30 Jul 2010 18:54:26
The author Salman Rushdie is one of several leading British writers criticised by the academic Gabriel Josipovici.
Their mantelpieces might creak under the collective weight of literary gongs but, according to one leading academic, leading contemporary British authors such as Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan and Julian Barnesare unworthy of the accolades they receive.
In an outspoken attack, Gabriel Josipovici, the former Weidenfeld professor of comparative literature at Oxford University, condemned the work of the giants of the modern English novel as hollow. He said they were like "prep-school boys showing off" and virtually indistinguishable from one another in scope and ambition.
The fact that such writers had won so many awards was "a mystery", Josipovici told the Guardian. He added: "It's an ill-educated public being fed by the media – 'This is what great art is' – and they lap it up."
He said: "Reading Barnes, like reading so many other English writers of his generation – Martin Amis, McEwan – leaves me feeling that I and the world have been made smaller and meaner. The irony which at first made one smile, the precision of language which was at first so satisfying, the cynicism which at first was used only to puncture pretension, in the end come to seem like a terrible constriction, a fear of opening oneself up to the world.
Many of the authors named by Josipovici are published by Random House. A spokesman for the publisher said: "Obviously we wouldn't agree. I don't think the authors would want to comment either."
Their mantelpieces might creak under the collective weight of literary gongs but, according to one leading academic, leading contemporary British authors such as Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan and Julian Barnesare unworthy of the accolades they receive.
In an outspoken attack, Gabriel Josipovici, the former Weidenfeld professor of comparative literature at Oxford University, condemned the work of the giants of the modern English novel as hollow. He said they were like "prep-school boys showing off" and virtually indistinguishable from one another in scope and ambition.
The fact that such writers had won so many awards was "a mystery", Josipovici told the Guardian. He added: "It's an ill-educated public being fed by the media – 'This is what great art is' – and they lap it up."
He said: "Reading Barnes, like reading so many other English writers of his generation – Martin Amis, McEwan – leaves me feeling that I and the world have been made smaller and meaner. The irony which at first made one smile, the precision of language which was at first so satisfying, the cynicism which at first was used only to puncture pretension, in the end come to seem like a terrible constriction, a fear of opening oneself up to the world.
Many of the authors named by Josipovici are published by Random House. A spokesman for the publisher said: "Obviously we wouldn't agree. I don't think the authors would want to comment either."
