Customer Reviews

In Defence of Realism

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The first three quarters of this books are an in depth analysis of literary criticism and theory of the postmodern, deconstructionist variety, and in particular the claim that the realist novel is an artifact of the past that serious writer have moved beyond. In the last part of the book Tallis offers his own assessment of the strength and weakness of the realistic novel, and why he believes it should and will remain the primary, most essenmtial genre of fiction, of which other forms are variations. This last part was fascinating and I wish there was more of it. His criticism of 'Theory' in the first part is quite engaging and very effective, as he demonstrates how the claims oF these thinkers are exaggerated and based on flawed ideas in the philosophy of language and cognition. In fact his attacks are so effective that after the first 2 or 3 chapters his point has been made convincingly, and I was ready to move on to his own analysis of realism in fiction. So the middle part of the book became somewhat repetetive as he attacks the exponents of `Theory' from many slightly different angles. Despite this I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the philosophical issues raised by fiction.