Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Zinoviev, Alexander - Clive James

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CLIVE JAMES

For The Radiant Future one's gratitude is unalloyed. It is nearer than The Yawning Heights to being an ordinary narrative and is thus easier for the reader to follow. There is a central character to get interested in and care about, even though he is not very likable. The central character is the narrator, head of the Department of Theoretical Problems of the Methodology of Scientific Communism…. The narrator's career as a philosopher has some resemblance to Zinoviev's own, and indeed it is possible that an element of self-hatred has been incorporated…. According to one of the cardinal principles of The Yawning Heights, it is impossible to flourish, or even grow up, in the Soviet Union while still retaining a moral sense. Therefore almost anybody you have ever heard of is automatically reprehensible.

This principle would be intolerably strict if Zinoviev did not in the first instance apply it to himself, and more...

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1. Introduction
2. Aleksandr Nekrich
3. John Leonard
4. John Bayley
5. Deming Brown
6. Geoffrey Hosking
7. F. D. Reeve
8. Clive James
9. Copyright