– This veering thing, it's weird. I can't put my finger on it.

– Yes, indeed. As in the chase in Walter Scott's The Lady of the Lake, ‘Lost for a space, through thickets veering’: it's in transit, a space of enigma, you lose sight of it.

– OK, that's a neat quotation to have up your sleeve, but I don't see how what you've been saying adds up to ‘a theory of literature’.

– No? Well, with respect, perhaps you need to get your eyes examined.

– My eyes?

– Or your voice.

– My voice?

– Or your silence.

– My –?

– You're never satisfied. It doesn't matter how hard I try to provide a lucid and accessible laying out of ideas and examples, and so on, you are always looking for things to nitpick, resist, dismiss or disagree with. No wonder so–called ‘intellectual life’ doesn't change much.

– I'm sorry, you can't anticipate how I am going to react to what you're saying. I'm not an automaton.

– But that's just the trouble. You are, rather. What Joan Retallack says about swerving is entirely apropos for veering: ‘Swerves … are necessary to dislodge us from reactionary allegiances and nostalgias.’ There's so much that's so endlessly predictable. And meddling with the programme is never easy. Your very resistance to what I have been saying, however, constitutes a certain validation –

– Oh, not that Freudian weaselling …

– One of the principal forms of veering is avoidance. You veer to avoid something – which might be something dangerous or unpleasant, but might also be an object of desire.