Master surveyor of many territories

This volume of several pounds weight and over 600 pages duration is an undeniably serious estimation of the last 250 years of European and American literature. The word panoptic might have been coined for Bayley: if not the monarch, he is at least the master of all he surveys. His readers had better be almost as universal, since his critical method is to assume that with so much known his duty is to adorn the facts with a few paradoxical interpretations. This works well at review length as the need for concentration keeps him on the high wire. He is the reviewer’s reviewer, and for a minor figure in the same trade to cavil must smack of ingratitude or envy.

Nevertheless, it should be done. These articles, the majority of which have appeared in the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books, are of two sorts. The smaller consists of attractively original examinations of subjects often skated over, especially those devoted to poetry and to Russian and central European literature. The larger section, at its most obvious on the classic English novel from Austen to Graham Greene, is a stream of received ideas variously decorated. Such pieces are editors’ darlings and not as audacious as they seem. They may be likened to the celebrated Miserere of Allegri. Supposedly so special it was never released from the Sistine Chapel library, yet written down after one hearing by Mozart, this arcane work consists of little but plainchant decorated by stratospheric soprano curlicues. Bayley resorts to ‘Allegri-ing’ often: he is sure we are lazy and will appreciate being entertained while having our core values confirmed.