Christ, the things we read and are recommended to read nowadays. Maybe one should get out more, but what happened to lit.crit. never mind the novel? In 2025, the dogmatic assertions of F R Leavis may seem at best quaint and at worst thoroughly off-putting, but neither now nor then could he be accused of shirking the effort. The small list of novelists whom Leavis determined were the only ones worth reading was perhaps more interesting for its exclusions such as Hardy, Dickens, Scott (possibly the worst omission) and Fielding. Yet in assembling his canon, Leavis had applied a faculty which nowadays can only be used very sparingly, lest anyone else (though they have no standing in the matter) take offence. Leavis applied his highly well informed "judgement".
The somewhat intolerant strictures of the Cambridge literary scholar were ultimately left high and dry by the welcome tide of pluralism. But his exhortation, that the reader exercises his or her discrimination to judge whether or not the author has successfully encountered and engaged with life and its abstract truths through the medium of the story, has been thoroughly superseded by the beguiling whispers of relativism. Which relieve us of the necessity of exercising any judgement at all.
Leavis provided a crib which at the very least established important reference points even if one disagreed with his choice of exemplars. Nowadays, universities eschew anything so musty or fusty as a canon. Perhaps that is why the study of English Literature is in free-fall. After all, what's the point of shelling out nine grand a year to be told, if the tutor can be bothered, that the literary "heritage" is something to do with colonial oppression ? Unwisdom is the new wisdom.
The world of literary criticism has changed too and paradoxically the resources devoted to it by the media have dwindled as the number of works of fiction have multiplied. Partly of course, this is to do with the post modernist trend which disputes all meanings, judgments and categorical statements of "truth". In such a world where even scientific rules can be denounced as a "sexed equations", we're certainly not going to put up with the trenchant opinions of the diminishing band of professional literary critics. Folk like Craig Raine who have had the confidence, to put it politely, to produce work such as More Dynamite: Essays 1990-2012.
Instead lit.crit. has been superseded by the review, a world dominated by freelancers in desperate need of a cheque and budding novelists who fancy some back scratching by their more established peers. In place of the detached and objective literary critic who has read widely and has a full range of cultural references there is now the reviewer who is in symbiosis with the authors about whose works they comment. Rarely do they exercise any discrimination beyond the level of the superlative and certainly they seem to feel no duty to the poor reader. Instead, contemporary reviews often read as highfalutin PR. Which is of course why publishers love them.
Today the breathless etiquette of the review and of the literary "feature" are at the point of parody, if not well past it. First, there is the mark of the creative writing course. For example, the words "luminous feast" turn up quite a lot, as if such a dodgy metaphor (which any self respecting author would blush to use) could redeem the lack of insight. What is a "luminous feast" anyway? I'm not sure that any of my culinary efforts could be dignified by the word "feast" and they certainly aren't luminous. I suppose the paintings of Turner can be described as luminous, but that's because their objects are so spare. But are novels? Why not just say they are (or are not) illuminating? Secondly, there is the portentousness. One doorstopper was described thus: "a work which blended formal astrological playfulness with meta-aware storytelling". None of these qualifiers make any sense at all, although they do bear the heavy imprint of the PhD thesis in social sciences. Certainly the judges of the Booker Prize entries were so beguiled they gave its author the trophy. As they were by another Booker winner which was praised for its "intersectional forms of exclusionism" and its "atmospheric set of ventriloquisms". Well, obviously.
Perhaps more seriously the symbiotic relationship of storyteller and reviewer is driving an increasing uniformity in the output of novelists themselves. Of course there are other cultural influences at work, but the point is that the reviewers and their sponsors are important transmitters of the shorthand of those received wisdoms which simply would not be tolerated by the mature literary critic. Why do so many books today rely on the themes of sexual, ethnic or gender based oppression (often in a familial setting) and a search for identity? Victimhood abounds and too many novels (to judge by the reviews) are thinly disguised memoirs of self help. Can self absorption really be described as "fearless"? I suppose with today's culture of instant offence-taking and egregious libel laws, a writer's focus on the self seems the safest course.
Here is a selection from the press in the past week alone: a novel which "is a tender book... which explores identity, belonging and consent"; a work "which celebrates being different and reminds us that we are all, in our own ways, a little bit alien" ; an exploration of "national identity against the background of a soggy Scottish holiday park"; a book which "is a linguistic exploration of belonging". My own favourite is the blurb about an implausible sounding tale of the relationship between a confused Vietnamese teenager and an octogenarian of Lithuanian descent who suffers from Alzheimer's. As the reviewer gushed, the story "is like a tawdry Middlemarch....an exploration of the inherited trauma of war and violence". It seems pretty clear the reviewer has either not read George Eliot or has not understood the Vietnam War. Or possibly both.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion the novel in the 21st century has undergone a profound transformation. Narrative, plot, character and action are in very short supply. Instead, solipsism seems the dominant genre and the cult of victimhood has deprived protagonists of all agency, even in situations of the most startling banality. Relief is supposed to be found in "experimental" novels, with their pastiches of Joyce. But typographical novelty, the absence of grammar, confusing changes in the position of the narrator and the casual mis-use of chronology do not make such a novel any more readable today than it was then. Instead the barbed wire which has been erected against our understanding has been reinforced. Apparently, this is dignified as "profundity" and the reviewer implicitly shames all those who don't get with the program.
Perhaps the most arresting of all those approving reviews was the one of a tale of a narrator whose mother tongue is "earthy, sinewy, witty, excessive, wry, noisy, vivid....Hot where English often seems cold. Mouth filling where English seems empty. Patterned where English seems plain". All are perfectly legitimate authorial opinions, although the review did not give an opinion either way. But it is slyly admitted the narrator had only ever spoken English. As for their mother tongue, they had neither articulated nor understood it.
But then perhaps "Fuck this for a game of skittles" sounds more lyrical in Aramaic.
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