David Lodge introduces To The Hermitage
Friday 7th Sep 2012
a Shandean novel, digressive, essayistic, wrongfooting the reader with gaps and anticlimaxes, tantalizing her with hints of amorous entanglements that are never confirmed, indulging in authorial reminiscences, describing places and crowds in exhaustive lists of minute particulars, the verbal equivalent of a Breughel painting . . .
David Lodge
From his new introduction to To The HermitageMalcolm's attraction to Diderot as a character, which lured him well away from his usual fictional territory, was no doubt in part an identification with the Frenchman's total dedication to the life of the mind and the profession of letters, his readiness to turn his hand to any literary task in a variety of forms and genres
Author
Picador |