"If you said to him, 'This must be right, all the experts say so, Hitler says so, Marx says so, Christ says so, The Times says so,' he would reply in effect, 'Well, I wonder. Let's see.'... You would come away realizing that an opinion may be influentially backed and yet be tripe."
Thus E. M. Forster, a British novelist who wrote one great book (A Passage to India), speared with surgical neatness the essential quality of any great critic. His words were an obituary on his friend Roger Fry, an art critic who died in 1934.
Last fortnight another friend, Novelist Virginia...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
