Generally described by whom? And is "England's best known-literary critic" really something to sound the gong about when James Wood could easily pack it up and move back to Durham?
You are generally described as England’s best-known literary critic. Where does that leave Clive James, whose essay collection, “Cultural Amnesia,” was just published amid great fanfare in New York? I don’t really think he is a literary critic, although he is very clever.
Do you disapprove of the way he treats high culture and pop culture with equal seriousness? Not at all. My chair is in cultural studies. But that’s not the same as running off on chat shows.
Terry Eagleton wrote "if Philip Larkin didn't exist, we would have to invent him," which is certainly one way to coax Martin Amis back onto the frontlines of the war against cliche. And as I'll never tire of reminding myself, everyone's favorite Catholic Marxist culture critic has compared suicide-bombers in Baghdad and Jerusalem to Rosa Luxemburg. (He saves his philippic energies for those "redneck fascists in Texas.")
Marx spoke, contra Proudhon, of misere de la philosophie. He might have had some of his so-called disciples in mind, too.