SOURCE: "Verbing a Noun," in London Review of Books, Vol. 10, No. 6, March 17, 1988, pp. 17-18.

An English educator and critic, Parrinder has written several books on H. G. Wells and science fiction. In the following excerpt, he offers a positive assessment of Out of This World, discussing the work within the context of twentieth-century history and Swift's earlier works.

[Graham Swift is a novelist who] is burdened by history, and for whom the central theme of modern life is our own historical self-consciousness. The 20th century, for [this writer], is the historical century par excellence. The 19th, by contrast, was less exhaustively documented and now seems to have been nourished on chauvinistic legends rather than the brutality of facts.

For 'facts', however, we must doubtless read 'representations'. These representations, in modern times, have been overwhelmingly photographic in nature. Even the literary and narrative arts have (as is well-known) been...