Imbued . . . with Exigence 
Christopher Tayler
Rachel Cusk recently wrote a piece for the Guardian describing her short-lived membership of a book group: ‘As if for the first time, I understood that reading is a private matter.’ Her co-readers’ inadequate responses to Chekhov provoke some grim reflections on the inadequacies of contemporary readers and writers. ‘Generally the greatest writers have written about what they’ve seen around them, about – in the parlance of creative writing schools – what they “know”.’ She quotes John Gardner saying that ‘great writers tell the truth exactly – and get it right.’ But, she says, ‘for the modern British – more to the point, English – novelist, this notion of truth is a little obscured and inaccessible.’ Historical novels and ‘books on “important” subjects’ are popular because they allow readers and writers to ‘evade the question’ of lived experience:
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Other articles by this contributor:
Genderbait for the Nerds · William Gibson
A Bit of a Lush · William Boyd
High on His Own Supply · Amis Recycled
Belgravia Cockney · being a le Carré bore
But Little Bequalmed · Louis de Bernières’s Decency
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