"Twentieth-century intellectuals can be defined by two extremes: the Paul Valéry types who made their discoveries in the abstract laboratory of their minds and the Graham Greene and Ernest Hemingway types who made their discoveries while drunk in brothels in countries where the president had just been shot."
— Moroney, Robin
Author
Date
December 23, 2006
Metaphor
"Twentieth-century intellectuals can be defined by two extremes: the Paul Valéry types who made their discoveries in the abstract laboratory of their minds and the Graham Greene and Ernest Hemingway types who made their discoveries while drunk in brothels in countries where the president had just been shot."
Metaphor in Context
Still, the biographer pants to keep up. Twentieth-century intellectuals can be defined by two extremes: the Paul Valéry types who made their discoveries in the abstract laboratory of their minds and the Graham Greene and Ernest Hemingway types who made their discoveries while drunk in brothels in countries where the president had just been shot. Empson was both extremes at once. Mr. Haffenden has to jump from an assessment of Empson's theory of how contradictory meanings get stuffed into a simple word like "dog" to his crossing of battle lines during the Maoist revolt in China in 1948 to deliver a lecture on Shakespeare.
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Robin Moroney, "'Seven Types of Ambiguity' And a One-of-a-Kind Critic," Wall Street Journal (December 23, 2006). <Link to online.wsj.com>
Date of Entry
11/26/2012
