Volume 32, Number 7 · April 25, 1985
Obsessed with Obsession
By Frank Kermode
Flaubert's Parrot
by Julian Barnes
Knopf, 190 pp., $13.95
Julian Barnes is an English writer still in his thirties. His first novel, Metroland, appeared in 1981, his second, Before She Met Me, in 1982. With his third, Flaubert's Parrot, he is beginning to attract the kind of attention reserved for serious novelists. Yet he is still, I should say, better known in Britain as a television critic. Television criticism is on the face of it a peculiar and unpromising genre, and that it should have been brought to such a high degree of polish in the English Sunday papers may suggest that something important though obscure is going on in British culture. Reviews of books and exhibitions and plays are about what you might conceivably read or visit; television reviews are about shows you either have already seen or never will. More often than not they never needed discussing anyway. The TV critic has to contemplate a wholly forgettable recent past as material for a piece that will have to be loved for itself alone. Wit, charm, fantasy are his instruments (TV criticism is apparently a male preserve). The genre was invented by Clive James, who actually collects his reviews in volume form, so that you can savor all over again two years later the giggly charm of a lost Sunday morning you spent reading about nothing.
Review, 2494 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |