re Re: SLSL influences & Pynchon a '60s student radical?

[s~Z]

>>>T.S. Eliot, perhaps?<<<

Not only is the critic tempted outside of criticism. The criticism proper
betrays such poverty of ideas and such atrophy of sensibility that men who
ought to preserve their critical ability for the improvement of their own
creative work are tempted into criticism. I do not intend from this the
usually silly inference that the "Creative" gift is "higher" than the
critical. When one creative mind is better than another, the reason often is
that the better is the more critical. But the great bulk of the work of
criticism could be done by minds of the second order, and it is just these
minds of the second order that are difficult to find. They are necessary for
the rapid circulation of ideas. The periodical press-the ideal literary
periodical-is an instrument of transport; and the literary periodical press
is dependent upon the existence of a sufficient number of second-order (I do
not say "second-rate," the word is too derogatory) minds to supply its
material. These minds are necessary for that "current of ideas," that
"society permeated by fresh thought," of which Arnold speaks.

T.S. Eliot