The Lively Arts: Gilbert Seldes and the Transformation of Cultural Criticism in the United States

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Summary: Gilbert Seldes a biography by Michael Kammen
Review: Mr. Kammen writes engagingly about a forgotten man in a forgotten occupation; a critic unattached to academia. Unfortunately the book's attempt at cultural history is too cursory to be comprehensible and the reader learns so little about Mr. Seldes; his personality, his feelings, the facts of his life, that he never seems more than the voice we hear in the quoted passages. The lively prose hides an inadequacy of purpose. Randy Wilson