Declaring His Genius: Oscar Wilde in North America by Roy Morris Jr.

Oscar Wilde is famous for having found the Atlantic Ocean a bit of a letdown. "The roaring ocean does not roar," he observed in 1882. But he would face tumult soon enough. Wilde was just twenty-seven, and about to embark on a year-long lecture tour of the United States that would throw him together with miners and socialites, undergraduates and poets, and set the ocean of the world roaring around him. He was young, dandiacal, theatrical, publicity-seeking—ridiculed and lionized on both sides of the Atlantic. In years to come he would glitter with fame and accomplishment, yet he would also be

culture August 18, 2011

What Makes A Great Critic?

I saw Pauline Kael speak once, "in conversation" with Jean-Luc Godard, many years ago at Berkeley. The place was mobbed and the event was a mess, with the so-called conversation quickly devolving into a shouting match (about Technicolor film stock, as I recall). But it was so great watching Kael yell at Godard, who was such a god around Berkeley at that time. Pleasurably shocking, in much the same way her movie reviews are. "Perversity!" she kept howling. I still yell that sometimes just for fun, in her memory.