorenson, Kennedy

Criticism 617 [The Mormon Bible]: …chloroform in print. Twain, Roughing It

Criticism Kafka 448 His longer narratives--Amerika, The Trial, even The Castle--are better in parts than as complete works; and his longer stories, even 'The Metamorphosis,' begin more acutely than they tend to close. Bloom, Western Canon.

Criticism 152 [Criticism] disturbs us…because it jogs a firmly held set of beliefs and forces us to re-examine them. Zinsser, On Writing Well.

Criticism 507 He consoled himself that he was treated badly because he was ahead of his time. Irving Stone, The Passions of the Mind (Life of Freud).

Criticism 411 Harrisburg Patriot and Union on Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: We pass over the silly remarks of the President; for the credit of the nation we are willing that the veil of oblivion shall be dropped over them and that they shall no more be repeated or thought of. Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years.

Criticism 411 The Chicago Times on Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat, and dish-watery utterances of the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States. Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years.

Criticism 411 The American correspondent of the London Times wrote [of the Gettysburg Address] that ‘the ceremony was rendered ludicrous by some of the sallies of that poor President Lincoln…anything more dull and commonplace it would not be easy to produce.’ Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years.

Criticism 159 Johnson on Lord Chesterfield’s published letters to his natural son: They teach the morals of whore and the manners of a dancing master. Boswell, Life of Johnson, Vol. 1.

Criticism 180 A lady once asked [Johnson] how he came to define pastern the knee of a horse [in his dictionary]: instead of making an elaborate defense as she expected, he at once answered, “Ignorance, Madam, pure ignorance.” Boswell, Life of Johnson, Vol. 1.

Criticism 253 Johnson on the right to be a critic of a play, although you could not write one so good: You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. Boswell, Life of Johnson, Vol. 1.

Criticism 244 Chinese proverb: Do not remove a fly from your friend’s forehead with a hatchet. Plimpton, ed. The Writer’s Chapbook

Criticism 147 John Berryman: I would recommend the cultivation of extreme indifference to both praise and blame because praise will lead you to vanity, and blame will lead you to self-pity, and both are bad for writers. Plimpton, ed. The Writer’s Chapbook

Criticism 142 Every day and every hour we say things of another that we may more properly say of ourselves. Montaigne, Selected Essays.

Criticism 421 A hundred times a day we laugh at ourselves in the person of our neighbor and detest in others the defects which are more clearly in us and wonder at them with extraordinary impudence and heedlessness. Montaigne, Selected Essays.

Criticism 104 …assault the vice without hurting the person. Addison, 4/9/1711. The Spectator.

Criticism 310 Censure, says a late ingenious author, is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent. Addison, 6/26/1711. The Spectator.

Criticism 310 There is no defense against reproach [criticism?], but obscurity. Addison, 6/26/1711. The Spectator.