"In today's individualistic, self-involved, self-serious culture, saturated with auto- fiction and digitised performative confessionalism, Williams's impersonal, almost allegorical attitude to his experience can seem evasive, stiff, unsatisfying. But if contemporary generations can be accused of taking their experience too seriously, Williams's detachment may provide a model for taking one's experience seriously but not uncritically. It may also bequeath a confidence that what is personal need not be private but is often shared–that there is a common structure underlying individual feeling. Such self-distancing may help us scrutinise rather than reify our impressions, placing emotion beyond rational argument."
Lola Seaton at New Statesman considers Raymond Williams on his 100th birthday.
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