An interesting article.

I think the role of a reviewer is important and, if we are to maximise our literary experience, we all need to take on that role at some point. To review a book is to employ some metacognitive skills - rather than just reading a book and thinking 'gee, that was a good read', we take time out to think about WHY it was good. What is it about us, as people, that makes us like the book? How did the book impact on us as people?

Of course, there is a time and place for everything. I teach both English and Literature at high school, but I still enjoy reading books without thinking about them.

As an academic, presumably Jay also publishes in academic journals, and pursues other textual analyses. Nothing in the article about aesthetics (a dirty word), but nothing about cultural/Marxist readings either. My only grumble with the reviewer Jay conjures up is that he is utterly mainstream, supporting the status quo with his puerile apolitical correctness. Sorry, but identity politics just doesn't cut it any more. For the best book reviews, imo, that actually challenge conventional thinking, try the London Review of Books, or New Left Review. But then, in our celebratory postmodern age people prefer pastiche to prose, and pop to politics--what a nice alliteration!

Nice article. I enjoy reading immensely and as an avid reader, I also enjoy book reviews. In fact, I did some book reviews for both larger newspapers and smaller magazines in The Netherlands and I wouldn't mind doing the same in Australia. Am I a frustrated writer who can't write? Not really. If anything it's more due to laziness that I haven't written my 'ultimate masterpiece' yet. In the meantime I enjoy reading books, reading reviews, reading more books and agreeing and disagreeing with both critics and fellow-readers. The nicest thing about reading a lot of book reviews is that you start recognising 'your' critic: the one you learn to wholeheartedly agree with, the one whose opinion you follow blindly and - most important - the one who leads you to that hidden gem you might never have discovered otherwise.

Interesting article, Jay. I can't imagine how drearily prosaic must the inner person be, who can see literature only as something to deconstruct in terms of a few shibboleths - who agrees with Derrida that “There is nothing beyond the text”.

I teach Russian literature (amongst other things) to seniors. It's an absolute joy to have students who are there because they want to read and appreciate literary works on the terms of the works themselves, for the pure joy of it

Well I'm glad I got a bight, as I felt sorry for poor Jay; the thread wasn't going anywhere. You're unjust though, Glorfindel; I never mentioned nor alluded to Derrida--if I did, I wouldn't resort to that tired old chestnut. Nor am I the dessicated politiciser of prose I may appear to be. I'd be more than happy to discuss the Russians; mainly Tolstoy, who I've read to the dregs, Dostoyevski and Chekhov, as these as you'd know, were far from apolitical; indeed, read on the "terms of the works themselves", they are polemical from cover to cover--the Russians above all! Tolstoy is Russia's William Blake, with mellinarianism and the plight of the surfs (like Blake's London urchins) watermarked into every page. Or do you deal only with the Mills and Boonsy Natasha and her hero Andre (my hero as a lad I must admit)? What of Levin, or the rapscallion Vronsky, and the questionable politics of effete Pierre. And what of the Karamasov's? Now there is a political family--and the little girl saying her prayers in the out-house? Or Rascolnikov; or my favourite, Prince Myshkin--was he political, or just aspergers syndrome?
I love literature! But I hate seeing it demeaned as mere entertainment for an ignorant Bourgeoisie.
What do you think Tolstoy would have thought?

Gee, Squeers, you're a bit hard on the "ignorant bourgeoisie" being entertained by literature. You remind me of Chekhov in The Seagull, where in Act 1, Trepliov says "I have to escape, I run away as Maupassant ran away from the Eiffel Tower which so oppressed him with its vulgarity" ! There must have been more than a few "ignorant bourgeois" watch Gogol's Inspector-General - to salutary effect?

I didn't frame my previous post with yours specifically in mind. I just hate the mindset in Derrida. How can negative deconstructionism be ever conducive to the pursuit of excellence, if the very existence of excellence is dismissed as a fleeting illusion?

Russian literature, after Belinsky's Letter to Gogol (1847), must be the most ideas-driven in Europe. He and the Westernizers and their descendants may well have been prepared to analyze works in terms of some themes for deconstruction, but how can you appreciate Dostoyevsky this way?

He is fundamentally not about economic relationships, or the role of women, or race, or political action, but about transformation of the inner human being as the way toward Russia's, and man's, salvation. Contentious of course, and very unpopular with Marxists, but Solzhenitsyn echoes the idea (also included in Tolstoy's late tract The Kingdom of God is within You) in The Gulag Archipelago:
“The distinction between good and evil does not run between one nation and another, or one group and another. It runs straight through every human heart.”

How do you analyze that?