SOURCE: “Nice Work,” in Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Vol. 25, No. 2, Winter, 1992, pp. 211-3.

In the following review, Kershner offers a positive evaluation of After Bakhtin. Though noting that the volume offers few new observations concerning Bakhtin's work, Kershner praises Lodge's analysis and recommends the collection for general academic readers and students of dialogic criticism.

A review should be, in principle, a dialogic rejoinder to one’s own discourse, but that discourse did not want or expect a rejoinder, it pretended to render all further discussion of the matter superfluous, to leave the reader in a state of dumb admiration. Hence, if your reviewer agrees with you, he seems to be stating the obvious, which is boring, or he agrees with you for the wrong reasons, which is embarrassing, and if he disagrees with you, it is because he has missed the point, or is airing a view...