What comes through in the last is Kermode's sense of an ending, a divergence of ways, in 1974. It comes as he evokes a time in which he had everything to do with the realization, for at least a brief moment, of a tolerance to take in, to examine, works written in languages other than English by authors whose thought rested on vastly different theoretical and technical underpinnings from those familiar, safe and sane to the Anglo-American critical community.
If anyone ever was the embodiment of the patient labor of reading, contemplative work with sufficient integrity to not need to enter into academic infighting, buzzword fusillades, or damnation through faint feints of praise, it was Kermode. That he was able to engage a certain insularity of English approaches with the full force of his considerable intelligence -- and to come away enriched by the experience -- is a tribute to his critical scope. I'm reading a couple of his collections these days, and will probably have more to say about him.
Some of the books he'll be remembered for are:
