Our Community, Your Establishment

Reflecting on some of the ideas in his great book Culture and Society, Raymond Williams observed that it was only when he “realised that no one ever used [the word] ‘community’ in a hostile sense” that he became suspicious of it. On that basis we should be suspicious of “the literary establishment”, because it is only used in a negative way – like a squash court wall again, something that exists in order to have stuff hurled against it.

Geoff Dyer on the literary establishment: “There is no such thing as the literary establishment. I know this because I am part of it.”