Quote:
Originally Posted by Bookpossum
I didn't think I should comment earlier and therefore influence others' votes - it's just my personal reaction to the man. Sorry fantasyfan!
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I quite understand your attitude, Bookpossum. I'll tell you how I first came across him. One year I noticed that
Hard Times had been made the prescribed novel for Senior Honours English. I had always considered it a second rate novel--good in spots but not an example of Dickens at his best. As it turned out I found that an examiner in the Department had read
The Great Tradition and decided that if Leavis said that this was the greatest work Dickens had produced, it must be so. Now As Middleton-Murray said, Leavis does reveal unexpected hidden treasures in that book but Dickens's greatest work it most assuredly is not.
This is the problem with Leavis.
Hard Times suited his analytical approach. The other works of Dickens he dismissed as "entertainment". That is why he also dismissed Fielding. Leavis's approach just doesn't work with that novelist. And of course, he doesn't really know how to handle Emily Bronte at all. Any
tradition that cannot include writers of the stature of those he ignores has a problem of being labelled
The Great Tradition. Austen, James, Eliot and Conrad do indeed form a genuine novelistic tradition--but is it the only great one? I wouldn't think so--though that is only my opinion.
So why did I choose him? Well, he is certainly a brilliant analyst of the writers he likes. He is also sometimes so wrong-headed and annoying that I think he would be certain of being an interesting focus for a book club discussion.
But I confess that I am glad that Forster (whom Leavis dismissed as a critic) won.