Whatever happened to the heroes?

Tom Paulin

Faber & Faber, 15.99

TOM Paulin is such a familiar face that it is easy to forget what an exotic creature he really is. As he grumps away on Late Review, there is something comfortably Oxonian about his approach. His harsh Belfast tones also somehow suit the grimly negative attitude, as though only a voice soaked in the gloom of Northern Ireland could brook such little nonsense.

But he really is an odd case if you listen to what he has to say. He represents a very particular strain in British culture: Unionist, Protestant, republican (ie anti-monarchy), nonconformist, libertarian and left-wing. Not only is he practically the only Protestant Unionist to break through the fame barrier on the mainland, but the strange contradictions of his character make for a bizarre reading experience.

His new book - a collection of his essays and reviews on literary subjects - is highly readable and instantly recognisable as Paulin, with its chunky, thick and clattery English and its grim and gruesome view of the world. Every poem he looks at, however charming and pastoral, turns out to be 'really' about war, revolution or republican angst.

Paulin uses the reviews to seek out his own peculiar tradition, his band of heroes, the writers who are his favourite guys. Unfortunately, the odd and eccentric readings he presents give the impression that all of these figures - be they Blake, Defoe, Hazlitt or Lawrence - are versions of Tom Paulin. They are precursors to his peculiar brand of republicanism, Protestantism, dissent, etc.

There are some very forced and unnatural interpretations in this book. A typical example: to prove that Wordsworth's 'Tintern Abbey' is a republican poem, Paulin goes to enormous lengths to show that Wordsworth uses the same words as Milton, a known republican. Fair enough, except that the words Paulin chooses are simple ones like 'din' and 'disturb', hardly allusions at all, just plain English. Of the hundreds of allusions from one book to another which Paulin tries to establish, only a tiny handful hold any water at all. All the connections he makes are based on such astonishingly flimsy evidence.

So far, so academic, and this is a set of academic reviews. But he is trying to establish a dissenting, puritan tradition at the heart of English culture - an Irish Unionist one at that. The fact that Paulin has to resort to such desperate measures is maybe indicative of some level of delusion.

There are good things in the book: he writes beautifully about his two real heroes, Hazlitt and Edward Said. The potted biographies of John Clare and John Bunyan are a model of the genre: incisive, economical, always bristling with energy.

The sheer persistence of his argument that true Brit Lit is dissenting and freedom-loving is touching, even inspirational. The attempt to show ordinary readers how to read complex prose and poetry is admirable, though I for one do not buy his line on sound patterns one little bit (all that attention to the "uhs" and "oos" is embarrassing and unconvincing). Still, Paulin is an institution in this country - a table-thumping, disputatious rogue - and long may he prosper.