Journal

Something Real Lies Before You
Graham Harman
Adapted from a talk to the ABA September 18, 2010
I’ll begin by asking who’s read Shirley in the last year
or two? I can assure you that you would not be the
only Brontë associate who hasn’t. I mentioned to a
fellow member a few months ago that I had chosen
Shirley to speak about at this meeting, and was told,
with a look of horror, that this particular novel was,
‘turgid and unreadable’. That response to the book is
very far from unique. ‘The standard critical view
since 1849,’ according to the editor of my Penguin
Classics edition ‘has always been that it represents an
ill-considered misdirecting of its author’s talents’.
The other immediate response that I’ve elicited when
I said that I was going to talk about Shirley, typified by very kind offers from
Christopher Cooper, was, ‘Oh! That’s the one about the Luddites! I have lots
of information about the Luddites that I can give you’.
Let me declare, right up front, that this is not a talk about Luddites. Although
I will invest 60 seconds in a synopsis. ...
- 54 -