John Sutherland
Regarding Henry
Monopolizing the Master: Henry James and the Politics of Modern Literary Scholarship
By Michael Anesko
Stanford University Press 248pp £30.50 order from our bookshop
I’ve wondered over the years what Michael Anesko was up to. In 1986 he published a monograph on Henry James. Nothing wonderful about that. James studies had by that time become industrial in its scale of monograph production. What was unusual about Friction with the Market was its bolshiness. The image of the Master promoted by himself and the keepers of his posthumous flame had been that of an artist loftily above considerations of money or celebrity. Anesko, by dogged sleuthing into the literary remains and financial evidence, uncovered a writer morbidly concerned with his returns and furious that he wasn’t, dammit, a bestseller like that awful Mrs Humphry Ward.
We’ve had to wait a quarter of a century for this second act of critical iconoclasm. Monopolizing the Master begins with a paragraph in which Anesko, an American professor, rubbishes his own profession (judging by his website, his career has not been jet-propelled – those of iconoclasts seldom are):
At least
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Perhaps, rather than having diagnosed a real societal malaise, she has merely projected onto an entire generation a neurosis that actually affects only a small number of people.'
@HoumanBarekat on Patricia Lockwood's 'No One is Talking About This'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/culturecrisis
*Offer ends in TWO days*
Take advantage of our February offer: a six-month subscription for only £19.99.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/literaryfebruary/
'Nourished on a diet of exceptionalism and meritocracy, millennials internalised the harmful falsehood that hard work necessarily yields success. The very least they should settle for is a "cool job", one that ... is the focus of their "passion".'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/workers-twerkers