The Real Thing by Terry Eagleton: Defence of realism falls far short of the real deal

The Real Thing: Reflections on a Literary Form

Author: Terry Eagleton

ISBN-13: 9780300274295

Publisher: Yale University Press

Guideline Price: £16.99

The Real Thing claims to be a defence of realism, yet it is more a compendium of what could be meant by the term “realism”, depending on who you ask. It’s a sort of phantasmagoria of homonymous possibilities that reads, especially in its opening chapter, very much like one of those texts adapted from a lecture series.

One of the most revealing aspects of Terry Eagleton’s account of realism is his ongoing interpretation of art as inherently moral in both style and content. Although his political history of realism is fascinating and insightful, his automatic application of morality to realist art surprised me – it’s not a position I’ve seen taken for granted since the 19th century, the era of Dickens, Elliot and co. But then, as Eagleton acknowledges, that was the high point of realism, and perhaps his view of it has somehow become stuck in the mindset of that period.

It’s difficult to know his stance on the various overarching statements he makes. Like when he says, apropos of little: “The novel is the Bible of an increasingly godless age.” Before this, he has referenced Henry James, George Elliot, Iris Murdoch and DH Lawrence (strange bedfellows in any scenario), yet surely he isn’t suggesting that this would be their collective view? So, instead, is he stating this as fact? I certainly don’t read novels as Bible alternatives. If I did, my love of JG Ballard, never mind Nabokov, could lead me to rather strange places.

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Especially when it comes to postmodernism, Eagleton’s tendency to make these sweeping, trite declarations mars an otherwise knowledgeable book. Eagleton betrays a personal dislike that precludes fair analysis with sentences such as “For postmodernists, truth is a question of how we organise the world in order to satisfy our needs and promote our interests” and “What excites the postmodern mind is what deviates from the orthodox and consensual. This overlooks the fact that… transgressing conventions includes rape and genocide as well as shocking suburbanites”.

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I kept wondering which postmodernists Terry Eagleton could be thinking of. At times, reading these nonsensical summations felt like I was listening to an old Corbynite in a bandana, rather than the text of a respected thinker of our age.