The Uses of Error

“The history of interpretation, the skills by which we keep alive in our minds the light and dark of past literature and past humanity, is to an incalculable extent a history of error.” So writes Frank Kermode of a history to which he has contributed many luminous pages. This book is a record of Kermode’s “error,” his wandering through literature past and present. He notes that “in thirty-odd years I have written several hundred reviews, an example I would strongly urge the young not to follow.” From these hundreds Kermode has selected the pieces he treasures most, and they provide an example that indeed will be difficult to follow. The Uses of Error contains some of Kermode’s very best writing. Again and again he proves himself to be more than a commentator or chronicler; he is rather a creator of cultural value in his interaction with the texts at hand. The appeal of this book is broad. Everything is here from Augustine to Ariès on death and dying, from Wilde to Woolf and writer’s block, from Joachim of Fiore to Flaubert’s Parrot. In a phrase or an aside on any of these subjects Kermode can open a vista, wither a reputation, or spotlight an intellectual mantrap. The core of the volume is a group of essays on the central figures of modern English literature. Kermode tells more here—about Tennyson, Shaw, Forster, and Eliot—than most people could in twice the space. His brief, vivid, and sympathetic writings extol the range of British writing and mark out the difference between an interest that is solely academic and the richer view of one who writes from inside the culture and shares a common experience with its interpreters. There is also Kermode the man. He saves a set of autobiographical essays until the end, and they are a veritable dessert for those who read the volume straight through. But they will stand first in the reader’s memory afterward, because they give body to the mind so clearly in evidence throughout the book. Kermode shows us the means by which he gained the perspective to become a transnational critic—not a critic on the margin, but one who shows us where the margins are. For anyone who is not yet familiar with Frank Kermode’s work, this is the place to begin. For those who are already acquainted with it, here is the chance to see the pattern of the whole.

Table of Contents:
Introduction I. Augustine Joachim of Fiore Deciphering the Big Book The Lattimore Version Sacred Space: Christian Verse Beethoven at Home II. Fighting Freud Freud is Better in German Work and Play Sic Transit Marshall McLuhan Philippe Aries' Bumper Book of Death Paul de Man's Abyss Talking about Doing: The Deconstructionists and the New Historicists III. Frances Yates and Imperial Secrets Roy Strong: Policy and Pageantry Protestant Poetry How Do You Spell Shakespeare? Shakespeare for the Eighties IV. Grandeur and Filth: The Victorian Cities Tennyson's Nerves Victorian Vocations: Frederic Harrison and Leslie Stephen Squalor: On George Gissing A Little of this Honey: Oscar Wilde Georgian Eyes are Smiling: Shaw and Conrad in Their Letters V. Wells's Ladder Forster and Maurice Yes, Santa, There is a Virginia The Feast of St Thomas Poetry a la Mode On William Gerhardie The Essential Orwell Half-Way Up the Hill: The Young John Betjeman Connolly's World Oldham to Blackheath: Roy Fuller Remembering the Movement Obsessed with Obsession: Julian Barnes Losers: Anita Brookner The Horse of the Baskervilles: Umberto Eco VI. The Faces of Man The Men From Man My Formation A Stroll Around the Block On Being an Enemy of Humanity The Uses of Error

About the Author :
Sir (John) Frank Kermode was Julian Clarence Levi Professor of English Literature, Emeritus, at Columbia University and a Fellow of King’s College, University of Cambridge. He was instrumental in the 1979 founding of the London Review of Books and was knighted in 1991 for his service to literature.