Kenneth Tynan: Criticism

Kenneth Tynan was English theatre critic and writer. Explore interesting quotes on criticism.

Kenneth Tynan: 80 quotes2 likes

“A critic is a man who knows the way but can't drive the car.”

As quoted in "Critic Kenneth Tynan Has Mellowed But Is Still England's Stingingest Gadfly" by Godfrey Smith in The New York Times (9 January 1966)
Variant: A critic is a man who know the way, but can not drive a car.

“Does the critic wish to influence the kind of film that costs more than £250,000? It is as if he were to send a postcard to General Motors explaining that he would like them to make a raft next year, or a helicopter, instead of a car.”

Kenneth Tynan

"Footnote on Cinema" (undated), p. 260
Tynan Right and Left (1967)

“One would have thought that the notion of an impersonal critic was as patently absurd as that of an impersonal person: yet playwrights still cherish it as a sort of holy ideal. Admittedly, we all make mystiques: but this one is particularly wishful. The man who asks for an anonymous, impersonal criticism is trying to elevate criticism to the status of a science; whereas it is, I am afraid, only an art. The critic's business is to write readable English: the playwright's to write speakable English. Beyond that it is every man for himself.”

Kenneth Tynan

"George Jean Nathan" (1953), p. 61
Profiles (1990)

“A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time. A great drama critic also perceives what is not happening.”

Kenneth Tynan

Foreword
Tynan Right and Left (1967)

“John Osborne spoke out in a vein of ebullient, free-wheeling rancour that betokened the arrival of something new in the theatre — a sophisticated, articulate lower-class. Most of the critics were offended by Jimmy Porter, but not on account of his anger; a working-class hero is expected to be angry. What nettled them was something quite different: his self-confidence. This was no envious inferior whose insecurity they could pity.”

Kenneth Tynan

"Decade in Retrospect: 1959" (1959), p. 13
Tynan Right and Left (1967)