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Article: Where Eagletons dare.(Terry Eagleton, The Gatekeeper: A Memoir)
- Article from:
- New Criterion
- Article date:
- June 1, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Foundation for Cultural Review. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Terry Eagleton The Gatekeeper: A Memoir. St. Martin's Press, 128 pages, $21.95
"I can't see" Sir Frank Kermode is quoted as saying on the back cover of The Gatekeeper, "how this book could fail to amuse" In that case I will have to tell him. It can fail because, despite containing many genuinely funny, and some touching, moments, its lack of amiability becomes ultimately distasteful. Terry Eagleton's progress from a poor working-class childhood in the north of England to a chair of English at Oxford is an admirable achievement, but the chip has never been dislodged from his shoulder. As a boy he was gatekeeper to a convent of Carmelite nuns, and the symbol of ...