tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490888218551680190.post7951866872008482670..comments2008-05-23T14:10:24.514+01:00Nicholas Murrayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07189263209323471368nicholasgmurray@googlemail.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490888218551680190.post-87625965170872296832008-05-23T14:10:00.000+01:002008-05-23T14:10:00.000+01:00Leavis passed my generation by completely but he's fun (fun, but very, very wrong!) to read now, I think. <BR/><BR/>His judgements are so often dead wrong (he hates Sterne!!) -- but his judgmentalism is kind of thrilling. Nobody writes with his kind of certainty any more. And with the papers full of so much puffing, his narrow vision feels almost like an antidote. <BR/><BR/>The Great Tradition is really about just 3 books -- that's some filtering mechanism he had!Mark Thwaitehttp://www.bookdepository.co.uknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490888218551680190.post-49245763361760505672008-05-14T09:22:00.000+01:002008-05-14T09:22:00.000+01:00Not strong on geography, Leavis, was he? I've only read enough James to be bored once- Daisy Miller twas- & steering this in the perenially pleasing world of the list, I'd perhaps place John Cowper Powys as one of the great English novelists- notwithstanding his being Welsh, I think. I'd also have to include Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Camus. Dostoevsky of course spent a little time in London, during the journey that produced Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, while Tolstoy's aristocratic sense clearly marks him out as more than pseudo-English, and with a Christian name of Albert, who could argue with Camus' inclusion?Andrew Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11708539533684206357noreply@blogger.com