Tag: literary spat

The Roast of Roland-Garros: English Critics Trade Verbal Smash at Net

Les Conquêtes Normandes d’un Tennisman Vieillissant – the third in the Confessions of an Ageing Tennis Player series – has not only caused a minor fracas between two esteemed British literary critics, Dr. Harriet Blore and C.W. Bramble, it has now crossed the Channel and has been picked up – with not a small amount of glee it seems to me – by the French literary press who write for the Voix du Nord, one Étienne Vérité (Correspondant d’Outrage Culturel it says in her press release). Here she is in full Gallic flow.

Le Times Literary Supplement, ce temple feutré du thé et des adjectifs contenus, a connu cette semaine une secousse rarement vue depuis qu’un sous-titre a dépassé douze mots.

Au cœur du tumulte ? Un roman, bien sûr. Mais pas n’importe lequel : Les Conquêtes Normandes d’un Tennisman Vieillissant – cette œuvre mi-philosophie, mi-cauchemar – qui a poussé deux critiques anglais à s’envoyer des balles littéraires au visage, service lifté en prime.

🎾 C. W. Bramble, l’apôtre du surréalisme à cravate tweed, y voit “une récursion proustienne en polyester.” Pour lui, Lord Andy ne délire pas – il dramatise. Le filet n’est pas un filet – c’est un miroir.

🎾 Dr Harriet Blore, quant à elle, répond avec un revers sec : “Une parodie.” “Un homme-enfant.” “Le tennis intérieur d’un narcissique en short.” Elle soupçonne que Bramble confonde profondeur avec pose et Pavlova effondrée.

🇫🇷 L’avis de la rédaction :
Nous les aimons, ces Anglais. Toujours prêts à mourir sur la colline du sérieux, même quand cette colline est en fait un court 17.Pour nous, Les Conquêtes Normandes reste ce qu’il a toujours été : Une hallucination utile. Une vérité floue. Un grand cri avec bandeau. Et pendant que les critiques s’étripent à Londres, ici à Paris, la chèvre regarde tout cela et ne dit rien. Elle n’en a pas besoin.

ENGLISH TRANSLATION

🗞️ Voix du Nord
Special Edition – Saturday

“The Roast of Roland-Garros: English Critics Trade Verbal Smash at Net”
By Étienne Vérité, Cultural Outrage Correspondent

London – The Times Literary Supplement, that hushed temple of tea and constrained adjectives, has this week endured a tremor not seen since a subheading exceeded twelve words.

At the heart of the turmoil? A novel, of course. But not just any novel: Les Conquêtes Normandes d’un Tennisman Vieillissant – that half-philosophy, half-nightmare of a work – which has prompted two British critics to hurl literary forehands at each other’s reputations.

🎾 C. W. Bramble, apostle of tweed-clad surrealism, sees “a Proustian recursion in polyester.” For him, Lord Andy is not delusional – he dramatizes. The net is not a net – it is a mirror.

🎾 Dr Harriet Blore, for her part, counters with a brisk backhand: “A parody.” “A man-child.” “The inner tennis of a narcissist in shorts.” She suspects Bramble confuses depth with posturing and a collapsed pavlova.

🇫🇷 The editorial stance:
We love the English. Always ready to die on the hill of seriousness — even when the hill is actually Court 17. To us, Les Conquêtes Normandes remains what it has always been: A useful hallucination. A blurred truth. A grand scream in a headband. And while the critics duel in London, here in Paris, the goat watches – and says nothing. She doesn’t need to.

Critical response to the critical response

Following my earlier post seeking reviewers for my next book, Les Conquêtes Normandes d’un Tennisman Vieillissant, one of the literary critics who graciously sent me a review of their own, has taken exception to the views of another critic (bizarrely from the same literary stable). I sense a literary spat in the making…. It goes like this:

To the Editor,

May I express my astonishment (not unmixed with despair) at the review of Les Conquêtes Normandes d’un Tennisman Vieillissant offered in your April 25th issue by Dr. Harriet Blore?

Dr. Blore, whom I have long respected as a reader of dispassionate clarity, has on this occasion seemingly mistaken irony for incompetence, surrealism for incoherence, and literary audacity for narrative wandering. Her dismissal of the book as “a man talking to himself on a court no one else can see” is not merely ungenerous, it is, I would argue, wilfully obtuse.

What Dr. Blore sees as fragmentation is, in fact, deliberate form unravelling itself. What she regards as literary affectation – talking goats, spectral coaches, Proustian forehands – is the very grammar of the novel’s philosophical ambition. Lord Andy does not hallucinate; he dramatizes. He does not lose touch with reality; he relocates it, absurdly and precisely, on the baseline of Roland-Garros.

It is no coincidence, I think, that Dr. Blore invokes Beckett. But the comparison would serve her argument better if she recognised in this book not parody, but inheritance. The tradition of existential sport-as-mirror runs not only through Beckett but through Camus, Duras, and Nabokov. Lord Andy is not ridiculous because he believes himself noble: he is noble because he dares to be ridiculous.

I invite Dr. Blore (and your readers) to reread the novel with less resistance and more imagination. It is a mirror cracked, yes: but who among us dares to look at ourselves in one that is whole?

Yours,

C. W. Bramble
Literary Correspondent, Times Literary Supplement

Here’s to a response!