Gratia artis
Sir: Kingsley Amis (according to Auberon Waugh, 8 October) believes the modernist movement (which Amis says did not aim to please, but to shock, baffle, impress) would never have succeeded without the cosseting of bodies like the Arts Council.
But how then does he account for the worldwide acclamation of Eliot and. Joyce? To achieve this they surely must have pleased huge numbers of people; their continuing enormous popularity is unlikely to be due to Arts Council nannying or to their ability to shock or baffle. Perhaps if ever Amis manages to please as many readers worldwide as either Eliot or Joyce
LETTERS
succeeded in doing, he will discard the chip on his shoulder he has about them.
The success of Ulysses (the great flag bearer of modernism) was brought about by no nannying on the part of any Arts Council. The promotion and advertising of and the gaining of subscriptions for Ulysses by Sylvia Beach was a classic case of free enterprise operating on the open market.
Is it not ironic that Amis, a writer who seizes language by the scruff of the neck and shapes it so well to the sound of his own voice, should mock the experimental exploration of new territory by the mod- ernists, to whom he as much as anyone is indebted. He should be thanking God for Eliot and Joyce, for without them, he would never have been able to write as he does, but would be wading in the tepid, weak-tea tradition of people such as Edward Thomas, whom he laughingly proclaimed recently on television to be in the mainstream of English literature.
Frank Dunne
15 Dinan Way, Exmouth, Devon
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