Puffed Wheat
James Wood: How serious is John Bayley?, 20 October 2005
The Power of Delight: A Lifetime in Literature: Essays 1962-2002
by John Bayley, selected by Leo Carey.
Duckworth, 677 pp., £25, March 2005,0 7156 3312 0 Show More
by John Bayley, selected by Leo Carey.
Duckworth, 677 pp., £25, March 2005,
“... biographies of novelists, and at his best when reviewing poetry. His essays on Sterne, Austen, Hardy, Trollope, Dickens, George Eliot and others begin incisively and then drift sideways, as critical argument is forsaken for biographical chatter and a widespread sowing of the field with puffed wheat. There is always a remarkably serene sense of what an ... ”