Volume 37, Number 2 · February 15, 1990

The True Amateur

By Noel Annan
Friends of Promise: Cyril Connolly and the World of Horizon
by Michael Shelden

Harper and Row, 254 pp., $24.95

'Why are so many people in England down on Cyril Connolly?' Edmund Wilson asked John Wain in 1957. Wain gave a sensible reply. Fashion had changed. The man of letters had been superseded by the professional academic critic. Empson and Leavis, Blackmur and Tate made discriminations and analyzed the text. Critics had at their fingertips examples of the intentional fallacy and the dissociation of sensibility. The critic now took his vocation as seriously as a young priest.



Review, 3327 words

To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:

If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in:

To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below.

I agree to the terms and conditions for this service.

To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below.

I agree to the terms and conditions for this service.


Search the Review
Advanced search