Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Whitney Balliett

Critical Essay by Whitney Balliett

["A Canticle for Leibowitz"] is a work of the Imagination…. Miller, who is a dull, ashy writer, is forced to depend, in addition to his conjuring tricks, on heavyweight irony: A scientist founds the monastery; the monastery guards the very knowledge that leads to rediscovery and repeated annihilation; the Memorabilia are the principal baggage the monks carry when they leave the earth. But irony, after all, is only a kind of high-toned mockery. It entertains but it changes nothing. (pp. 159-60)

Whitney Balliett, in a review of "A Canticle for Leibowitz," in The New Yorker, Vol. XXXVI, No. 7, April 2, 1960, pp. 159-60.