Taking Sides: the TLS v. the LRB

I finish LRB 7.1.2021.

Runciman on Obama: I must admit, better than this thread's recent discussions of Runciman would indicate. Readable, fluent, but also good at pointing to Obama's seeming failure to think in terms of institutions and lasting structures.

Meehan Crist on Gaia: I didn't know she was a scientifically informed writer. Actually quite informative. Lovelock's idea of AIs saving the planet does sound far-fetched.

Fitzpatrick on Lenin: quite well done, with fresh focus on the women especially Lenin's wife.

Ian Jack on model railways: a touching subject.

Naoise Dolan on Elaine Feeney: the book sounds like it has some interest, but the author gives the impression of being yet another of the LRB's new younger writers who writes with too much display of her millennial status. The generation gap, or performance of generations, in the paper is getting pronounced.

Will Frears on AFC: dire.

Ian Jack on model railways: a touching subject.

I used to live a short distance from the shop mentioned at the beginning, never went in but was very interested to read it was much more than just a lone hobbyist's outlet.

Alan Bennet's diary the highlight of the issue obv.

i know nothing whatever abt foopball and fully intend never so to change this yet even i was cursing at points in the frears piece

example: is the "no one likes us/we don't care" millwall chant actually in fact apocryphal? were i a sub at the LRB i wd have queried this and suggested either a word change (to what the writer actually means) or (if this *is* what he means) a brief expansion (eg how did this "apocryphal" chant manifest in the world if NOT on the terraces) (i mean it's a digression and it's a hornby-driven digression at that but it's still more interesting than some of his other entire paragraphs lol)

"Fitzpatrick on Lenin: quite well done, with fresh focus on the women especially Lenin's wife."

Hard agree with user Pinefox!

It is in no way apocryphal. That article was trash.

longing for the days when their foopball correspondents were hans keller *and* a.j.ayer tbrr

It's good that everyone who has read that review, on or off this board, can see that it is, as Tim justly says, trash.

I don't rate Bennett's diary and have said so previously at length - possibly on ILB.

Much of this latest entry is as poor as ever, but relative highlights: his praise for Victoria Wood (talk about a meeting of minds - has he never done this before?); his note that he doesn't understand the poems in the LRB (me neither) but that he was interested in the footnote about Tadcaster (me too); and the last line.

Quite characteristically poor: his entry on Graham Greene, whose occasion is that he has NOT read a new biography, NOR read most of the work. So what of substance does he have to say about GG? Mainly that he once met GG who didn't comment on AB's play and had a limp handshake - and is now slighted in print for this, 43 years on. Not appropriate, and reminiscent of AB's dreadful dismissal of David Bowie c. 4 years ago.

you have indeed said so, on the occasion of AB's bowie entry --- and stevieT also then took this position

in mild-mannered defence of these entries: the idea was conceived (i think in a happier time for all concerned) as a fun once-a-year xmas entry at an angle to the rest of the issues of the magazne, when AB wd deliver a year's helping of his (acutal real literal unedited*) diary entries, and these wd be somewhat frivolous and somewhat catty (the "theatre memoir") as commenting in passing on political events and places he'd visited during the year, and plus anecdotes recounted abt his family and his own domestic ephemera, plus passing on his impressions (as arbitrarily sparked by whatever) less of the work of the ppl he'd encounted than of their affect when he met them. this very much feeds into his aesthetic and indeed his critical intellect: in his day he had a ferociously good ear for the half-baked layers of not-quite-cultured assessment (it's the core of forty years on for example and also often features in talking heads); in addition he uses a kind of perverse unassuming gossip to deconstruct the literary figures he engages with, i guess i'm thinking of kafka's dick in his drama, but yes, also the basic nature of the green room exchange, the handshake, the stultified chat of figures when they're not quite fully in public character, but also not quite not. what does this reveal about them? sometimes much and sometimes nothing at all! it's a diary not a critical essay! he doesn't do "deep" bcz he doesn't entirely trust it (also key to his aesthetic and his critical intellect)

my (equally mild-mannered ) critique is that the concept has probably long passed its best as shtick, with part of this shtick his own (somewhat passive-aggressive) self-presentation as a slight and small and easily overlooked person, very much the mole of the beyond the fringe crew, very much the wary and shy representative of his family as opposed to say his professiona role -- who by virtue of the latter neverthless gets glimpses of great personages when they are not carefully fluffed for important public consumption and a critical eye, as perhaps they wd have been with say jonathan miller or peter cook, the acknowledged big beasts of his mileu. worth noting that he is the last of this crew, the last surviving active voice of a stance that has -- by virtue of time passing as it normally does -- vanished from this world. who of his early 60s contemparies is even left? and the world he now passes through is very much colder and crueller -- the ideals and potential of that long ago time is entirely crushed, and argtuably simply looks absurd to us whose youth came later. his saving wit has curdled, he is angry and embittered and despairing and above all OLD and FRAIL now, in a time he greatly dislikes. his vanished time no longer has any collective purchase over it: the collective is forever dispersed.

i don't even slightly object to his dismissiveness towards bowie or greene of course -- in both cases they are very much still surrounded by the seamless glow of uncritical reverence, and one small angry discontented mole isn't going to bring that down, even if his discontent seems poorly fashioned. this was the probem with the bowie entry. its opacity rather than its irritability -- what took place between them in no way sparked AB's insight. in a more genial moment he might have made something of this? i don't know -- post-beatles pop culture doesn't feel like territory he any purchase except when it drifts towards more obviously camp territory (also bowie was famously a mix in semi-public -- in interviews -- of mask and of insecurity, and of an inability or even an unwillingness to deliver new dimension to his work in that context). so the device is ill-set up to work. plus that year's entry reeked of depression (it was brexit year and trump year, two events perfectly constructed to shunt AB back inside his shell to be honest). what does he have left to pass on to us: a lesser and darker thing -- the observations of the last ambassador of a moment we only have very poor purchase on now, on our times as they grate past him. the last new elizabethan lol (i mean except for herself). it's not data we'll come by any other way.

*are they unedited? i have no idea. they may well be selected, for whatever virtues the selecter sees in them in respect of a larger unit of writing

Surprisingly I omitted to say the most obvious thing about the bad entry on Greene:

I’ve been put off by the Catholicism showing through and his frequent ‘rare’ interviews. A darling of the Sunday papers in the 1960s, he was always said to be retiring while in fact being avid for publicity.

I'm amused by the reminder of Bastani's jokes about 'Tony Blair's fortnightly "rare interventions"', but more pertinent, I can't believe I didn't observe the irony of Alan Bennett, of all people, disliking someone because 'he was always said to be retiring while in fact being avid for publicity'. Because apart from the increasingly poor content of his diary, this has always been my most obvious complaint about it: that 'shy, retiring Alan Bennett, the reluctant national treasure' publishes his personal diary for thousands to read, and then makes sure to publish it again in book form. I've said this in writing at least once or twice, but I didn't expect to find AB himself complaining about the trait in someone else.

lol fvck i wrote a long and superbly devastating response to this and ilx totally ate it

i will come back to it on a day when i'm not meant to be doing something extremely different and look it's noon already ffs

as a writer and commentator mount makes me grind me teeth (lol he dissed m.r.james so fvck him) but someone totally unexpected recently told me a story abt good behaviour on his part as an editor (possibly at the TLS in the 80s or 90s

When I worked in the Asian & African Studies Reading Room in the British Library, he was a regular and was liked by the staff, and by no means every reader is!

tom: when you retire you must publish the full list of the liked and the disliked!

Lenny Henry very much in the latter camp, so I've been told.

Heh, LH was possibly the most unpleasant celebrity customer I encountered when I worked in a comic shop in Covent Garden.

I wonder if Graham Greene is still 'surrounded by the seamless glow of uncritical reverence' - he seems to me to be an author whose reputation is already fading, as the political/social context of many of his books similarly becomes more distant and obscure. Even while he was alive, both Anthony Burgess and Anthony Powell were arch Greene sceptics, perhaps for political as well as literary reasons, perhaps out of pure professional jealously.

As an arch Bowie sceptic, I wish DB's reputation would go into similar eclipse, but if anything his death has sentimentally erased criticism and caveats. Tin Machine rehabilitation well under way...

Feel like John le Carre has replaced GG wrt uncitical reverence, the serious but popular novelist who 20 yrs ago was still largely considered a thriller writer.

haha I enjoy the Le Carre I've read but even at his best he always read so desperate to be Graham Greene

Eric Ambler is the OG genre GG imo

^

greene just feels in full eclipse these days -- last person i read gushing abt him was probably lol julie burchill c.1982

im sure most of you did but i did not know that diana wynne jones was colin burrows’ mother.

i like the idea of niela orr's short piece on MF Doom -- disquisition on masks and death, personal as well as cultural -- but i don't feel it quite work weaving these topics and modes together, likely bcz the editing isn't especially confident abt the topic. of course they're outsourcing the expertise (which is fine) and yes they want to make more space this for material (and for younger writers outside the usual bastani-mocked tight white london circle), but they needed to push harder on what will need translation to their current readers and what might bring in new ones?

case in point (i already moaned abt this on twitter): set down in print, rap verses often don't do the required work to convince a reader (doesn't have to be a hiphop-sceptical sceptic) that they have of course done for a fan when heard on record, and this disparity needs addressed bcz it's locked into the justification for the discussion being in the magazine at all. (by which i mean: a reader unfamiliar with the source will sometimes read a line being described as "great" and think "but as i read this line isn't that great? quite the opposite!" -- meaning that the reasons for the stated judgment need also to be placed on the page (which precision is maybe 3/5s of good criticism anyway). of course when she's writing in the baffler orr can assume a familiarity and an alignment on the reader's part, and needn't spend time on this over there. but if this is about opening the LRB up to new -- presumably an editorial line more than it's orr's own crusade -- rather briefly opening a door in order to shut it again, then the editing needs to be more clear-headed abt who's being taught to appreciate what. the allure of cool -- or just the desire just to be a more youthful cultural loop -- are both engines that will s[putterc quite quickly in this context

adding that LRB's writing abt poetry -- where the "right to be there" isn't even contested, even if half of us just skip the actual poems -- generally does put a fair amount of the required work in? poetry's slant affect w.r.t. prose being a long-known issue.

peace out

(hiphop-sceptical sceptic = hiphop-sceptical reader)

also ignore the open brackets before "by which i mean"

"s[putterc" is what i meant to write tho

Mark S is right. I'm sure if I get round to reading this piece I'll conclude that what it's talking about is repulsive garbage.

Maybe not great to talk of a recently deceased musical artist that tons of ppl on here have a deep love of as "repulsive garbage".

Eric Ambler is the OG genre GG imo

Is Ambler despondent about the state of the British empire and the moral vacuum at the centre of it? I've never read him.

yeah pinefox I know you have "previous" with hip hop, but... I find it difficult to understand how you could be sure about your feelings about something you've not read yet, about an artist you're not familiar with

Daniel_Rf he was more overtly political than that but kinda. Less despondency and more action imo. Amateur protagonists always being underestimated by cruel and amoral professionals

ambler more disgusted than despondent i think: everything is rotten

Len Deighton a big Ambler disciple irrc - and Kingsley Amis a big fan - both of them post-war rottenists in their way

Adam Shatz on the end of the Trump era: solid maybe, but so standard, so much bien-pensant box-ticking. It's more like an Observer op-ed than the LRB. The one useful argument he makes here, which the Observer might not like, is that violence and domestic terrorism are American not unAmerican, and that African Americans might see the issues differently from whites.

Randall Kennedy on the Supreme Court: now this is much better, the real deal. Factual, clear, unflinching, with no faff about figures of speech or personal anecdotes. Just straight ahead through the salient realities and the arguments, with a cold-eyed conclusion from a progressive standpoint. More political analysis should be like this.

I'm sure that Mark S and I had a period of online admiring Len Deighton's COOKSTRIPS.

Yeah in a way a book like Ambler's Cause For Alarm is akin to one of those early modern Everyman books - a simple dude just trying to get along gets ensnared in rottenness and has to hack his way out of it

COOKSTRIPS is grebt, as is the scene in THE IPCRESS FILE where harry palmer has an unexpected meet-cute with his posh old-school boss in a modish supermarket -- which may or may not be a very early UK safeway -- and then baffles said boss by openly buying TINNED CHAMPIGNONS, bcz the best non-posh spies only use the very fanciest ingredients

I had mentally dismissed Ambler as a John Buchan type so very excited to hear he's more interesting than that!

Also need to read Deighton - really enjoyed the adaptations to cinema I've seen. Mind you a friend of mine was reading a Deighton where the German villain "perfectly emulates the Portuguese accent, as the Germans are so adept at" and as a child of German parents growing up in Portugal I'ma have to call bullshit on that.

Deighton a handy midcentury artist/illustrator also: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UyG48ICMzHA/To1XXWbzrCI/AAAAAAAAB80/pNDlaA4xD_U/s320/Penguin+no.+1442.jpg

I have owned that edition for decades. Amazed to learn that Deighton drew the picture!

via digression into the entire cockburn family and even orwell lol this is my ilx commentary on or around ambler

also you can find user aimless serially missing all the points abt him if you use the search function precisely enough

"Randall Kennedy on the Supreme Court: now this is much better, the real deal. Factual, clear, unflinching, with no faff about figures of speech or personal anecdotes. Just straight ahead through the salient realities and the arguments, with a cold-eyed conclusion from a progressive standpoint."

Sounds like Perry Anderson on the EU.

never ever listen to any lrb podcasts ever. it’s like pinefox’s observer editorial comment enacted x1000.

lol

Randall Kennedy on the Supreme Court

Aw, fuck, now the LRB is turning into the NYRB.

this piece on Mary Kay-Wilmers retiring contains two interesting quotes:

“Newspapers say the same thing over and over again and we’re all horrified and collectively up in arms and there’s normally more than one side to something,” she told the Observer in 2014. “So if you hear somebody saying something coherent and intelligent that’s not totally out of order, it’s interesting to read it.”

what happens if it's coherent and intelligent and out of order? I would think that is more interesting to read.

Last year, she explained that the LRB had endured “because we have a sense of humour that you can see without it necessarily being declared. We’re not po-faced, as it were.”

lol rite.

also, consulting editor, who was the editor, senior editor and deputy editor taking over - someone who knows about editor roles tell me whether this is a recipe for disaster? My only analogy is management where having someone who used to be in charge still with an ability to make their opinion felt, and two people in authority feels very very bad.

Those quotations from her seem broadly accurate. You don't agree?

'out of order' seems a floating phrase here - if something is coherent and intelligent, then it is already in order? Maybe what she meant by 'out of order' was contrarian / offensive, in a way that maybe the SPECTATOR is.

I don't think the LRB suffers from lack of humour. Maybe even too much of the wrong kind - as in the indulgence of Bennett but also the blokeishness of Burrow.

I don't know much about McNicol. I think I once met Spawls, at an LRB event. Does she go on as much as Friedell does about how ex-boyfriends are awful, Jane Austen is great for breaking up with awful ex-bfs, etc? That's a tiresome motif.

if “not totally out of order” isn’t an additional qualification what’s it doing there? it feels like a v constraining - “intellectually v sound and well written of course but simply beyond the pale, couldn’t possibly publish”.

and yes i think that the lrb can be incredibly po faced - certainly many of its core writers - (some of their sillinesses might be more easily exposed if they weren’t so sonorous) but this is an area in which we differ, which is part of an ongoing conversation, i feel! (and i still mean to go back to the lockwood with your critique in mind pf)

i mean that “not totally out of order” might just be a way of defining editorial voice, which ofc is necessary, but it leaves questions begging and also seems like not a good way of defining editorial voice!

I agree that 'out of order' confuses her point. It does seem like she's saying 'some things I wouldn't want to publish because I don't agree with them'. Which I suppose I can go along with.

What's an example of LRB writers being too solemn? I don't see it.

Here are some LRB writers who are in different ways comic, dry or ironic: O'Hagan, Lorentzen, Hofmann, Eagleton, Lockwood, Michael Wood, Burrow, Perry, Collini, Runciman, Mount, Mars-Jones. James Wood has a kind of sense of humour but can certainly come closer to solemnity (but less so now). Perry Anderson is, in a way, the least comic but even he has his own kind of sarcasm.

I don't like all those writers much but I don't think excess of seriousness is their problem.

FWIW I would suggest that if you think the LRB is an insular club (something many of us have felt at various times), then humour would tend to reinforce this, and flat seriousness would be the best way to cut through it.

It occurs to me that when he started out in about 1990, James Wood's high seriousness had such a rhetorical function: he was puritanically aloof from backslapping, logrolling UK literary culture.

the humour is a good point. immediately and without much reflection i would say there’s a silly and not at all funny sort of “tittering” literary humour that you notice most in the lrb podcasts, but which i think is present in the writing.

if you’re going to tell me that runciman isn’t unbearably solemn then we may differ on our basics. i would perhaps say that there is a rough space where i would put solemn, self-satisfied, pompous, self-regarding, which i would tend to put along with lacking in humour and that i think lanchester, for all his occasional tone of cumbersome levity, and a fortiori runciman exemplify this.

Fizzles, everything you're saying, to me, confirms the idea that there is *too much* humour, not too little.

The fact that these podcast people josh along chuckling together can't be a sign that the LRB is too solemn, can it?

Runciman unbearably solemn? I find that description incomprehensible. If anything I think he's too blokeish and informal.

Lanchester, again, clearly isn't solemn. He's very similar: blokeish, joshing, ironising - but not actually funny.

To understand what we're describing, we need to be able to posit what the alternative to this mode would look like. I think, again, that Perry Anderson is a relatively good example of the alternative: someone who IS almost always serious, and NEVER indulges the blokeishness.

In fact the NLR would be a much, much better example of a journal that IS solemn. To 99% of people it would be less entertaining than the LRB, though I can still find it entertaining at times.