Splinters

It gives me morose gratification to see the name of Maurice Blanchot in the second sentence of the first article in this week?s TLS (though not in this extract).

There is a lot of talk about the future of literary criticism, yet all I want say (now) is that Blanchot is the future. His criticism is light, indirect and offers an exhilerating and profound indifference to fashion, gossip, social critique and textual analysis. He reviews as if the book under discussion is the manifestation of an alien landscape with traces of our blood collecting in rock pools. Is this Criticism as Science Fantasy?!