Article Preview
An Aesthete at the Movies
- Abstract
I ENCOUNTERED Parker Tyler for the first time back in the very late 40′s (either in 1948 or ’49) when he came to Columbia to deliver a lecture on the artist as a movie character in both the literal and colloquial sense. He spoke in the basement of what is now Butler Library to a small gathering of the curious, down among book stacks in the cultural catacombs to which serious discussions of the cinema were consigned in those days. As a lecturer, Tyler seemed self-possessed, academically chic, and knowingly unruffled by his predominantly passive audience.
He began by apologizing for not speaking ad lib as a previous lecturer in the series had done, and then proceeded to read a reasonably literate, humorless diatribe against Hollywood philistinism, then, especially, the deadest of dead horses.
About the Author
This article is available for purchase to subscribers and for individual purchase
Subscriber Sign In
Not A Subscriber?
