Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Steiner, George - James Fenton

1. Printable Version
2. Download PDF
3. Cite this Page
4. Tweet This

JAMES FENTON

[Professor Steiner's most recent publications are On Difficulty and Heidegger. We do not yet know what his] next book will be 'about', but we may guess, on the basis of such texts as are available, that the aboutness will direct itself—will aim its most urgent responsions—towards some great zone of silence ('topic' would be too restricting a term, too banal and ungiving in its locality) about which we do not, as yet, 'know' anything at all.

You think I am mocking. Perhaps I am not. For such speculation is the favourite Steiner mode. It is true that knowledge and tradition have accumulated in this one mind to such an extent that the loss of that mind (one pictures for instance a number 11 bus, out of control, bearing down upon the Professor) would rank with the burning of the library at Alexandria. How remarkable, then, that everything Steiner knows must take its place alongside the enormous amount that he does not know. Or does...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass

1. Introduction
2. The Times Literary Supplement
3. DONAT O'DONNELL [pseudonym of CONOR CRUISE O'BRIEN]
4. Richard Gilman
5. John Gross
6. John Simon
7. Theodore Solotaroff
8. The Times Literary Supplement
9. D. J. Enright
10. Nicolas Krasso
11. Geoffrey Grigson
12. Eliseo Vivas
13. Richard Freedman
14. Jonathan Culler
15. Raymond Oliver
16. James Fenton
17. P. F. Strawson
18. David H. Stewart
19. Copyright