Volume 35, Number 14 · September 29, 1988
Outrageous Things
By David Lodge
The Passion
by Jeanette Winterson
Atlantic Monthly Press, 160 pp., $16.95
One of the privileges of maturity and distinction in the world of letters is the power to bestow accolades on younger writers. Such gestures are disinterested only in a materialistic sense. They are always interventions in literary politics, attempts to influence literary taste, rituals of succession, and they carry an intriguing element of risk for both parties. When Gore Vidal declares that the twenty-nine-year-old British novelist Jeanette Winterson is 'the most interesting young writer I have read in twenty years'—words that her publishers predictably quote at every opportunity—one sits up and takes notice because he is laying his own literary judgment as well as her merit on the line.
Review, 2451 words
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