Word: tynan
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...angry fault-finder was London Critic Kenneth Tynan. In a review written for the London Observer, Tynan dealt with the book briefly and concentrated on attacking its author. "For the first time," he said, "an influential writer of the front rank has been placed in a position of privileged intimacy with criminals about to die and-in my view-done less than he might have to save them...
Intense Identification? Tynan had been bothered by the book before it was published (it was serialized in The New Yorker). He had expressed his disapproval to Capote when the two men met at parties and when Capote appeared on Tynan's TV program in London. He repeated his objections in his review. In Cold Blood, said Tynan, seemed callously indifferent to the fate of the criminals it scrutinized. Capote probably could have produced enough evidence to show that the two men were insane and might have saved them from hanging. But he did not bother to search...
...Tynan suggested that Capote was probably in need of a little psychoanalysis himself. He quoted from a lady psychiatrist: "Is it possible that Capote was gaining satisfaction out of acting as confessor to the criminals because of an intense identification with them? At some time or other, all of us feel like killing; but now Capote can avoid the real situation, since someone with whom he strongly identifies has done the killing instead...
...tough scrapper, struck back immediately. "I don't believe in artists replying to criticism," he wrote to the Observer, "and I have never done so myself, for I think it shows lack of pride and really serves small purpose. But this bullyboy chicanery concocted by Tynan is one over the odds." Capote emphatically denied that he could have done anything more to save his "pitiful friends." A competent psychiatrist had offered his testimony, and the Kansas court was not likely to be impressed with any more medical men. Nor did he have anything to gain from the deaths...
...Kenneth Tynan once described the critic as a backseat driver who knows the way but can't drive a car. Unfortunately his definition does not explain someone like Susan Sontag--a critic with no sense of direction...