Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Brophy, Brigid (Antonia) - Anthony Burgess

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ANTHONY BURGESS

This deplorable little work [Fifty Works of English Literature We Could Do Without] has been duly deplored in the literary reviews and the "class" papers: only the Sunday Express, I think, found anything to praise. The authors are now rubbing themselves in an ecstasy of the kind granted only to Exclusive Brethren…. I don't propose to help inflame the delicious abscess. I merely want to express my disquiet that this is what British literary criticism should have come to…. [Here] are three people of large culture and considerable social standing. They have enough fame and they are presumably not short of money. What then has impelled them to publish so ill-conceived, ignorant and vulgar a book?

One answer, a shameful one, is a hunger for notoriety. Their book, far from being ignored (if it had been the work of uneducated people that would have been a just response), has had wide newspaper coverage; they themselves have been...

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1. Introduction
2. The Times Literary Supplement
3. Gene Baro
4. Pearl Kazin
5. Dan Wickenden
6. Charles J. Rolo
7. Maurice Richardson
8. The Times Literary Supplement
9. Joseph L. Quinn
10. Martin Tucker
11. Eve Auchincloss
12. Naomi Bliven
13. The Times Literary Supplement
14. Anthony Burgess
15. Victor Strauss
16. Anthony Burgess
17. Alan Levensohn
18. Edward Weeks
19. Joyce Carol Oates
20. Time
21. Hermione Lee
22. Alan Hollinghurst
23. Marilyn Butler
24. Copyright

1. Joyce Carol Oates