In Defence of Realism is one of two books that Raymond Tallis published in 1988. The other, Not Saussure, is a critique of a tendency toward linguistic idealism in contemporary literary, a denunciation of the idea that reality is constructed in and through language. Not Saussure at least has the virtue of making some valid points about some of the more derivative (and stupid) versions of postmodernism, but then messes it up with woefully bad readings of Lacan's "mirror stage" and Derrida's notion of deconstruction.

It is in the context of that discussion that Tallis first advances what will be the core thesis of In Defence of Realism: namely, that the linguistic idealism of postmodern thought has caused literary authors to turn away from realism in favor of experimental meta-fiction that explores dreams, fantasies, alternative universes, magic, and so on. This whole phenomenon, he argues, is an attack on both our sense of reality and the principles of science that have enabled us to grasp that reality.

This thesis is, of course, simply nonsense. I am particularly annoyed by Tallis's argument because I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation on this very topic. Derivative postmodern theory's denunciation of realism as naive and outdated, I argued, was historically blind and critically naive. I showed the sophistication of texts by French realists like Balzac and Stendhal, demonstrating that they are as meta-textual and experimental as any postmodern novel. But it was also clear to me that this anti-realism was a product mainly of a vulgar version of postmodern theory. Just look at Roland Barthes: when it came to his examples of "writerly" texts, it wasn't just Mallarmé and Proust and Robbe-Grillet. Two of his most famous texts on this topic, S/Z and "The Death of the Author" are in-depth commentaries on Balzac, the founder of French realism. Even as a raw youth in graduate school, I had a sense of nuance to my argument that is missing from Tallis's book. Yes, some postmodern theorists dismiss realism, but there is a range of thinkers and positions out there, many of which warmly appreciate the realist tradition.

Reading In Defence of Realism, therefore, comes across as a vitriolic exercise with two aims. The first is simply a matter of Tallis's literary taste - or rather, distaste - for the literary trends of post-war fiction. Tallis hides behind an epistemological critique, but really this is mainly a question of aesthetic difference. He doesn't like contemporary literature much, which is his right, but his logical premise for attacking it in this way is absurd. The second aim, the true impulse from which this critique springs, is Tallis's hatred of "post-Saussurean" literary theory, as he calls it. As noted above, his main engagement with that topic takes place in Not Saussure.

Nonetheless, it is this second aim that keeps poking up through in this book, and leads to a lot of misreadings. Tallis is hopelessly unsophisticated when it comes to distinguishing what separates the various thinkers from each other - in Not Saussure, for instance, he repeatedly characterizes Lacan and Derrida as being essentially in agreement with each other, even though they were famously antagonistic toward key aspects of each other's ideas. Rather than carefully measuring where his own critique aligns with or departs from the critics he is dealing with, Tallis instead makes the hysterical claim that literature has been "raped" (p.ix) by postmodern ideas, whose "mighty Amazon of theorrhoea" (p.v) ("theorrhoea" being Tallis's oh-so-clever and sophisticated portmanteau of "theory" and "diarrhoea") has not a single good point to make.

This blanket condemnation leads Tallis to multiple own goals, such as this attack on Baudrillard's "high-profile stupidity" (p.vii):

"Baudrillard's assertion that the Gulf War had not happened was only one of many damaging instances of the inadequacy of Theory to reality - in particular the political reality to which its exponents had claimed to bring special insights." (p.vii)

Why is Tallis attacking Baudrillard here? My understanding of Baudrillard's work is that he shares many of the same core concerns as Tallis, in particular the way that the virtuality of postmodern life is eroding our sense of reality. Baudrillard is not an advocate of this phenomenon, he is a vehement critic of it, and in this way he logically ought to be seen by Tallis as an ally. But no, Tallis is no making an argument from logic here, but from sheer anger - a fact that he admits in his preface to the reissued version of the book.

There is a similar perversity in Tallis's choice of literary targets. Donald Barthelme and Alain Robbe-Grillet get a thorough dressing-down - but were they really the forefront of contemporary literature in 1988? Doris Lessing gets a serve for turning away from her realistic (but "boring") earlier novels to write science fiction - too bad she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007. Iris Murdoch is dismissed because The Sea, the Sea is much too unrealistic - too bad it won the Booker Prize in 1978. And wasn't Murdoch's chief source of philosophical inspiration Plato, rather than Derrida? I found myself wondering why Tallis didn't take on, for instance, Don DeLillo's White Nose, one of the most famous novels of the 1980s, and a penetrating examination of the loss of reality in postmodern society? How about Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, which weaves together postmodern themes with scientific rationality? The answer probably lies in the fact that they don't fit the aesthetic and critical narrative that Tallis is trying to build, and so he left them out. You know, like good critics and scientists do when they encounter something that doesn't fit their hypothesis.

Indeed, when one considers realism in the larger history of the novel, Tallis's argument falls apart completely. Yes, the British novel emerged in particular emerged out of the development of Lockean empiricism in a predominantly realist manner, but alongside that there is a long and honored tradition of "unrealistic" writing that stretches from Swift's Gulliver's Travels to Shelley's Frankenstein to Stoker's Dracula. It would be ridiculous to denounce, say, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde as an attack on reality and science: its concern, as with so much of the history of the novel, is not epistemological but ethical.

This is the last text that I will read by Tallis. Not only does he write from a perspective that is skewed by his own prejudices, but he writes in an openly arrogant way that I find abhorrent. Even if you detest someone else's writing and ideas, it is a sign of maturity to write about those things without having to resort to derogatory names, personal attacks, ungrounded accusations of corruption, and constant sarcasm to get your point across. Tallis is the rudest, most immature critic I have encountered in this respect, someone who shows utter contempt for anyone who dares not to share his tastes or critical views. ( )