THE STATE OF CRITICISM
389
to agree with me (as I do with William Phillips) tha t when many
intelligent people spea k about the
state
o f contempora ry criticism,
they are likely to echo the na rra to r of Beckett's
H ow It Is,
who,
crawling na ked eterna ll y th rough the mud , keeps punctua ting his
unpunctua ted rec ita ti on with the droning phrase: "something wrong
there. "
It
would take more ta lent, knowledge, a nd time than I now have
to prov ide a reliable account of the many current, fi ercely conflicting
views on the topic " Litera ry Criticism and its Discontents"; but I
canno t share Willi am Phillips's belief tha t the ma jo r problems in
criticism today stem from a split between theory and prac tice, or from
a rising and dangerous structura list tide. Nor can I share (a lthough I
would like to) hi s implicit assumpti on tha t if mos t critics wro te like
Leavis, Wilson , Howe, T rilling, etc., things would somehow turn out
all right. T here are just too many vexing and interrela ted pro blems.
Some observers would po int
to
the very pro lifera tion and diversity I
have just described as a ca use or symptom o f our troubles: fragmenta–
tion, g lut, sca ttering o f effects, confusion o f tong ues, and so on .
Others would focus o n the historica l situa ti on-a time when virtuall y
everything in critica l di scourse is being contes ted: the sta tus of the
text, the author, the subj ec t, the reader, interpre ta tio n , evaluation ,
literary history, the very na ture of litera ture itse lf. And of course this
is not just the result o f wo rk done by literary theorists but the
seeming ly inevitable development o f modern history shaped not only
by Marx , N ietzsche, and Freud , but by imperia lism, wars, revo lutions ,
the emergence o f continents, and just about every thing else.
If
we are
still part o f Randa ll Ja rrell 's famous "Age o f Criticism," we a re also
ironicall y in many ways back to bas ics, arguing first principles in a
thoroughl y skep tical time- ano ther fac t tha t o ften makes discourse
difficult, but also a reason why some people find the current situa tion
exhilara ting, the p rospects for criticism promising, and many of the
more radica l critics no t the villa ins but the heroes o f the story. Then ,
of course, there is the p ro blem of a udience. Certa inl y the audience for
literary criti cism has dimini shed in the past thirty years. Why has this
happened and wha t are some of its implica ti ons? And fina ll y any
extended account o f o ur p rese nt situa tion would have to include one
part of wha t Lio nel Trilling used to call the "stubbo rn actua l" -the
relationship between cr iticism and the distressed sta te o f Eng lish
studies and of the la rger soc ie ty in which critics live and work.
Criticism has a lways been an emba ttl ed ac tivity a nd I don 't want
to exaggera te the extremity o f the current situa tio n. T he first chapter
