Product Description

Written by one of the country's most eminent reviewers and academics, this book presents a sceptical and an intelligent assessment of the true value of art.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #30078 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-01
• Released on: 2006-06-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Review
"'An informative, thought-provoking and entertaining book on a subject that rarely produces writing with all three qualities.' David Lodge, Sunday Times 'Engaged, provocative and frequently funny.' Sam Leith, Daily Telegraph 'Incisive and inspirational.' Blake Morrison, Guardian"

Rupert Christiansen, Spectator
'Carey lays into the snobs... Exhilarating and suggestive.'

Blake Morrison, Guardian
'Incisive and inspirational... I found myself putting ticks in the margin and laughing at the jokes.'

Customer Reviews

Hilarious, but internally contradictory
It's hard not to love John Carey. There are so few witty, intelligent literary critics willing to stand up for the general reader. As ever, this offering is rich in pointed and thoughtful deflations of the smug, the pompous and the self-important, and the result is rib-tickling and heartwarming.

However, it isn't always illuminating, because Carey's critical judgement is sometimes overwhelmed by his flair for apt phrases and putdowns, and because of the stark contradiction at the heart of the book. Having spent several chapters wittily dissecting the pretensions of high culture in the form of the visual and musical arts, he abruptly tells us that literature is different because it alone is self-critical. Huh? Modern art - since Matisse, at least - is vehemently self critical to the point of being self-consuming, constantly lampooning its own status. There's an intriguing argument about literary language actually being vague and suggestive rather than precise, but one could use this just as well to defend Vaughan Williams or Kandinsky. Somehow, Carey wants to cut Dickens a lot more slack than anyone else, despite the fact that he too could be as snobbish as anybody.

If you can live with all these contradicitons, however, you can enjoy Carey's own lacerating wit as itself the kind of literary pleasure he wants to defend.

A Nose Tweak
The funniest book I have read this year. Carey tweaks the nose of the urban elites, and their earnest country cousins at 'arts centre' mission stations, he tweaks it until it hurts, and then he still won't let go.

If your idea of the arts coresponds with the cultural taste of the metroploitan pivileged class, then read this, you deserve an intellectual nose pinch. If not, read it anyway.

A Joy to Read From Beginning to End
This book is a sheer joy from start to finish, full of sharp insights, written in sparse, elegant prose - astringent and beautiful and easy to read. I was so taken with it that I kept slowing myself down in order not to get to the end of it too quickly! Also, it's such a counterblast to the armies of literary and artistic snobs out there (some well known novelists included) - and from such an erudite, well read source as well. It's hugely funny, wise, iconoclastic and may well change your life. It should be required reading for anyone with any involvement in the arts, but perhaps most particularly for would-be critics (and Arts Council Committees!) everywhere. I loved it, and only wish I had half such facility with words and ideas. Buy it, read it, savour it.