Volume 43, Number 8 · May 9, 1996
Confessions of a Literary Man
By David Lodge
Not Entitled: A Memoir
by Frank Kermode
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 263 pp., $23.00
In my opinion, and that of many others, Frank Kermode is the finest English critic of his generation. There is a semantic flaw in that statement, since Kermode was born and brought up on the Isle of Man, a small, mountainous island moored in the choppy Irish Sea halfway between Liverpool and Belfast; and Man is not a part of England, or indeed of the United Kingdom, but a British dependency, with its own parliament, laws, and language (now almost extinct). However, to call Kermode the finest Manx critic of his generation would be a paltry compliment, since not many of its population of approximately 70,000 are professionally engaged in literary criticism; and in any case he has made his distinguished career as a teacher and scholar in the English departments of English universities.
Review, 3339 words
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