Back
            Manny Farber
            
                
            
            
        
    
                                    Major works:
Negative Space • “The Gimp” • “Underground Films” • “White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art” 
                                Read an excerpt from
                                
                            
                            Read a passage from White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art by Manny Farber
                        White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art
Manny FarberWayne’s acting is infected by a kind of hoboish spirit, sitting back on its haunches doing a bitter-amused counterpoint to the pale, neutral film life around him. In an Arizona town that is too placid, where the actus was planted last night and nostalgically cast actors do a generalized drunkenness, cowardice, voraciousness, Wayne is the termite actor focusing only on a tiny present area, nibbling at it with engaging professionalism and a hipster sense of how to sit in a chair leaned against the wall, eye a flogging over-actor (Lee Marvin).
(On The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance)