Reviewers forgive a book’s lack of scholarship if its political message serves them

Evidence

Who on the Left – and not only on the Left – could dissent from the abuse heaped on the likes of Zia, etc.? We can take infinite pleasure in the inventiveness and eloquence of the denunciations which are, because of their justness, our own; because we are already preoccupied with the twin problematics of the ‘Third World’ and the ‘Nation’, far too many of us are willing to set aside all sorts of things that the book says about women, minorities, servants, and others who are not of the ruling class. It is this very pleasure of those wide-ranging denunciations which makes it possible for the New York Times, let us say, to lift the book out of its immediate location and compare Rushdie’s achievement in Shame – in one breath, as it were – with Sterne, Swift, Kafka, García Márquez, Günter Grass. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 243 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Enjoyment of political denunciations makes readers forgive a book’s other failings — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 243

Broader Connections

• Enjoyment of political denunciations makes readers forgive a book’s other failings #corroborates (0.93) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 243