Critics and Body Parts

[Joe Roberts]

An W.S. Gilbert note ...

Gilbert, suffering severe gout, named his pair of feet for his critics.

In a letter to Sullivan, July 27, 1892:

... "My right foot, which I call Labouchere, is very troublesome, and I take a vicious pleasure (not unalloyed with pain) in cramming him into a boot which is too small for him. My left foot (known in Homburg as Clement Scott) is a milder nuisance, but still tiresome, and would hurt me a good deal if he could."

Labouchere:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Labouch%C3%A8re

... The article mentions critical altercations with Gilbert.

Scott:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_Scott

... Scott at least belonged to the same gentlemen's club as Gilbert, so to presumably encourage more civil discourse.

- - -

Today, who might associate opera critics with body parts?


Joe

[Joe Roberts]

Outlook mangled the link; perhaps it was affected by the gout.

Better to just click on:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Labouchere

There's an image from an early Gilbert work, "His Excellency". Gilbert had a "public feud" going with LaBouchere's mistress.

Do authors and critics take works so passionately and personally today?

Joe

[Peter T. Daniels]

Back when I was the shelver at the Cornell Music Library, Karel Husa
used to check out Slonimsky's Lexicon of Musical Invective about every
other week.

BTW I looked him up not long ago -- in his 90s, he has retired to
somewhere in North Carolina.

[John W Kennedy]

Not in public, as a rule. The last case I can think of offhand was
Edmund Wilson's philippic against Tolkien, which Tolkien declined to
take seriously.

--
John W Kennedy
"Never try to take over the international economy based on a radical
feminist agenda if you're not sure your leader isn't a transvestite."
-- David Misch: "She-Spies", "While You Were Out"