I was trained in the '50s as a New Critic. I remember what literature was like before the New Critics, when people stood up and talked about Shelley's soul and such things.
“But if I wasn't playing, I would drink Saturdays, then Sunday, then Monday. Then I would try and train and it was no good, then have another drink just to pass the day away.”
“Television, despite its enormous presence, turns out to have added pitifully few lines to the communal memory.”