Nicholas Manning expresses disagreement with my post on William Logan’s criticism of a few days ago. I’ve got to say, he makes some really good points. For Manning, Logan says things because they sound good, but his insults possess no critical intelligence and are, in fact, badly written.
I do agree that Logan’s perspective on Ashbery is “incompetent”. I’m not so convinced that Logan’s writing is as bad as Manning makes out. However, he makes a strong case for it not to be accepted as good critical writing. Have a look.
