Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Kenneth ClarkKenneth Clark
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Session:         Page of 763

And I do agree with Chris. I think it's neurotic. He said, “Well, how do you account for this?”

I said, “Chris, the only way I can account for it is by saying that, you know, there are some things that I believe, and if I believe them strongly enough, I tend to say that I believe them. And this creates conflict and controversy with people who don't believe what I believe, or believe that I shouldn't say what I believe, and I continue, in spite of one xxi conflict after another, in spite of one glorious defeat after another, I rigidly maintain the same posture, and obviously I can't do anything about it.”

I mean, -- And he expressed the opinion that that was probably too bad. And I said to him, “Well, you know, at 61, it's been too bad a long time ago, and there's no point in my trying to be popular now..”

I guess there's a kind of an arrogance here, because what I also was saying to Chris was that I did not see, in the models of accommodation and compliance, models that I wanted to imitate, you know. I never, Have not yet seen anyone, from before I was a teenager, whom I respected, who seemed to have this wonderful capacity to modify his personal opinions to meet what he believes is the popular or immediately rewarding position.

I am perfectly willing to concede that it's perversity, or, as he put it, personal kind of -- I'm willing to concede all of those things that my critics accuse me of, except I'm not willing to concede it to the point of changing. And don't ask me why I don't want to change. I suppose it's easier not to.





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help