Things Thought Too Long: Modernism and the Future of the Single Author

Note: Warwick Gould was unable to travel to Austin because of his wife’s illness: the paper was read for him while he waited on the phone in London to answer questions. The audience reaction—I think to the Roger Shattuck quotation on the meaningfulness of Modernism—caused the deliverer of the paper to comment at one point ‘I’m only reading this for him, you know’. The comparative absence of questions indicated that the audience was not able to be content with the line proposed in the paper.