New Times,
New Thinking.

5 April 2013

5 April 1941: the average man’s lament

From our correspondence.

By The Old Statesman

5 April 1941

SIR, – Critic last week commented on the Times article on “The Eclipse of the Highbrow.” Mr George Sampson in a letter to the Times now declares that the average man is the ultimate authority on artistic merit. Hence this song:

     I am just an average fellow
     And though I much prefer Othello
I am always forced to go and see Tom Mix.
     I find Poussin’s pictures saner
     Than those of La Marlene
But somehow I am nightly at the flicks.
     I love Back upon the ‘cello
     For I’m just an average fellow
Whom Sandy at the organ can’t amuse.
     So pity my sad plight
     Listening every bloody night
Not to berg or Bloch or Bartok but to blues.
     I prefer a bluebell’s beauty
     To any naked cutie
(It’s an average man that’s speaking in these rhymes).
     I like photographs of churches,
     Why is it that I purchase
That disgusting Daily Mirror, not the Times?

Signed, Average Man.

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