In the Times Literary Supplement, John Montague examines Michel Houellebecq’s poetry.
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Woefully Reductive
In the Times Literary Supplement, Tim Parks discusses the increasing prominence of translated works among Nobel candidates.
Posted in Writing
Tagged prize, tim parks, tls, translation
Life Being Described
In the Times Literary Supplement, Stephen Abell explores the importance of physicality in the fiction of J. M. Coetzee.
If the problems of language are irremediable, the lesson from Coetzee’s work must be that they are not irredeemable. If, as Pieter Vermeulen says in J. M. Coetzee and Ethics, sympathy can be defined as a “sense of incapacity”, then it is appropriately an act of failure; it is a flawed means of sharing flaws. Patrick Hayes picks up on this when he perceives Coetzee’s position on literature as emerging “only in an unsettling way from a deeply compromised position of weakness”.
Posted in Reading
Tagged book review, jm coetzee, south africa, stephen abell, tls, uk
Continental Theory
Posted in Reading
Tagged ben jeffery, book review, tls, tom mccarthy, uk
Low Living, High Thinking at Cambridge
This year the University of Cambridge celebrated its 800th birthday, an anniversary no less secure than any other of thirteenth-century origin, with an “anniversary portrait”, a handsome volume illustrated with the reminiscences of recent and not so recent alumni. Assisted by lengthier contributions on various aspects of the place, the fragments assembled in the collection, edited by Peter Pagnamenta, enable the Master of Trinity College, Lord Rees, to predict a brighter future for the University than for “any other patch of ground in the world”.
Continue reading Peter Linehan’s piece in the Times Literary Supplement.
Chaste Little Harem
In the Times Literary Supplement, John Bowen writes of Charles Dickens’s refuge for fallen women.
Urania women were obliged to tell their story to Dickens but, once they had done so, were forbidden ever to refer to it again, either to each other, the staff at the home, or in their future lives. The parallel with the ways that Dickens handled his own family’s shameful secrets is striking.
Posted in Reading
Tagged charles dickens, john bowen, tls, uk
All Critics Now
The Times Literary Supplement has a review by John Mullan of Rónán McDonald’s The Death of the Critic.
Nowadays, there are more critical responses than ever, but critical authority has been devolved from the experts. McDonald surveys the rise of blogs and readers’ reviews, of television and newspaper polls and reading groups, under the heading “We Are All Critics Now”. He argues that the demise of critical expertise brings not a liberating democracy of taste, but conservatism and repetition.
Posted in Reading
Tagged book review, criticism, john mullan, literature, ronan mcdonald, tls, uk