1. "Marche also delights in pointing out Robbe-Grillet's lack of success and visibility, which undermines the idea the author had some effect on novels."

Compare the sentiment above with that, famously ascribed to Brian Eno, that only one hundred people bought the first Velvet Underground album, but all of them started a band. That is, does "influence" require a popular audience, or does an audience of productive elites suffice? How about an audience of influential theorist-critics?

2. If England never produced an avant-garde (and Woolf was not avant-garde, no matter what you think) (and neither was Lawrence, you idiot--Mama's Little Bertie was also a Victorian) (and, to fill out the Big Four, forget about the Irish Joyce and Polish Conrad), wtf about Wyndham Lewis?

Five hundred words on each. Spelling counts, though there is some leeway given the on-demand nature of the assignment. Give yourself time to prrofread (haha!) and edit.

Maybe Stephanie and Matt can branch out and review the latest Black Crowes album for Maxim.

Everyone is right. This was like being stuck with the less-photogenic cast members from Best Week Ever. Useless as film criticism, useless as entertainment if you're over 23.

When you bust another for usage/spelling/style, you gotta watch yer own ass.

Tina writes:

"I'm actually an academician, friend. Neither of us appear to posses the freighted objectivity to even deign to enter journalism, low as that fruit may hang."

1. Did you mean to write academic (laborer in academe)? It is not synonymous with academician (member of an academy).

2. In the second sentence, appear does not agree in number with its antecedent, neither. Try: "Neither of us appears. . . ."

3. Posses = groups who follow Puff Daddy and Snoop Diggity Dogg and Wyatt Earp. Possess = "have."

4. Split infinitives don't bother me if they don't bother you.

5. OTOH, libertarius's (see Strunk & White, Rule #1) assertion that there is no English avant-garde is pure doofus-ness till he addresses e.g. Wyndham Lewis.

You neglect another of Lewis's collaborators, T.E. Hulme, whom even Pound acknowledged as the (English) Father of Imagism,.

By Ford Huefer Ford, I assume you mean Ford Hermann Hueffer, later Ford Madox Hueffer, later Ford Madox Ford, from Surrey. Where except England is Surrey?

With Lewis, that's three English Men of 1914, and it's starting to look like the Great London Vortex to me.

I'd back off the No English Avant Garde answer before I took comps if I were you. Even if the Woolf = Victorian (always Leslie Stephen's little girl?) gambit got by, you'd be fumbling toward Pass Without Distinction.

I threw in T.E. Hulme, Imagist. I did not throw in Professor Doolittle's little girl, Imagiste, but thank you for reminding me that Mr. H.D., Richard Aldington, was also among the English experimentalists of 1914(you write British in your last sentence, surely a mistake since you have already suggested that Joyce is acceptably avant).

You are working too hard to deny poor Fordie. He was English. Concede.

Or else you must let Eliot be English. If you are going to argue cultural affinities = nationality--then he was, even prior to his triple conversion, English in spades.

Pound was English till 1920, then he was Italian, then he was forcibly American, then he was Italian again.

I am glad you did so well in school.

Hey! Me, too!!

"like Lucy and Harpo in the Mirror"

Doesn't the context of a piece help determine how much you must lead your audience? That is, you can attempt things hitherto unknown to man in the art-jounalism precincts of e.g. Esquire without labeling the resulting pieces "faux bio" or "fiction based on fact."

Why, then, pester Paglia, who, whether you admire her opinions or despise her opinions, pretty much does nothing but issue opinions? She is, after all, a well-known, widely-admired, more widely-despised, critic, not a journalist.

I remember that my freshman comp professor thought that it was the nadir of Western civilization when the Washington Post took to labeling Art Buchwald's column "Satire and Whimsy" rather than forcing its readership into the difficult intellectual position of having to Get the Joke.

That's kind of a definition of criticism, I think, which is the art Paglia practices, however well or poorly. Anyone who would badger the editors or let his subscription drop because she is not "objective," because she offers "opnions," is reading her through the wrong generic lens. (If you want to criticize her criticism, then that's fine. But to criticize her for attempting criticism is silly.)

For years, many on the Left hankered for opinionated commentators with as much fuck-it-all spirit as the loathesome but culturally cached Limbaugh. Paglia is not our girl--her politics are goofy libertarian, her pop cultural judgments obnoxiously cutesy-poo, and her style confrontational for its own wearisome sake--but that is the context in which she should be judged, not as a journalistic automaton.

It's easy to see where this will go and why Salon, driven by clicks and therefore reliant on controversy, posted it. Still, whatever the initial impulse, it is good to see something from this side of the argument.

Atheist anti-intellectuals ready?

Christian anti-intellectuals ready?

Then LET"S GET IT ON!!!!

Who you think he is is another "beatnik" who is actually more literate (bbo's puns often reveal a reader), more widely intelligent, and considerably more obnoxious than this wannabe.

I, too, will miss Garry and Be-bop--though I tended (as Anonymous) to give them both grief. At least they had some integrity and could be counted on for honest rage.

The poets of medieval Provence considered the theft of another person's style or form to be plagiarism, Goodcelery.

The first sentence is about how generosity overcomes O'Hehir's high critical standards:

"I'll set aside my own mixed assessment of Minghella's work and observe that he had an unerring eye for projects that combined big-screen cinematic spectacle, a literary pedigree and wide appeal among upscale audiences."

Revision:

"He had an unerring eye for projects that combined big-screen cinematic spectacle, a literary pedigree, and wide appeal among upscale audiences."