The late Philip Larkin from the New York Review of Books on High Modernism:
I dislike such things not because they are new, but because they are irresponsible exploitations of technique in contradiction of human life as we know it. This is my essential criticism of modernism, whether perpetrated by [Charlie] Parker, Pound, or Picasso: it helps us neither to enjoy nor endure. It will divert us as long as we are prepared to be mystified or outraged, but maintains its hold only by being more mystifying and more outrageous: it has no lasting power.
On rdio, here's Charlie Parker's Relaxin' at Camarillo, still enduringly enjoyable...
Comments