Review Essay: The Representation of Business in English Literature (Book Review‪)‬

An anthology is an odd species of learned text. It is neither the "flesh" of a unified argument produced by a single mind, nor the "fowl" (no pun intended!) of a wide-ranging, multifaceted journal, retooling each month or quarter. Instead, the scholarly anthology offers a set of scholarly essays, heavily footnoted, deep and narrow in focus, and often ambiguously linked. In the case of The Representation of Business in English Literature more than enough intellectual heft is offered, with contributors from some of the United Kingdom's leading research institutions (Edinburgh, Hull, Leeds--though Oxford and Cambridge are noticeably missing). Notwithstanding, questions of consistency and breadth of focus linger over the volume from start to finish, and at times the evaluation of the literary mind seems to balance on purely mercantile terms, an unfortunate oversimplification that almost swamps the volume--almost. Nonetheless, the essays eventually rally and offer a measure of helpful insight into the world of social critique and exchange of ideas across sometimes-hostile boundaries. This book was initially commissioned by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), and, as John Blundell describes in the foreword, the tap-root was F. A. Hayek's bittersweet notions about intellectuals, among whom he counted in rather motley fashion "journalists, teachers, ministers, lecturers, publicists, radio commentators, writers of fiction, cartoonists, and artists--all of whom may be masters of the technique of conveying ideas but are usually amateurs so far as the substance of what they convey is concerned" (x). Although Hayek admitted the strength of this sweeping class of people in a comment to the IEA's founder Sir Antony Fisher in a 1945 meeting--" ... [they] reach the intellectuals, the teachers and writers, with reasoned argument. It will be their influence on society which will prevail and the politicians will follow" (ix)--even here a sense of condescension and pragmatism prevails. Literary voices are seen as naive, amateur, and merely idealistic but at the same time influential and if properly trained able to affect the really important people--the politicians. This is a dour portrait of serious literary minds. (I will not vouch for publicists and radio commentators, but does not Bill Watterson of Calvin and Hobbes fame deserve a better place than to be lumped in this thin category of cartoonists?) John Blundell finishes his foreword with a plan to reeducate writers and to redirect their vision of business through a mechanism of financial incentives because "fiction writers above all ... treat business as an honourable, creative, moral and personally satisfying way of life" (xvi). However, does this business plan to rectify fiction writing seem any more credible than a fiction writer's aspirations to chasten and thus transform the world of market capitalism? Is it possible that the contributors to this volume, and perhaps even their antecedent Hayek himself, might be guilty of an amateur understanding of the penetrating insights into human nature and society that are available through the aperture of imaginative prose? My reading of The Representation of Business in English Literature, in light of this thorny question, has revealed a mixed and intriguing set of observations.