Literary interlude

Christelow said: “I must tell you how I played golf with Manchip once. I thought I’d take the
oppor­tun­ity of learn­ing some­thing of his favor­ite poet, so I said to him as he teed off: ‘Tell me, Master, what sort of a poet is Gynander?’ ‘Oh,’ he said in that deep voice of his, ‘a very inter­est­ing poet indeed.’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I should have thought he was. But,’ I said, ‘what sort of a poet is he?’ ‘Why,’ said Manchip, chip­ping away with his iron, ‘do you real­ise, Christelow, there are only six frag­ments of Gynander still extant?’ ‘Really, Master?’ I said. ‘But what sort of poet was he?’ ‘And,’ he went on, cut­ting the turf about, ‘there is one con­struc­tion that appears no less than twice in each, which is seen nowhere else in Greek lit­er­at­ure. Now, what do you think of that, hey?’ ‘Very inter­est­ing,’ I said. ‘But Master, what sort of a poet is Gynander?’ ‘Surprisingly care­less about genders,’ he said, get­ting him­self on the green, and rolling off the oth­er side. ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘But what sort of a poet is he?’ ‘Ah,’ he said as I bunkered myself, ‘you mean the gush side of criticism…’ ”

—Robert Robinson, Landscape With Dead Dons, Penguin, 1956