Frank Kermode observed in a recent article that critics are always being needed to rediscover work that, for whatever reason, has gone silent, Good literature is more silent than one might suppose: it waits mutely on the shelves, it cannot attract attention to itself, and in the conditions of our own or any other time it could wait till judgment day without being found and proclaimed. The finding and proclaiming, on an organised basis, might be part of the business of university English schools. On the other hand, there is nothing quite like doing the thing for oneself: opening the book in a shop or library and becoming riveted at once.

LRB 21 November 1991 | PDF Download