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| Reviews |
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| Robert Giddings is a well-established
literary critic who regularly reviews for the likes of The Sunday
Times, The Guardian and The New Statesman and Society, and who
has a dozen or so critical books to his name. And if this doesn't
suggest as much, the language of the blurb on the back of the
book - "In this book Robert Giddings explores the literary
nexus - the interdependence always existing between writers
and their readers" - makes it clear that The Author, The
Book and The Reader is something of a 'literary' book.
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| 'Literary' I admit, is something
of a nebulous term, but here I mean that the book does assume
a vast knowledge of English literature, treating it in the manner
of the critical essay. So unless you're pretty well-read, or
have the rare ability to take interest in a close discussion
of texts you have never read, this book could be rather daunting.
Although that's not to say that you have to be familiar with,
Pope's Imitations of Horace, or Wordsworth's Preface to the
Lyrical Ballads, to get anything out of it. |
| The book is divided into nine
chapters focusing on a particular writer from each period: Samuel
Johnson, Tobias Smollet, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Mark
Twain, Tolkein, Scott Fitzgerald, and John Le Carré.
In each of these Giddings explores the historical, sociological
and political context of the writing, and how this influenced
the literature produced at that time. Thus the development of
printing and paper production is discussed alongside censorship
and fashion, and we learn that "Literacy and print allow
the 'author' to organise plot as never before and to construct
a sequence of events under his own conscious control",
and that "serial publication made careful planning of a
novel of vital importance". |
| Much of the information and historical
detail Giddings relates is, if densely packed, quite fascinating,
but his argument about the relationship between the author,
the reader, and the business (or is it art?) of communication
sporadically gets lost. However, despite this, he does come
up with some shrewd and thought-provoking ideas. In his chapter
'Tolkein: Climbing Mount Olympus by Escalator' he points out
(albeit somewhat tautologously): |
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"An understanding of the need The Lord
of the Rings was seen to supply may help us to an awareness
of the book's real qualities. One thing which it seems clearly
to satisfy is the need for a complete, whole and entire world
- an environment, which although complex and vast, does make
whole, complete and entire sense." |
| And considering the medium of
film in 'John Le Carré and the Writing of the Igloo Walls',
he suggests: "'serious' writers have tried for years to
keep literature and entertainment separate". |
| As an overview to the history
of English Literature and the development of its devices and
genres Giddings' book is extremely helpful. We sweep from "oral
man", through imitation, the epistolatory technique, the
detective story, and fantasy, to emerge amid the more familiar
faces of The Professional and Inspector Morse. But this is not
a book to be breezed through. It requires a quiet room and well-sharpened
wits. |
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- Writers Monthly, January 1992
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by Bridget Frost
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| Robert Giddings believes that
media studies should not be a reductive activity. In this fascinating
book examining selected prose by eight authors he demonstrates
that we need to be finely aware, when reading "cultural
artefacts.' including modern mass media, that issues of ownership
of the means of production and distribution, are crucial. There
is nothing new in the relationship of modern media, and the
contemporary, dismissiveness of film and television is in a
great tradition of cultural snobbery which has always revealed
itself by allegiance to the immediately preceding mode of production.
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| Only in a very closely packed
last chapter on John Le Carré does Giddings really explore
aspects of contemporary media studies. But the main thrust of
his consideration of eight writers (all male), ranging from
Samuel Johnson and Charles Dickens to Mark Twain and Le Carré,
is to bring out the very close relationship between the. author
and the predominant mode of production. He starts with Johnson.,
who straddles the period between patronage and the birth of
publishing. It could be argued that Johnson, in his famous salvo
against the Earl of Chesterfield, killed off patronage
for 200 years. |
| By far the best and most searching
essay in this collection is that on Dickens, with skilfully
selected vignettes, illustrations from the periodicals in which
Dickens published his serials, and a brilliant stimulating examination
of Dombey and Son in relation to public expectations. |
| The mode of preparation of the essays leads
to undue repetition and sometimes a lack of overall clarity
about their place in a work of this title but, even in the section
on Tobias Smollett, where the writer indulges in a rather excessive
consideration of the history of Bath, there are some delightful
touches, particularly in relation to the importance of sugar
in the development of capitalism. |
| In a searching exploration of Edgar Allan Poe's
Dupin, Giddings shows how print technology influenced the development
of detective fiction. Dupin, he argues, is made credible as
a result of being presented to us as a reader of newspapers.
Literary criticism appears more deliberately in the later essays,
where Le Carré's dynamic relationship with film is well
brought out and J.R.R. Tolkien's use of myth is linked with
similar strategies in painting. |
| The Author, The Book and the Readers deserves
to be widely read.
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- Tribune
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by Michael Stanley
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