ABR welcomes letters from our readers. Correspondents should note that letters may be edited. Letters and emails must reach us by the middle of the current month, and must include a telephone number for verification.

Tyranny of the literal

Dear Editor,

I was delighted to read Sue Thomas’s incisive review of Derek Attridge’s J.M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading in the April 2005 issue of ABR. Attridge’s renowned analyses of poetic rhythm in English are a fine example of that ethics in practice. Thomas’s review is further extended by the conversation it sparks with James Ley’s essay in the same issue, ‘The Tyranny of the Literal’. I welcome Ley’s reminder that it is impossible to examine ‘the meaning of a novel [or any literary form, for that matter] without considering its aesthetics. After all, it is a rhetorical structure that wants to shape your response.’ Better still, his brisk, exemplary analysis of The Bride Stripped Bare, in which certain of that novel’s narrative structures are sharply revealed. The garish narrative structures raised by publicists around the literary work are too often analysed and debated, precious little of any substance being said about the actual craft exhibited (or otherwise) by the work itself.