Word: criticism
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...Critic Huneker's day was already dead. The shades of Europe's mauve decade had become old-fashioned memories; Huneker's men of the hour were but ghosts. It is significant that not a single subject of these selected essays was a U. S. citizen. "Essentially and inescapably civilized" is what Editor Mencken calls Critic Huneker, by way of congratulating him on being, in effect, European...
...Critic Huneker's principal interests may not have been in the U. S., but his breezily enthusiastic criticism was undeniably native. Often blundering, always bold, he was a warm-hearted chronicler of adventure in the arts. Healthy exaggeration came naturally to him, made his sweeping statements sweep cleaner: "[Shaw] is as emotional as his own typewriter, and this defect, which he parades as did the fox in the fable, has stood in the way of his writing a great play. He despises love, and therefore cannot appeal deeply to mankind." Wagner's Parsijal is dismissed as "that bizarre compound...
...Critic Huneker was born in Philadelphia (1860), studied art in Paris, traveled widely, returned to the U. S. Traveled or settled, he produced gargantuan quantities of newspaper criticism of all the arts. Everywhere he drank beer and talked. Says Editor Mencken: "I have heard them all, but he was the best." Critic Huneker is generally credited with having been "the chief man in the movement of the '90s on this side of the ocean." Among his books: Chopin: The Man and His Music; Ivory Apes and Peacocks; Steeplejack; Painted Veils...
...London opening last fortnight the play had fair success. Actress Foster is not the only person Critic Hannen Swaffer has belittled. He once called Playwright George Bernard Shaw "a tiresome old driveller." Playwright Shaw did not smack Critic Swaffer's face. Instead, at the annual luncheon of the Critics' Circle last month in London, when Toastmaster St. John Ervine divided dramatic critics into three kinds?"critics, reporters and Hannen Swaffer"?Shaw said all dramatic critics were very bad, compared Swaffer to the late great Playwright-Critic William Archer,* said that Archer was worse...
...Critic Swaffer, tall, stringy, in his 50's, convivial, well-to-do, was once a famed young tosspot. Now he confines himself to sherry, champagne His black silk stock, early Victorian wing collar and frock coat attract stares. An English wisecracker, he likes to pin actors with a phrase. Besides the Express, he writes for the London Bystander, for Manhattan's slangy Variety (stage trade journal whose language Editor Sime Silverman defends on the grounds that Variety caters "strictly to hams and theatre managers and acrobats...