[W.F. Lantry]

Hey, Folks,

Interesting review in the Guardian today, of Terry Eagleton's new book, How to Read Literature, by Steven Poole. It's not often a review makes me want to read a text, but this one actually does.

The best part, for me, was the 'faulty assumptions' section. Naturally, I would delight in any argument that has as its goal the destruction of "the doctrine of Literature as self-expression." And any book that highlights both Tristram Shandy and Mrs. Dalloway can't be all bad. He also seems to go after both the idea of originality and the tyranny of the quotidian.

Curiously, though, the best part was reading through the review to get at Eagleton's main positive values. These seem to be spontaneity and authenticity, although the reviewer takes exception to both ideas. To my mind, these are indeed key values, although it's possible that assessment isn't widely shared.

In any case, here's the link:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013...agleton-review

Thanks,

Bill

[Janice D. Soderling]

'Dostoevsky is better than Grisham in the sense that Tiger Woods is a better golfer than Lady Gaga' … Terry Eagleton

Actually, I haven't read anything by this critic, but I keep running across the name. Have you read him before, Bill?

(That probably exposes my ignorance, but that's been exposed here many times before.)

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Janice D. Soderling

Actually, I haven't read anything by this critic, but I keep running across the name. Have you read him before, Bill?

Janice,

His "Literary Theory" has been pretty much a standard text in American graduate schools for the past few decades. It's one of the few books that just about everybody reads, both grads and undergrad majors. He's an engaging writer, who tends to explain things with clarity and even a little humor, without too much of the rigamarole that makes readers' eyes glaze over. He's also an engaging speaker.

More recently, he's gotten some ink for going after Dawkins' sometimes simple-minded atheism. It might be his Catholic background, or maybe just a feeling that Dawkins was overstating the arguments... in any case, it caused a bit of a stir.

I haven't personally seen this new book, so I don't know if I can recommend it. But you should be able to lay your hands on Literary Theory fairly easily. It's worth your time.

Best,

Bill

[Quincy Lehr]

Eagleton's a good critic with good politics, and I'm planning on reading his latest, too. His book attacking the "new atheism" was fantastic. Not only did it go after Dawkins, but the far cruder and all-round more loathsome Christopher Hitchens (about whom Richard Seymour's Unhitched is a much-needed polemic that is both worth reading and fun to read). Eagleton's main influences as a youth were Trotskyism and left-leaning Catholicism, coupled with his Irish background. He is a major intellectual.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Now the nickel drops. I do try to read authors with whom I am, or think I will be, in disagreement. I have most of Dawkins' books, so I suppose I should read at least "Literary Theory" to be fair.

[Nigel Mace]

Really? Good politics are so simply defined are they? Well that's a relief, I thought all this intellectual stuff was supposed to be testing. Eagleton's Trotskyist past and his worship of now massively discredited French theorists should put any thoughtful literary critic, or sincere peruser of creative writing - poetry or prose - on notice. The categories he uses in this new work - according to the quizzically amused review already cited - are as malleable and indistinct as any that he used to condemn when high on his Marxist horse. Reader beware. Once a dogmatist always a dogmatist - whether its Catholic theology or the sacred views of the history owning, true consciousness left. He is, however, a very well read and thoughtful commentator whose personal judgements, when not supposedly buttressed by infallible theories, are well worth reading and considering - just like any other critic, no more and no less. Dawkins, to get off the literary point, has at least got rather a lot of sound and tested science on his side. How many battalions has the theorist?

[Duncan Gillies MacLaurin]

If anyone wants a bit more background here's an interview with Terry Eagleton in The Observer from December 2007.

Duncan

[Nigel Mace]

Indeed, Duncan. Well posted. If anyone thinks that Eagleton's combative categories - Amis and Christopher Hitchens as reliable/credible representatives of liberal or left opinion - are to be trusted.... then I suppose they will swallow the rest if his self-promoting guff. All of which still doesn't mean that as an ordinary contributor to the ebb and flow of critical opinions, he does not have, like others, some interesting things to say - but not more.

[Duncan Gillies MacLaurin]

Eagleton is quoted in this essay by John Pliger.

Duncan

[Nigel Mace]

Great Pilger article and Eagleton is quoted in exactly the kind of way that I think shows what his critical and polemical potential can do when not in thrall to theory or dogma - though he (and Pilger by using him in this way) goes a bit far, forgetting Pinter was a sulphurously loquacious opponent of the Iraq War among other western crimes. He also, of course, as is the polemicist's wont, neglects to mention the writers who have used their talents in the same cause - presumably by the device of not rating them as being an "eminent" British "poet, playwright or novelist". Just not true in my book. Apart from Pinter, how about John Le Carre - novels and film versions, Alistair Beaton - theatre and TV plays, Robert Harris - novel and film version, the many productions at the Tricycle etc. etc.