They amount to a formalist defense, positing the story as an autonomous object in which diverse readers perceive diverse ideas.

NEWYORKER: Deceptive Picture

Without the characteristically stifled and knowingly awkward laughter that usually accompanies Beckett's plays in the theatre, his texts can appear denuded, clumsily formalist and tediously inhuman.

ECONOMIST: Modern drama

Though a lover of modern art, Mr Danto is firm with its more formalist and doctrinaire champions, particularly Clement Greenberg, a critic who dominated the New York art world at mid-century, much as Mr Danto, with a far quieter voice, stands out now.

ECONOMIST: Contemporary-art criticism: Art��s dead; long live art | The