Conversations with Critics

Veteran critic Nicolas Tredell has been conversing with fellow critics for over three decades. This revised and expanded volume contains twenty interviews with Britain’s leading intellectuals, academics, and exploratory novelists and poets, covering the period between 1990-2004. From conversations ranging from the seismic shift in teaching attitudes in the universities from the sixties to the nineties, to the impact of French theorists and the Tel Quel set on literary theory, to the influence of the Catholic Church in relation to literature and culture, to the collapse of communism and the rise of postmodernism, to a range of discussions on each writer’s methods, approaches, and influences, Conversations with Critics is a lively and enthralling book rich in plentiful discourse. In a fresh introduction, Tredell muses on the changes digital media has wrought on the art of the interview, along with the rise of the neoliberal university replacing the liberal humanist model, and the place of art in this corporate superstructure. Those interviewed: Christine Brooke-Rose, Frank Kermode, Karl Miller, George Steiner, Bernard Bergonzi, David Caute, Terry Eagleton, Roger Scruton, Robert Hewison, Stephen Heath, Brian Cox, Catherine Belsey, Marina Warner, Donald Davie, John Barrell, Colin MacCabe, C.H. Sisson, Lisa Jardine, Philip Hobsbaum, and Raymond Tallis.

‘[a] scrupulously researched . . . anthology of 20 lengthy and fascinating conversations with prominent literary figures’. Isobel Armstrong, Times Educational Supplement

‘as entertaining a guide to contemporary critical debates as one could hope for . . . [Tredell’s] questions are informed, explicit and seek always to connect specific issues to overall literary and political contexts’.
Mark Ford, Times Literary Supplement