An oblique blaze in things

Steven Connor wrote those words, but did not altogether mean them. He was outlining the rationale for ‘creative’ forms of criticism that had blossomed by the late 1980s: a rationale he faithfully paraphrased, but from which he retained a cautious distance. Even as his own writing has unfolded new modes of daring and surprise in the quarter-century since, he has scarcely entertained the honorific title of ‘creative’ critic, or hinted that he would confuse his own prose with ‘literary language as such’. It is among Connor’s virtues that he remains so profoundly a scholar, too immersed in the archive to fancy himself a less transitive ‘writer’, too burdened with matter to traffic in empty form. Yet his writing has become distinctive, or indeed unique. Its traits and techniques are inseparable from the effect and worth of his work. This essay asks, therefore, what happens in Connor’s writing. The answer comes in two stages. First I will identify certain characteristic stylistic features across several texts that Connor has written. Second, I want to draw back slightly and propose four significant intellectual manoeuvres that his work displays.