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DORIS LESSING
phenomenon, the top layer of literary academia. Their lives are spent
in criticizing, and in criticizing each other's criticism. They at least
regard this activity as more important than the original work. It is
possible for literary students to spend more time reading criticism
and criticism of criticism than they spend reading poetry, novels,
biography, stories. A great many people regard this state of affairs
as quite normal, and not sad and ridiculous....
Where I recently read an essay about Antony and Cleopatra
by a boy shortly to take A levels.
It
was full of originality and excite–
ment about the play, the feeling that any real teaching about litera–
ture aims to produce. The essay was returned by the teacher like
this with this comment: "I cannot mark this essay, you haven't
quoted from the authorities." Few teachers would regard this as sad
and ridiculous. . . .
Where people who consider themselves educated, and indeed as
superior to and more refined than ordinary non-reading people, will
come up to a writer and congratulate him or her on getting a good
review somewhere - but will not consider it necessary to read the
book in question, or ever to think that what they are interested in
IS
success....
Where when a book comes out on a certain subject - let's
say star-gazing - instantly a dozen colleges, societies, television pro–
grams, write to the author asking him to come and speak about star–
gazing. The last thing it occurs to them to do is to read the book.
This behavior is considered quite normal, and not ridiculous at all....
Where a young man or woman, reviewer or critic, who has not
read more of a writer's work than the book in front of him, will
write patronizingly, or as if rather bored with the whole business,
or as if considering how many marks to give an essay, about the
writer in question - who might have written fifteen books, and
have been writing for twenty or thirty years - giving the said writer
instruction on what to write next, and how. No one thinks this is
absurd, certainly not the young person, critic, or reviewer, who has
been taught to patronize and itemize everyone for years, from
Shakespeare downward.
Where a Professor of Archeology can write of a South American
tribe which has advanced knowledge of plants, and of medicine and
