From the Bookshelf of Working Class Readers…

The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes

Jonathan Rose

Why we're reading this: its a massive survey of w/c readers put to about 1950
[close] its a massive survey of w/c readers put to about 1950

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Sep 01, 2023 Stefan Szczelkun rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: working-class-writer, class, literary-history

Rose sets up an idealisation of the Canon of English Literature as the salvation of working-class readers. But then in the fulsome detail that follows, we learn how the great canonic writers despise the working class at the same time as needing them as readers, and we learn about the limitations of what they can write about because of their limited experience in the world and we learn about how they are unable to represent the intellectual richness and power of working-class people because of th Rose sets up an idealisation of the Canon of English Literature as the salvation of working-class readers. But then in the fulsome detail that follows, we learn how the great canonic writers despise the working class at the same time as needing them as readers, and we learn about the limitations of what they can write about because of their limited experience in the world and we learn about how they are unable to represent the intellectual richness and power of working-class people because of their entrenched classist attitudes.
BeCos many canonic writers are not Simply bourgeois. All are human. There are plenty of working-class fans of Billy Bunter. etc.
So the mass of material in this book, that Rose has provided, undermines his own arse-licking forelock tugging professorial attitude to the establishment.
It’s all good, thank you JR. I Know you did your best!
If the Leisure class can do one thing, it is to use that leisure time to create a world of words. An artful space, not just of representation but of a contemplation. Space for a readers contemplation of their mental freedom.
What Rose can’t do is to come to some radical imaginative conclusions of how to change the state of affairs - end class oppression Yes Sir!. Something that I Can do. Right now! I propose to rejig the category. Let’s scotch ‘proletarian fiction’. Let’s use a new category of ‘working-class books’. Let’s physically reorder our bookshelves and talk about that process.
What Rose doesn’t tell us, but the information he serves up to us does, is that there are now plenty of ‘working-class books’, as well as plenty of ‘working class songs’ and all we need to do is be more active and informed selectors.

The first mind blowing insight that I’m indebted to Prof Rose for is that the C19th and early C20th in England was a vibrant time of self-directed and mutual education by working class people. Why did no-one tell me about that before?! (That's how poor our intellectual connections are at this time!)

The second surprise provided to me by the good professor is that a working-class intelligentsia did in fact arise in the 1920s and 1930s from those C19th Mutual improvement societies, WEA et cetera and did even kick some arse of the elite modernist literature scene - even if its more commercial novels were disparaged as middlebrow. And its Labour Party was a faint imitation of working class vitality and power due to its deference to a culture of the higher ups.

If you want a lot more detail of my proposal go to my blogger for a long detailed and illustrated review with many quotations etc
https://stefan-szczelkun.blogspot.com... ...more

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