My World View: Literary fiction

1. The preoccupations of many literary people, the sort who obtain degrees in English literature and then either write novels which only their fellow literati read, or teach more of the same, or (most likely) do the latter while dreaming endlessly of doing the former, are of little interest to any but themselves. The fact that the literary journals (such as Times Lit. Supp.) and serious press book pages are all written by these same people — novelists themselves or would-be ones — (all doing each other favours most of the time except where some spiteful rivalry drives them to carp) means that the whole fiction industry is a self-serving world in which only the novel is thought to be of any interest.
2. I find most of the famous classics of English literature rather boring, just as boring in fact as most contemporary novels. Jane Austen, Mrs Gaskell and the Brontë sisters are no better, as far as I am concerned, than any English soap opera on television tonight; in short, they are inconsequential drivel.