Surranachronism-Literarydiscussion

I am interested in disputing the characteristic cliches of English literary taste, many of which emerge in the review by Mark Thompson of the recent complete edition of the works of the Serbian author Danilo Kis. Mark, who is a conformist historian and not a literary critic, regards himself as an authority of the works of Kis and confidently dismisses 'Garden, Ashes' as overripe, overlooking the Nobel prizewinner Josef Brodsky's estimate of it as a 'lyrical masterpiece'. 'Self-indulgent' would be the English cliche here and Thompson jumps into it with alacrity. Thompson assures his readers that nobody in England reads Kis, a statement that might put us in mind of a possible remark by Stalin, that nobody read Mandelstam (he was banned at the time). Despite Thompson's certainty that, given his knowledge of Serbo-Croat, he is the sole survivor Kis reader in England, the fact remains that I have read Kis's work with absorption and pleasure for thirty years. Thompson manages to write a lengthy (and stereotypical) article about Kis without even once mentioning either Kis's fascination with the central figure of the father, or Kis's acknowledged debt to the novelist who influenced him above all others - Bruno Schulz, the creator of ironic hyperbole and author of 'The Street of Crocodiles'.