Three Cheers for Auntie
SIR,—Stuart Hood (December 30) says that the ob- jectors to Miller's Alice are 'aghast at the idea of artistic intelligence being allowed to examine afresh a cult object.' He's wrong about that, though. What they're actually aghast at is the idea of an inartistic stupidity's being encouraged to daub mere modishness (the Indian background music, the ooh- so-blasphemous hymns, the Marienbad snail's pace. the sullen coffee-bar heroine, the inept ad-libbing) on to a piece which the majority of people have always thought not half bad the way the author left it. Can't Miller (and Bart, and Lerner and Loewe, and all the other self-appointed resurrection- men our miserable arts and entertainments are plagued with) more often think up something original, something of his own?
Previous page
