This about business

"But before we can go any further, you've got to make up your minds what this novel is actually about."
At first, as always, there is blank silence. The class sits staring, as it were, at the semantically prodigious word. About. What is it about? Well, what does George want them to say it's about? They'll say it's about anything he likes, anything at all. For nearly all of them, despite their academic training, deep deep down still regard this about business as a tiresomely sophisticated game.
As for the minority, who have cultivated the about approach until it has become second nature, who dream of writing an about book of their own one day, on Faulkner, James or Conrad, proving definitively that all previous about books on that subject are about nothing - they aren't going to say anything yet awhile. They are waiting for the moment when the can come forward like star detectives with the solution to Huxley's crime. Meanwhile, let the little ones flounder. Let the mud be stirred up first.