Writers want to find readers, wrote Philip Roth; then they long to
escape them. Nothing escapes a general readership more completely than
death, when reputations are revised in ways that are often baffling.
Kingsley Amis and Iris Murdoch, major figures in postwar fiction, are
now read less widely than they were. William Golding, a Nobel laureate,
also seems to have fallen from critical favour.
Modern university courses in “Eng Lit” appear to have dispensed with DH
Lawrence, which is less a shift of the scholastic tide than a profound
error of judgement. How can any serious survey of the 20th-century novel
exclude Lawrence? But the most remarkable revision is surely the case
of JB Priestley. Acclaimed for most of his life as a writer of hugely
popular books and plays, which became part of the national imagination,
he is now best known for that dramatic pot-boiler, An Inspector Calls
(1945) and as a founder member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
(launched after Priestley wrote an article in this magazine).
To a modern readership his novels are – if they are considered at all – period pieces. Even The Good Companions,
his breakout hit of 1929, adapted many times for stage and screen, has
fallen by the wayside. There are writers of the recent past who are not
particularly well-read, but who are nevertheless well-considered:
Patrick Hamilton, for example. Priestley is neither well-read nor
fashionable. For many readers, who would consider themselves
well-informed, he never existed. ... [mehr] https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2019/02/why-jb-priestley-matters
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen