Name: The critic as artist
ISBN: 9781557133687

What Hacker News says

yesenadamApr 2020

Thank you! Gee, that's such a brilliant idea. I must try it.

If Chesterton's Mr McCabe (from On Mr. McCabe and a Divine Frivolity[0] in Heretics) had never existed, it would make little difference. It's just an excuse to say what he wants to say.

...criticism of the highest kind...treats the work of art simply as a starting-point for a new creation. It does not confine itself...to discovering the real intention of the artist and accepting that as final. And in this it is right, for the meaning of any beautiful created thing is, at least, as much in the soul of him who looks at it, as it was in his soul who wrought it. Nay, it is rather the beholder who lends to the beautiful thing its myriad meanings, and makes it marvellous for us, and sets it in some new relation to the age, so that it becomes a vital portion of our lives, and a symbol of what we pray for, or perhaps of what, having prayed for, we fear that we may receive. – Wilde, The Critic As Artist

[0] http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1301191h.html#ch16

Edit: I've 'borrowed' A Perfect Vacuum from archive.org, thanks! Also, I've hardly read any Borges, but that Borges fake review of a novel which is identical with Don Quixote but totally different is one of the funniest things I've read.

http://www.coldbacon.com/writing/borges-quixote.html

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jackcosgroveMar 2020

Oscar Wilde's got you covered.

https://www.wilde-online.info/the-critic-as-artist.html

> THE CRITIC AS ARTIST: WITH SOME REMARKS UPON THE IMPORTANCE OF DOING NOTHING

Reflecting on my internet posting history, sometimes it does seem like a whole lot of nothing. But I still like it.

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yesenadamFeb 2018

Thanks, interesting. Well, I'm pretty new here too. Maybe you offended some /. people, ya think?! Why name names like that. You sounded very bitter. Anyway, you can edit a comment to ask the downvoters why they did so. I find it annoying sometimes not to know why. But I'd say that's why. No-one wants to read that kind of angry rant on here.

Ohh, you mean, can be explained by your stoic principles. Gotcha.

I'm always amused when I hear people in the US talk about "radical left-wing", and calling anything left of far-right, "communist". I guess I don't think they know what left or left-wing means. That stuff you decribe sounds more like "stupid" or "ignorant" than any particular left/right thing. Hmm well, using those bad-faith labels ("virtue-signaling", "victimhood narratives") might be satisfying, but no-one thinks they're doing that, (like people never think they're being unfair, unjust etc) so I imagine it would make further dialogue impossible. You don't win just by having a label for something.

But yeah, I've seen appalling videos of the kind of thing you're talking about. I was once called 'sexist' (by a girlfriend! ha) for saying men and women are different - that men have penises, women have vaginas. It was confusion acquired from confused post-modern university arts lecturers, I think. But yeah, it has gotten pretty stupid. Well, there have always been stupid thought fads like that. HL Mencken is good on keeping perspective, not letting that bug you too much.

Even scientists usually come to an experiment/survey with some hypothesis about how things will turn out, which is why they're doing it. Sure, we try to be more accurate, have better information, not let our baggage cloud our perception, but I think this 'unbiased' person is a myth and unattainable, and not very useful to aim for. To be 'expert' in anything, in the sense that is possible in our lives, is to be biased. (I see why I have a problem with the very word 'biased' - it takes for granted that 'unbiased' is a real thing.)

“It is only about things that do not interest one, that one can give a really unbiased opinion; and this is no doubt the reason why an unbiased opinion is always valueless.” - Oscar Wilde

Actually that quote's worth giving in context. From The Critic as Artist:

Ernest: Well, I should say that a critic should above all things be fair.

Gilbert: Ah! not fair. A critic cannot be fair in the ordinary sense of the word. It is only about things that do not interest one that one can give a really unbiased opinion, which is no doubt the reason why an unbiased opinion is always absolutely valueless. The man who sees both sides of a question, is a man who sees absolutely nothing at all. Art is a passion, and, in matters of art, Thought is inevitably coloured by emotion, and so is fluid rather than fixed, and, depending upon fine moods and exquisite moments, cannot be narrowed into the rigidity of a scientific formula or a theological dogma. It is to the soul that Art speaks, and the soul may be made the prisoner of the mind as well as of the body. One should, of course, have no prejudices; but, as a great Frenchman remarked a hundred years ago, it is one's business in such matters to have preferences, and when one has preferences one ceases to be fair. It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of Art.

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FiveFiftyOneApr 2009

Playing with Oscar Wilde's essay Critic As Artist:

All fine imaginative work is self-conscious and deliberate. No poet sings because he must sing. At least, no great poet does. A great poet sings because he chooses to sing. It is so now, and it has always been so. We are sometimes apt to think that the voices that sounded at the dawn of poetry were simpler, fresher, and more natural than ours, and that the world which the early poets looked at, and through which they walked, had kind of a poetical quality of its own, and almost without changing could pass into song.

With some license, should you substitute poet for developer and song for program, you end up with a nice description of the art of programming :-) Here's my shot at it:

All fine imaginative work is self-conscious and deliberate. No programmer develops because he must write code. At least, no great programmer does. A great programmer develops because he chooses to write code. It is so now, and it has always been so. We are sometimes apt to think that the code that was written at the dawn of programming was simpler, fresher, and more natural than ours, and that the world which the early programmers looked at, and through which they walked, had kind of a programmable quality of its own, and almost without changing could pass into code

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