Tout le reste est littérature.

One of the greatest shocks of my life came when, delighted at the prospect of studying literature for a B.A., I found that many of the writers I enjoyed reading were relegated to the second division in the minds of experts in the field. The existence of the Great Canon of Dead White Males was an obstacle that was finally skirted round rather than scrambled over, but I even met it in the Irish Writers Centre not too many years ago and it still puzzles me. Apart from Maria Edgeworth and a few stolid looking bluestockings, the impression that any visitor might get is that Irish women hardly ever put pen to paper in the past. McKittrick Ross has finally gathered a cult following, but her name does not exactly trip lightly off every reader's tongue when it comes to Irish writing.


Slap the tag "literary" onto any work and it seems to take on an aura of dazzling self-importance. "The Masses" back away in horror, assured that they will be both bored and patronised by its style; the pretentious will carry a copy to every social gathering, sure of its talismatic power to open intellectual doors.


I suppose that one has to deal with the reality that there are "good" and "bad" stylists and that Henry James is, in the long run a more engaging read than "The Bobsey Twins", whose author still has not registed in my brain. However, I have far better memories of the pleasure the latter gave over several years than of the struggle endured one long cold winter as I grappled with the Old Pretender's codified style.

Really there's room for all and Verlaine was right to look askance at much that alarms as Literature