" Here, 19th-century literature could represent life outside London only with vague gestures of generalisation, as if the naming or describing of actual towns in the provinces fell under a pudeur scarcely less than that obscuring sex. Pallid typifications were the rule. Middlemarch is the title of a great novel, but the town itself is an abstraction, whose relation to the Coventry at which scholars try to peer behind it is notional. Was 'Coketown' – one of Dickens's few excursion outside London – based on Preston, as some believe? It hardly matters. North and South? Skirts drawn up around Manchester, set in 'Milton'. In Hardy, the faux-archaism of 'Wessex' and its cod-toponyms – Casterbridge, Melchester, Christminster and the rest – belong with the faux-mythology of the fates, though in this predominantly rural world, in which towns are subordinate, the veils, coy rather than classifying, are of less moment. Even in modern times, Cooper's Scenes from Provincial Life evaporated Leicester, Amis's Lucky Jim tippexed Swansea, and Lodge's 'Rummidge' trilogy could not bring itself to name Birmingham. The persistence of the convention speaks volumes for the low standing of urban life outside the capital, novels risking loss of audience if they speak too openly of a particular city, as unlikely to be of much interest to anyone outside it. With few exceptions, films have followed suit. Liverpool in Distant Voices, Still Lives honourably aside, settings have tended to be either in London or a generically blurred North or Midlands."
from 'London Review of Books' by 23 January 2014
Sent via Marvin
from 'London Review of Books' by 23 January 2014
Sent via Marvin
Sent from my iPad
