Literary Significance & Criticism
This novel can be most clearly understood as a commentary on globalization via a fictional account of the effects of the Earth's expanding political, economic and social influence over human inhabited planets. Barnes appears to suggest that those most harmed by globalization are the ones least willing to change in response.
Read more about this topic: A Million Open Doors
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“Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense; a substitute for true knowledge. Books are less often made use of as “spectacles” to look at nature with, than as blinds to keep out its strong light and shifting scenery from weak eyes and indolent dispositions.... The learned are mere literary drudges.”
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“I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.”
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