Skip navigation
London Review of Books London Review Bookshop

Have you seen my Dada boss? subscriber-only content

Terry Eagleton

  • Typecasting: On the Arts and Sciences of Human Inequality by Ewen and Ewen  Buy this book

If the authors of this book sound like a firm of estate agents, it’s because they have virtuously repressed their first names as a protest against gender stereotyping. But one wonders if they have failed to carry this resistance far enough. There are, after all, several million Ewens knocking around the globe, and this particular pair might fear that their unique personalities are threatened by a blandly generic term. Perhaps the best strategy would be to vary one’s surname from day to day to avoid the indignity of being labelled.

subscriber-only content Subscribers to the print edition can log in to view the entire article. For information about subscribing to the London Review of Books click here. This article is available for purchase online. Buy this article.

Terry Eagleton is John Edward Taylor Professor of English Literature at Manchester. His books include Literary Theory, After Theory and, most recently, The Meaning of Life.

LRB cover artwork

From the archive

Slumming with Rappers at the Roxy
Hal Foster on Nobrow: The Culture of Marketing, the Marketing of Cultre by John Seabrook

Mon Pays
Michael Rogin: Josephine Baker

Benefits of Diaspora
Eric Hobsbawm on the Jewish Emancipation

Before and After Said
Maya Jasanoff: A Reappraisal of Orientalism

Newsreel History
Terry Eagleton on Modern Times, Modern Places by Peter Conrad