Since the Modernist revolution, writing has been seen as an intensely private activity, a view which might have come as something of a surprise to Chaucer or Pope. For liberals such as Henry James and David Lodge, it represents a venture into individual consciousness of unique worth - so valuable, in fact, that in this new novel Lodge suspects it may be the summum bonum. 'Consciousness' - the very term has an inescapably reifying ring to it - is the transcendent truth of the modern liberal age. The novelist is its high priest, and the novel is its scripture. The image of the solitary author brooding over his or her fine perceptions is now the conventional view of literary authorship, however absurdly ahistorical it may be.

LRB 23 September 2004 | PDF Download