The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Essays by Simon Leys
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Critical Reality

Two approximate descriptions of the indescribable Simon Leys: Harold Bloom without the arrogance or the Shakespearean idolatry; or Terry Eagleton with an understanding of Asian as well as continental culture. With the wit, erudition and style of both. The unique can't be categorised. And Leys is certainly that: a unique literary and social critic.

Fiction, in fact all writing, for Leys is depiction of reality as opposed to the expression of truth, which is an entirely different matter (science is after all fiction of a particular genre). Poetry as the apotheosis of fiction is the grasping of reality, the naming of what actually is. Literary criticism is the poetic uncovering of a reality that even the author of the work criticised may be unaware of. Since reality provides an infinite scope for story-telling, neither fiction nor its criticism has any obvious boundary and therefore leads to social commentary.

This view on the world produces lots of profoundly engaging judgements on European literature and the society that produces it: Balzac displays the aesthetic sense of a prosperous Caribbean pimp. Victor Hugo is a Trumpian (but endearing) figure of French literature. Malraux is essentially phony [sic]. The orientalist Edward Said is a Palestinian scholar with a huge chip on his shoulder. Roland Bathes bestows a new dignity upon the age-old activity of saying nothing at great length.

Leys's judgements of are perhaps even more interesting for Europeans who are novices in Chinese literature: the persistence in Chinese culture of spirituality within a landscape largely devoid of material ancient monuments, the self-expressiveness of writing per se as an artistic and quasi-sacred frame for literary content, the modernity of Confucian thought in its openness and adaptability, China itself as a sort of recipe for cosmic order with the main ingredient as a virtue ethics that could come from Thomas Aquinas, the lethally seductive charm of Zhou Enlai, Mao's complete lack of personal charisma, Communist literature as rhinoceros sausage.

Simon Leys died just short of two years ago. His legacy is profoundly rich.

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