The new establishment

Who will subvert today’s anti-establishment that is just as smug and conniving as the old?

THIRTY YEARS AGO, when the Secret Author was but a young shaver wandering wide-eyed along the approach roads to Grub Street, people used to be very exercised by an entity known as the “literary establishment”. In the manner of Bloomsbury, half a century before, nobody was ever quite able to define this tantalising abstract, but like most establishments throughout history it was thought to be corrupt, conniving, conservative, elitist and exclusionary, bent on promoting the careers of its favourite children and anxious to slam the door in the face of promising new talent that declined to abide by its rules. The power it exercised was, naturally, indirect. Some of it resided in institutions (the Royal Society of Literature, say, or the Society of Authors); some of it could be seen…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, February 2023

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