Kermode

[Valentino, Russell]

Literary critic Frank Kermode, who "combined an eminent scholarly career with popular success," died Tuesday, the Guardian<http://news.shelf-awareness.com/ct.jsp?uz3716000Biz9928918> reported. He was 90.

"He's probably the greatest literary conversationalist I've ever known--it wasn't just the lectures and the monographs and the books, it's the fact that just talking about a writer he'd say incredibly pithy, intelligent things which would prompt you to go and read them again," said Alan Samson, Kermode's publisher at Weidenfeld & Nicolson. "He knew he had exceptional gifts, but there was a modest manner about him. He knew he was smarter than everyone else, but he was this pipe-smoking, beguiling man who listened to what you had to say.... It's the wreath of pipe smoke, and the benign smile and wisdom, which I'm really going to miss."

The late John Updike praised Kermode's gifts as a reviewer, noting that his conclusions seem "inarguable--indeed just what we would have argued, had we troubled to know all that, or goaded ourselves to read this closely," and Philip Roth admitted that although he dislikes reading reviews, "if Frank Kermode reviewed my book I would read it," the Guardian wrote.



Russell Scott Valentino
Professor and Chair
Department of Cinema and Comparative Literature
Editor, The Iowa Review
University of Iowa
tel. 319-335-2827


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