Kenneth Tynan
Kenneth Tynan
Kenneth Peacock Tynanwas an English theatre critic and writer. Making his initial impact as a critic at The Observer, he praised Osborne's Look Back in Anger, and encouraged the emerging wave of British theatrical talent. In 1963, Tynan was appointed as the new National Theatre Company's literary manager...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionCritic
Date of Birth2 April 1927
writing creative would-be
Pornography is writing that seeks primarily, even exclusively, to bring about sexual stimulation. This can be done crudely or delicately. In the former case it would be bad literature; in the latter good.
writing play effort
The sheer complexity of writing a play always had dazzled me. In an effort to understand it, I became a critic.
communication writing cutting
All writing is an antisocial act, since the writer is a man who can speak freely only when alone; to be himself he must lock himself up, to communicate he must cut himself off from all communication; and in this there is something always a little mad.
coward exactly fifty mean sort youngest
Even the youngest of us will know, in fifty years' time, exactly what we mean by 'a very Noel Coward sort of person'.
dramatist instincts
A dramatist is a congenital eavesdropper with the instincts of a Peeping Tom.
forty might pan peter slightly wholly
Forty years ago, he was Slightly in Peter Pan, and you might say that he has been wholly in Peter Pan ever since.
men print critics
Western man, especially the Western critic, still find it very had to go into print and say: "I recommend you to go and see this because it gave me an erection."
vulnerable gregarious gifted
Everyone is vulnerable who is at once gifted and gregarious.
years car wish
Does the critic wish to influence the kind of film that costs more than £250,000? It is as if he were to send a postcard to General Motors explaining that he would like them to make a raft next year, or a helicopter, instead of a car.
feelings doubt intuition
When a society has doubts about its future, it tends to produce spokesmen whose main appeal is to the emotions, who argue from intuitions, and whose claim to be truth-bearers rests solely on intense personal feeling.
men artist cry
The man who reacts to the universe with a cry of impotent anguish is acceptable as an artist only if he can persuade us that he has sanely considered the other possible reactions and found them inadequate.
play ends felt
When you've seen all of Ionesco's plays, I felt at the end, you've seen one of them.
believe would-be needs
I hope I never need to believe in God. It would be an awful confession of failure.
country political censorship
Any country that has sexual censorship will eventually have political censorship.