1812. PseudoErasmus--May 16, 1998--9:40 p.m. PT

Cellardweller The point of your addressing Message No. 1796 is somewhat lost on me. As something of a devotee of the "intentional fallacy", I really don't care about Proust or his life or "what he intended"--only about what Proust wrote. The lives of authors and artists have rarely interested me.

I do see the relevance of your comments on Proust to the Kauffmann issue, but again, the question over in the Movies thread had to do NOT with Kauffmann's critique & interpretation (about which I don't care, because, once again, of the intentional fallacy), but with whether he was patronising to homosexuals in that article.

I find it interesting that you constantly blur this distinction between the soundness of Kauffmann's critical evaluations and the "ethics" of his attitude.

In other words, it's really neither here nor there, whether Williams, Albee et al. wrote "closeted drama" as Kauffmann implied in 1966, because their conscious or unconscious intentions are irrelevant to the quality of their plays. All that matters is whether Kauffmann's remarks were patronising or insensitive to gays, regardless of the soundness of his interpretations.