Just had an interesting discussion about Graham Swift's novel Waterland, the central character of which is a history teacher. As the talk went on, it struck me that there are quite a few works of the last twenty years which have featured characters in educational environments. Jotting down a list, I ended up with Miss Jean Brodie (of Muriel Spark's novel), the university lecturers in the arts who crop up in the fiction of David Lodge, and the science lecturers of Ian McEwan's works, the English lecturer of J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace, and Alan Bennett's new play The History Boys. Is this an unusually dominant trope of postwar fiction? Since many postmodern novels are marked by self-reflexivity on the role of narrative in the contemporary environment, does having a teacher as a central character provide a lens for this? Is it also part of the more general expression of scepticism about the reliability of the "professional," the doctor, the lawyer, the politician? Other answers on a large postcard, please.

Labels: English Literature

The death of the playwright Arthur Miller, perhaps the most influential dramatist of the twentieth century, follows soon of the heels of the passing of Susan Sontag and Jacques Derrida. The passing of this trio of brilliant intellects marks the waning influence of the radicals who came to prominence in the Cold War atmosphere of the late 1950s and '60s; who will take over their mantle, as the voices of the next generation in this new war? David Hare's Stuff Happens, though provocative, would never claim to have been as bitingly political in such a tragically recognisable domestic environment as Death of a Salesman. And what critics around today can make as humane and natural a response to drama, without getting tied up in loops of theory, as Miller did in the winding prose of his non-fictional work?

Labels: Arthur Miller, English Literature

So, Robert Kilroy Silk has set up a new party dedicated to restoring Britain's proper relationship with the rest of Europe. One presumes, then, that by choosing the name Veritas for the party, it will be following in the footsteps of the first great European integrationist, Julius Caesar, who introduced the word into the English (or rather, that heterogeneous hybrid of French, Saxon, American, Latin, Greek) language in the first place.

Labels: Politics, veritas