EXPERT TEXTPERT: A review of three recent books on criticism

James Ley in the Sydney Review of Books:

Many years ago, back when I was a fresh-faced postgraduate student, I was invited to lunch at the home of my aunt and uncle. It was, I seem to recall, a pleasant spring afternoon. Warm yellow sunlight was falling through the dining-room window across a well-furnished table, where I was seated beside my aunt, who spent much of the meal quizzing me about the thesis I was in the middle of writing on the work of James Joyce.

Everything was proceeding quite amiably, until I happened to declare my admiration for Molly Bloom’s celebrated soliloquy in Ulysses. Expressing myself no doubt with a certain callow enthusiasm, I began to describe the extraordinary labour that went into its composition, mentioning in passing that it was written entirely without punctuation – motivated as I was at that time by the belief that this remarkable fact was not widely known, or at any rate was not as widely known as it should be. It was at this point that another of our dining companions, an acquaintance of my uncle’s, a flushed and corpulent fellow with a pronounced squint, who had apparently made vast sums building shopping centres or something, and who signalled his good fortune by driving around in an expensive sports car, the prestigious make of which now escapes me, but which I can report was indeed red – anyway, it was at this point that my uncle’s rather well-lubricated guest leaned slowly into the sunlight, granting everyone a distinct view of the minor Pollock of exploded capillaries that bloomed across his empurpled proboscis, scanned the table with a single bleary bloodshot eye, and said in a loud and scornful voice:

What’s … the use … of that …?

Suffice to say, the afternoon began to go downhill. A frank exchange of views ensued, during which it transpired that our dining companion held eminently practical opinions on all manner of topics. These included a general disdain for the various academic disciplines that fall under the rubric ‘humanities’, an unshakeable belief in the virtues of trickle-down economics, and a strong disinclination to educate poor people.

More here.