Critics

To the Editors of The Crimson:

Why this continuing, ghoulish interest in the critical response to Professor William Alfred's "The Curve of an Aching, Heart"?

Critics are not news; they never have been. It is axiomatic that journalists opinions should be strictly separated from news, a line that should be scrupulously adhered to both in regard to a newspaper's own pundits and those hired by others. This is particularly true in theater criticism, where only the most pompous critic would claim that his judgment, communicated to thousands of readers, is even marginally more newsworthy than the judgment of his neighbor, who communicates it only to her husband in the seat next to her. The logical extension of this new Crimson policy (which has never been triggered into effect by Harvard-authored books, nor by Harvard-directed and produced plays at the American Repertory Theater) is to send two Crimson editors to each Harvard show: one to review the play, one to report on the review.

Moreover, I find it incomprehensible how anyone could take even the slightest interest in the swiftly written, ad hoc judgments of a meretricious media whose like Rex Reed, or that superannuated hack Brendan Gill (whose review was not, as reported, favorably).

As long as we've decided that critics are news, but the report that Robert Bursting, the Dean of American drama critics, enjoyed the play quite a lot. As did I. Paul A. Attanasio '81