“Read Jennette Lee’s ‘The Ibsen Secret,’ perhaps the most successul of all the Ibsen gemaras in English, if you would know the virulence of the national appetite for bogus revelation. And so in all the arts. Whatever is profound and penetrating we stand off from; whatever is facile and shallow, particularly if it reveal a moral or mystical color, we embrace. Ibsen the first-rate dramatist was rejected with indignation precisely because of his merits–his sharp observation, his sardonic realism, his unsentimental logic. But the moment a meretricious and platitudinous ethical purpose began to be read into him–how he protested against it!–he was straightway adopted into our flabby culture.”
H.L. Mencken, A Book of Prefaces
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
An ArtsJournal Blog