London Review of Books

I had, and I think she had, a sense that she knew it all. She had been pals with R.D. Laing and lived some crazed years with Clancy Sigal. She had read a bunch of Pelican books on the sociology and psychology of behaviour. We all did then, they sat on bookshop shelves like a university course: Laing, David Stafford-Clark, Erving Goffman, Vance Packard, Michael Argyle, C.J. Adcock, Viktor Frankl. And more and more. They were all over the house, on tables, on the floor. She bought them, I bought them, Peter and his friends bought them. Somehow they were cheap enough for the smallest allowance. All these were read and taken in. How could you not cope with a difficult adolescent with all that under your belt?

A++

This was so good - and makes me want to read more Lessing next year. I must be attracted to people with shitty reputations.

I've only read The Grass is Singing, about which I have little to say, and Shikasta, which I found unpleasant and gave me a picture of its author (personal interpretation obv) which has correlated remarkably strongly with the one built up slowly and carefully by Diski.

i don't know much about lessing and haven't read any of her stuff, but i love when LRB gets scurrilous. one of the best and strangest stories i ever read was Andrew O'Hagan on abandoning a job ghostwriting an autobiography of Julian Assange

Weirdly that article is being made into a movie

siiick

Diski:

Sufism lasted, as far as I can tell, for the rest of Doris’s conscious life. In later years she never spoke to me about ‘the work’, as it was called. I wasn’t sure whether this was from disappointment about the teaching or from her understanding that I was a failure and therefore to be kept in the dark. She told me when Shah died of heart failure in 1996, but only for my information. No questions allowed. No weeping, no distress. After all, we were all here on borrowed time, waiting for the penny to drop. Shah set up groups and organisations and Roger, our small daughter and I often spent a Saturday or Sunday first in his house in a leafy village not too far from London and then at Langton House near Tunbridge Wells, another suburb of perfect respectability. The house was, I suppose, formerly the old landowner’s house, large and walled, with outbuildings and a huge garden. Things were various. People in groups went at weekends to manicure the gardens and on Saturday night to have a group meal and listen to Shah’s table talk, which was, if you listened properly, Doris said, his real teaching. There were public lectures, generally on historical or philosophical topics. The lecturers were academics or highly regarded journalists and writers, who, as far as I know, had nothing to do with the Sufis, or even knew that they were speaking under their aegis, but were paid to lecture by the Institute for Cultural Research, set up by Shah.

Thomas M. Disch reviewing a book by Peter Washington:

Shah managed to connect with one of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky's most devoted disciples, Captain J. G. Bennett. Now an old man and a spiritual orphan, Bennett was persuaded in the 1960s to turn over a valuable English estate at Coombe Springs, which had served for many years as a Gurdjieff-style Prieure. When the other trustees of the estate balked, Shah was adamant: there must be an outright gift or nothing at all. Bennett tried to negotiate, but the more conciliatory his behavior, the more outrageous Shah's demands became. The new teacher wanted to know how Bennett could have the nerve to negotiate with the Absolute. Once the Absolute had got his way, "Shah's first act was to eject Bennett and the old pupils from their own house, banning them from the place except by his specific permission. His second act was to sell the property to developers for £100,000 in the following year, buying a manor house at Langton Green near Tunbridge Wells in Kent with the proceeds."

Real estate -- secret key to the Universe

27 June. Shortly after the East Coast franchise has been sold off to a tie-up between Virgin and Stagecoach I am sitting at Leeds station when a notice is flashed up on the Sky screen: 'Hello Leeds. Meet Virgin trains. We've just arrived and we can't wait to get to know you.'

And take you for every penny we can.

You couldn't make it up.

It strikes me these days how much the LRB carries about the classical world. Can feel like 1-2 articles about Ancient Rome per issue.

I don't read Diski but did you notice that the short cuts piece on the Piers Gaveston Society was taken down from the website? Possibly for legal reasons. (I hated the article.)

Still there for me:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n19/nick-richardson/short-cuts

Basically written by hedonismbot, demystifying to the point of mundanity.

I'm ambivalent about Lessing but I can recommend the Golden Notebook. I also liked her short essayistic collection Prisons We Choose to Live Inside.

I don't know how many people remember, but Lessing went to Afghanistan in the 80s and wrote a book celebrating he Mujahideen. I remember seeing it on remainder tables (late 80s or early 90s) and I wish I had bought a copy. I would like to read that some day. I'd be surprised if she didn't have some contact with the CIA.

I think I was reading LRB a lot about ten years back. I appreciated their coverage of Israel's aggression against Lebanon in 2006. I do feel a bit lost at times, in LRB. It all seems terribly British, though I guess I find the flavor a little more palatable than TLS. (I like that end of the year issue of TLS though, where lots of writers talk about what they have been reading in the past year.) I still glance at it from time to time and I think I like its reviews of philosophy, history and social science works best. Often it's choice of what literature to cover bores me, but then I hardly do any literary reading, so my opinion is pretty useless on that.

(Since I haven't read her Mujahideen book I probably shouldn't be saying it was a celebration of them, but that's the impression I remember getting from glancing at it.)

i can recommend the golden notebook (incidentally my wife was less complementary, enigmatically remarking while reading it that "you might as well be reading something written by a man", whatever she meant by that) but the overall oeuvre of lessing im not so sure about. some clunkers for sure. there's a book of hers called the fifth child which is basically "we need to talk about kevin" ten years earlier and without the massacre dénouement. it's just as poor as the shriver book.

we started to read it in high school - it was part of the syllabus - but the book was so universally disliked, including by the teacher that we changed to a different book. I had already finished it by that stage, unfortunately.

Every female friend I've ever mentioned Lessing to has either had no opinion or a negative opinion. On the other hand, my mother was a Lessing enthusiast though, at least up to the science fiction phase, though I think at that point she still respected her for doing what she wanted with her work.

I had a professor in college who said that Lessing could not "write an English sentence" (if I remember the phrase correctly).

Another thing about LRB: a lot of times the article titles are as obscure to me as a goon crew or lex thread title on ILM.

"What Lord Essington Didn't Find in the Forest"

And I am left wondering if I should be interested in this or not.

When I worked in a bookshop Lessing was highly thought of by a lot of women who would have thought of themselves as 2nd-gen feminists. Not that they bought anything new by her, but they looked back fondly on her heyday.

I've liked a few of her books, and some of her stories, but she's very hit and miss for me.

(I like that end of the year issue of TLS though, where lots of writers talk about what they have been reading in the past year.)

I like that as well. TLS' coverage of translated literature is far, far better than the LRB.

As for Lessing The Golden Notebook is all-time and that piece of Diski's points to The Children of Violence series so that's where I'll go next.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2016/04/28/the-editors/jenny-diski/

Diski died this morning, sadly. Ominously, no pieces by her had appeared recently.

Nifty thing of 100 de-paywalled 'diary' articles from various places/events around the world: http://www.lrb.co.uk/archive/100-diaries

definitely one of those times when i regret not having a subscription to the lrb: vaneigem on bosch

word can someone pastebin that

http://pastebin.com/FBWLnhUu

may the almighty lord's blessing rain on you vigorously

^seconded :-D

thirded!

I'm looking for a magazine focusing on new fiction (preferably global, genre-inclusive) for inspiration - great as LRB and NYRB are, I'm more interested in reviews and interviews than in-depth analysis. Any recommendations?

World Literature Today and its new spinoff Latin American Literature Today might be worth a look. but I cant think of anything that exactly fits the bill, and would also read a magazine like the one you describe.

Michael Orthofer's Complete Review is a blog, not a magazine, and it doesn't have interviews, but it has many good reviews of current and older world literature. Don't let the mid-1990s Geocities look of the site turn you off, because the quality of the content is really good.

^^^ good one. Though be aware he pretty much hates short fiction, poetry, most non-fiction, and book covers that aren't pure white with a little bit of text.

thanks for the input! went with a sub to World Literature Today, but will keep the Complete Review in mind for reference

I recently had my subscription renewed as a gift and I'm busy building up a new stack of articles I'll get around to at some point. Recent highlights have been Colm Toibin on Diane Arbus, Rivka Galchen on Kafka's last (read: earliest) letters and dear, creaky old Iain Sinclair on London (what else). I've missed it.

Curiously I've found it below-par recently ... including for instance Runciman on Theresa May.

Agreed on that article. Very flat. Evidence of a torpor in the opposition?

wasn't impressed with the sinclair, his concerns might be legit but it just read like old man yells at cloud.

i find him at quite a basic level unreadable. that first set of sentences!

So: the last London. It has to be said with a climbing inflection at the end. Every statement is provisional here. Nothing is fixed or grounded. Come back tomorrow and the British Museum will be an ice rink, a boutique hotel, a fashion hub. The familiar streets outside will have vanished into walls of curved glass and progressive holes in the ground. The darkened showroom of the Brick Lane monumental mason with the Jewish headstones will be an art gallery. So?

I saw Sinclair give that lecture in person. He was mostly just improvising with eloquence. It's odd that it has now become a piece of ... writing.

I can imagine it being transcribed by a computer from the recording. Which would helpfully explain Fizzles' bemusement.

I used to love his prose, thought it sparked off the page. That certainly doesn't. Also that bit about the BM, I know it's lol hyperbole but my first thought was "no it won't".

I think it's been diminishing returns for a while with Sinclair - almost like he's written himself to a standstill inside ever-decreasing circles.

it's a bit like he's writing the voice-over for a documentary. which would be fine, if the documentary existed, and there were images to hang the scraps from.

i get both lrb and nyrb but i think i am going to jettison the first. so much of it feels sealed off in its own world.

friend of mine who had to work w iain sinclair told a story about him where he came off as a pompous, defensive, bitter misogynist which has put me off getting more familiar

I have always found his writing rather hard to follow. Is this worse than his previous writing? I mean both worse for that trait and worse in general.

The bit about the British Museum is obviously a joke and, yes, perhaps it does all seem like 'old man yells at cloud' but I do know exactly what he means. I took a walk through the West End recently and was astonished at the amount of demolition and construction going on. A great many familiar (or kind of familiar) buildings are disappearing. On one corner of Leicester Square, something large has gone (a cinema, I think). I believe they are going to extend the hotel next door (the former Leicester Square Dental Hospital). Then, in Soho, Walker's Court is in the process of being torn apart. The Raymond Revue Bar building was being demolished even as I walked past. And it was the same on a number of other blocks around there. (Also, I recently noticed that the Odeon Marble Arch has gone.) Perhaps it is just age. It's only because these things have been around in my lifetime that it seems strange to see them go. If I was young and had only recently come to London, probably none of it would be particularly remarkable.

I think he has been a very very good writer, in his own way. Maybe one of the greats of his generation.

Maybe he is past his prime but that will come to all of us. If we're lucky. Enough to have a prime.

But it's true, this particular London lecture, in person, was not great work. Rambling, semi-reactionary, etc, and only occasionally insightful. He oddly connected London to Donald Trump; can't recall if there was any substance to that.

Liked Downriver quite a bit at the time and have much time for his film crit. Sinclair's BFI book on Crash is good.

His LRB work though is rough-going to say the least.

As to the LRB itself that "Women in Power" issue had a risible cover and concept. That aside it was pretty good. Loved the pieces on Spinoza, Claretta Mussolini, Kafka and they actually got me interested in a work of fiction (The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus) which happens once every 3/6 months. LRBs coverage of fiction is so bad.

I wanted to pick up the latest issue to read Sheila Fitzpatrick's essay on the centenary of the Russian Revolution/review of recent books on it but haven't yet.

I also let my sub lapse and have been tempted to renew again, but have been waiting for an issue with enough to really win me back. So far, no luck.

I know it's not really the thread for it, but any thoughts on who may take over the reins of the NYRB?

to read Sheila Fitzpatrick's essay on the centenary of the Russian Revolution/

iirc SPs conclusions that there isn't much enthusiasm for the Russian revolution or its ideas was kinda...off to me, especially given what has been happening post-Latin America, then onto Sanders/Corbyn and some of the fierce counters from the right (and er Bannon being a fan of Lenin, although that's probably a troll, even so..)

Iain Sinclair is a pain in the hole. Only stuff of his I have enjoyed were the book-scout bits in White Chapel Scarlet Tracings or whatever it was. Psychogeography has produced a vast amount of bad writing, probably second only to the Beats.

simplicius simplicissimus is very good!

Yeah, I loved that piece. Am planning to ask people if there was a big crowd there whenever they tell me they went to something now.

london review of LOL

Our event with Terry Eagleton on HUMOUR on 10 June is nearly sold out - last few tickets available here: https://t.co/xwReBVT2JC pic.twitter.com/L7YbWi7QqA

— LRB Bookshop (@LRBbookshop) May 19, 2019

Thanks for the link - going to this with my partner now

I also go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1cVl7KHsGA

what's the deal with theory *slapbass flourish*

you-know-who is blogging GoT: i am reaching for a lanchester/lannister joke but luckily someone just rolled me out of the moon door

he has also watched some other TV shows

Do you go to TE's Humour bash Mark S ?

I dug "you know nothing, john lanchester" from a while back

what language is the pinefox now posting in before he reaches for babelfish?

(i'm out of town that day i think, in hastings with my sister)

To be fair, that Lanchester piece seemed fine. I have never seen GoT, so I may well not know what I'm talking about.

Mark S I learned it from my friend R J G

The GOT piece is fine. I liked the "Tony Blair or Ladyhitler" line. But even when he's OTM, he's a bit muddy. It's not so much "John, you took the words out of mouth" as "John, you took the words out of my mouth, added some syllables, and made them a tiny bit less clear"

Crosspost to the a "a box of ___ every month" thread?

www.londonreviewbookbox.co.uk

Letter commissioned for the first issue:

SIR: The London Review doesn’t have, or intend to seek, an Arts Council subsidy. This means that the envious, the indolent, the mischievous must, if they wish to be damaging, take issue with the journal itself, and not with the way it is financed. Most writers believe that they are (or, given the chance, could be) terrific editors, and they are particularly contemptuous of the skills that go into producing journals from which their own works are excluded. Arts Council grants, I’ve come to see, make it all too easy for the whimper of neglect to masquerade as public-spirited dismay. The London Review won’t have to get annoyed about this kind of thing.

It will have other things to get annoyed about, but many of these can be seen as pretty well routine: the publishers will be cagey, the librarians won’t want to know, the backbiters will go on about élitism, metropolitan cliquishness, lack of compassion for the avant-garde, the sycophants will wait and see. The appalling thing about our ‘literary culture’ at the moment is that a large section of its representatives seem to get more of a kick out of seeing things collapse than they do out of seeing them survive. Sooner or later (and I would like to think that this might be the moment) they must ask themselves if they really do want another serious reviewing journal; or if, in their heart of hearts, they prefer to sit around complaining that they haven’t got one.

Ian Hamilton

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v01/n01/letters

they shd commission a letter from ilx for the whateverth issue

Thank you for your service Ian. We're gonna nationalise it now and lock all the white literary London boys now.

Astonishing letters-page controversy:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v10/n03/christopher-norris/paul-de-mans-past

yeah i remember all that de man stuff very clearly :(

Salad days

just finally finished reading empson's seven types of ambiguity properly for the first time (only ever skipped thru bits of it before): not always crystal clear but good not bad

was a bit startled to discover it had an index, something i was convinced i had claimed that it did not here in this very thread: rereading i discover it was the pinefox who said this (his copy had an editor;s note saying not) and that i then posted a link to an on-line version which did

anyway i came to post the following line on proust as i felt it was funny and apposite, only to find i already posted it three years ago lol: "Parodies are appreciative criticisms in this sense, and much of Proust reads like the work of a superb appreciative critic upon a novel which has unfortunately not survived" -- thats right william

(i can only think that three years ago i couldn't locate my physical copy, not at all an unusual situation in my house)

the unsurviving novel is proust

given where the sentence comes in the book it's in, empson is kind of saying "it me, i'm proust"

je suis etc

CALL ME MADELEINE

Some days the novel reads you.