Interview with Sir Christopher Ricks - literary critic

[@barryspurr14]

Simply wonderful - thank you!

[@sattarabus]

Sir Chris is brilliant. The enraptured listener can bask in the cool luminosity of his aperçus, opinions, and reservations. His podcasts are no less illuminating. To read him in print, and pause awhile on a thin floating thought, is to caress an epiphany. A pushpin would have sufficed to draw blood---- he could have avoided lunging with a lance to trounce George Steiner. Invidia?

[@garymorgan3314]

Kermode was brilliant, Rick's is very good but with the Manx I came away feeling I knew so much more and wanted to read what he'd discussed: little gems on Stevens, Salinger's novellas, Kafka; so much packed into 'Modern Essays' and always lucid and intelligent. No wonder some of Leavis's attack dogs set on him!

[@sattarabus]

More than two hours of stimulating conversation. Sir Chris was perfectly intelligible even when he was elucidating some abstruse aspect of craft or art. I missed Alan's questions, adroitly probing and prompting Sir Chris, on account of tantalizingly poor audio. Please re-dub the interviewer.

[@spikedaniels1528]

Prof Sattar Basra // Yes thank you, redubbing would be just the thing here - unable to effectively track the talk - splendid suggestion!

[@garymorgan3314]

Last heard him discussing Dylan on Radio 4 ..I though he made hard work of it but likely he not I was right. Top on Milton and a delight to find him alive and articulating. Top fellow. As to arcana/academia. it is the narcissism of small differences that are actually LARGE. Thanks for the post.

[@hazelwray4184]

... 'but likely he not I was right'?

[@garymorgan3314]

@@hazelwray4184 Yes, Hazel: i thought he was correct. Your point? (My turbid prose haha).

[@johnmartin2813]

C.R. leaves out of account the adjustment of the calendar which took place c. 1750 so that in fact he doesn't really share a birthday with Dr. Johnson.

[@louduva9849]

Smart arse.

[@chrish12345]

The Elliot/Hill quandry seems to have parallels with Rachmaninov/Prokofiev - in either case the latter was influenced by the former and, seemingly because of that, wished to disparage the former.

[@futterkulcha]

Do you happen to know which poems he's talking about? That is, which poems of Hill are specifically influenced by which of Eliot's?

[@clarahayes9793]

I didn’t know this, but fascinating.

[@lilcicero77]

I'm reading his Tennyson, which is insufferably pompous. So I wanted to see and hear him. I quite like his passion actually. But I regret his Tennyson.

[@garymorgan3314]

I must read that one! The man Pound rather brilliantly called Lawn Tennyson. i love good bad books, what was the title of Empson's zany effort? Something about tobacco I believe.