This time, Durrell must be defended from oblivion--I can still recall when criticism was seen as the champion of great literature, custodian of mediocrity. For the moment it seems .. lost, as if fiction is getting along fine without it. Of course this is only because literary studies has jurisdiction over criticism: who reads a good book review anymore, one written knowing that most readers respect, believe in, great writers as something more than...
the last frontier of a Hollywood obsessed with dark corners to be exaggerated?
What is assured is veritable oblivion for those who speak wisely about books: for unless they enjoy scheduled, recurring get-togethers of people who like to read...literary folks will have a beast of a time connecting with anyone not majoring in Literature.
Perhaps they study very well, these book clubbers. Perhaps discussion groups are extremely rich enterprises in which it is my desperate misfortune not to have partaken...or maybe I simply have a single movie in mind, The Jane Austen Book Club--where discussion did reach some sophisticated heights. Of course as a chic flick it left its residue.
I cannot trust Thursday night smart-talk simply because I see it as it should be as a student. Yet of course this normative sort of blitheness is directed critically against the classroom as well, the very place where I learn to be thus critical!
This justifies the institution of higher learning. It, like N., seeks to achieve a trenchant self-criticism as a means of knowing the world, of overcoming--the reader is familiar with struggling as a form of philosophizing. It still requires a veritable career in philology...
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