And the second bit of good news came a few weeks ago with the publication of an anthology of antagonists of Theory, Theory’s Empire. This is a door-stopper of a book with essays by eminent and often angry critics, philosophers and social scientists. The selection is a bit uneven, with some contributors dating back to the 1960s. But it is sure to give ammunition to Theory’s opponents and to sap the confidence of its defenders. Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa calls it “a magnificent collection of essays that returns sanity and rationality to literary criticism, rescuing it from the esotericism, jargon and delusions under which it had been buried."
My guess is that the Empire of Theory is breaking up much as the Evil Empire of Communism did, to filch a phrase from Ronald Reagan: suddenly and noiselessly, like a sand castle melting into the beach. The question is what will follow it. Something will. Something must, for man is an interpretive animal and cannot abandon the habit of interrogating what he reads. Theory has not been completely useless. As Eagleton rightly observes, the door is now shut on the naïve belief that language is transparent or that interpretation of texts can be completely impartial. And thanks to Theory, too, readers’ minds have been scoured clean of the foolish Romantic belief that literature is a kind of mystical, redemptive experience which introduces us to Higher Truths.
I don’t know what will follow. And at the moment, I don’t care. It’s time once again to gorge myself on novels and leave the critics for later. If I wait long enough, I might not have to read them at all.
Ah, but then what will all the satirists have to write about?
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