cover image Criticism in Society: Interviews with Jacques Derrida, Northrop Frye, Harold Bloom, G

Criticism in Society: Interviews with Jacques Derrida, Northrop Frye, Harold Bloom, G

Imre Sulusinszky, Imre Salusinszky. Methuen, $14.95 (244pp) ISBN 978-0-416-92270-7

These candid, contentious interviews with nine prominent literary critics serve as a guide through the perplexing thickets of modern criticism. Northrop Frye discusses the Bible as a storehouse of myth and ponders why great writers like Ezra Pound and D. H. Lawrence were ""ideological fat-heads.'' Harold Bloom claims that the literary world and academia are dominated by charlatans, fools and bureaucrats; he sees the true critic as an original voice rising above conformist babble. To deconstructionist Jacques Derrida, the modern critics' role is to gauge the relation of our culture to writing and speaking. Other deconstructors interviewed here are Barbara Johnson, Geoffrey Hartman and J. Hillis Miller. At the opposite pole stands Edward Said, who discusses his Palestinian roots and argues that criticism should take up wide social issues as he did in his book Orientalism. Salusinszky teaches at the University of Melbourne in Australia. (September 15)