11 October 2005

RIP Wayne Booth

One of the giants of literary criticism died yesterday. Wayne Booth was one of the rare literary critics who wrote well, advanced scholarly understanding, provided valuable perspective to fiction-writers, and illuminated literature to those in allied fields. Although not cited in the opinions, some of the essential reasoning in both Feist and Nation Enterprises descends from Booth's 1962 opus The Rhetoric of Fiction. (And if Certain Judges had been paying attention, several more problematic decisions… would not be so problematic.)