Also, my defense of Kenner will rest solely in the index to
A Colder Eye: The Modern Irish Writers (1983), in which proper names are followed by a one-word summation of their existence. These range from the just ("Rosetti, Dante Gabriel,
exhumer, 132") to the unjust ("Behan, Brendan,
boozer, 9, 324") to the bizarre ("Laurel and Hardy,
pseudocouple, 331").
Other faves:
- Yeats, William Butler, founder
- Stephens, James, leprechaun
- Shaw, George Bernard, omniscient
- Marlowe, Christopher, onomatechnician
- MacNeill, Eoin, fussbudget
Does he do this in
The Pound Era? Best Kenner-Indexism in the comments section, for a figure not in his index (literary or non-literary), wins a prize.