No Future
In his highly provocative Only Pinter Remains, Terry Eagleton argues that the utopian impulse in British literature has died. Tracing this tradition from playwright Howard Pinter all the way back to Blake and Shelley, for those not automatically inclined to ascribe left sentiment to the authors Eagleton assembles for this article’s canon, the op-ed, published in Saturday’s Guardian, is a marvelous example of how to encounter politics within culture.
Though Eagleton could (and should) definitely be upbraided for the limited catalogue of ‘approved’ authors that he provides, (and his characterization of the ideological pliability of immigrant writers), Eagleton does a brilliant job of indicting several contemporary authors for aligning themselves too closely with the powers that be. His damning appraisal of Salman Rushdie’s fate, and Christopher Hitchens’ post-9/11 political trajectory hits particularly hard.