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pornography, mysteries, romances, science fiction, the whole array
on the racks of a drugstore, and we might very well be able to dis–
criminate even among the trashiest productions, but we will not over–
turn the hierarchy. Leslie Fiedler in
H'hat Was Literature?
tried to exalt
Gone With the Wind,
the Leather-Stocking Tales, etcetera, and to de–
preciate T. S. Eliot, Joyce and other modernists, confessing his own
hypocrisy in formally admiring them, but even he can only argue for
good yarn-spinning, story-telling, which has its aesthetic value, but
not for the complete abolition of the distinction between genuine lit–
erature and real trash. The paradoxes of deconstructionism must ul–
timately fail as they come up against the wall of facts. There is an
author, there is a work of art, distinguishable from trash, there is a
correct and plausible interpretation, there is a literature with an in–
evitable relation to reality, as otherwise literature would only be a
language game. Literature tells us about man, nature, society and
the meaning of life.
It
has a cognitive, social, and ethical function.
Introducing "one of the most unusual
voices in contemporary fiction."*
DAPHNE
MERKIN
Enchantment
ANOVEL
•Kirkus Reviews
....
r~'-'
..........
NARY"-Hilma Wolitzer
HARCOURT BRACE JOVANOVICH
