Greenberg’s first essay

I’d read some of his early stuff before, but never his debut essay on Brecht from 1939. He was just 30 years old, and the really surprising thing is that he’s already Clement Greenberg in this piece. I’m too busy this morning to type out any sample passages, but some of its best lines might easily have come from his prime.

In the preface to Art and Culture he calls himself one of those authors who carries out his education in public, but I can think of few writers in any genre to whom that self-critique is less applicable. If you had been the editor of Partisan Review and seen that piece, you would have accepted it immediately as well, and you would also have predicted big things for the kid. There’s more than a voice in that Brecht essay, there’s the hint of a whole world.