Book Reviews? LRB vs the failing New York Review of Books vs ... ?

I agree.

I was just thinking about Alan Bennett as an LRB political figurehead (long quoted as saying he likes it cos it's the most radical literary review).

His schtick in effect is: 'the "national treasure" that "Middle England" loves, but who is actually a left-wing critic of our society, radical in a way that would worry many of his admirers'.

As such, it occurred to me that he could literally be called an avant-gardist - as in, say, someone who covertly takes the fight deep into enemy territory.

I wouldn't call him an avant-gardist in other ways.

It might possibly be that AB's status as key LRB totem is well on the wane, and that he is withdrawing much as McKibbin did (as above).

The LRB and NYRB are entwined with a kind of pre-cold war politics. It's left, but its Perry and Tariq Ali, no intersectionality. Like nyrb it engaged with the issues but as the stats show it doesn't have enough women reviewing, and I can see the LRB making the exact same mistakes the NYRB made.

Ultimately and once the trust fund cash runs out I can see the whole thing dying off.

Sorry cold war, like its left but as the Grenfell piece showed it has different colours.

I don't like the Grenfell piece, but I don't think it represents the political stance of the whole LRB (certainly not all of its contributors) -- more the political stance of its author.

It's true, though, that in publishing it across the whole issue, the paper allied itself with the article, which I think was very poor judgment.

The Cold War seems a red herring to me. The LRB has an interest in Russian history (Sheila Fitzpatrick) but otherwise the Cold War isn't really much part of its politics at all, no more than anyone else's. Once again, Crewe's engagement with Momentum, et al, seems more significant than any of that.

If 'no intersectionality' means that not many of the writers (or topics) are non-white or female, then this is broadly true, but not more true than of most equivalent titles (are they all also unsustainable for the same reason?). More to the point, the engagement with a) changing that, at least re gender and b) taking on big political issues of the time, eg Rose on Trans, Mishra on white nationalism, etc, seems genuine and increasingly extensive. That's not to say that the actual writing has always been good.

The LRB doesn't need me to defend it - I have been frustrated by it as much as most people - and it will survive or it won't, regardless of what we say. So I suppose I am merely trying to state facts.

Once more, the financial facts are another matter - you may know more than the rest of us about the balance of the paper's income. I don't know about trust funds, do know that it was long recipient of an Arts Council grant. I agree that such sources of income can be important to keep these presses going, and think it's a good thing that they do.

Once more, the NYRB seems to be a different thing, part of a somewhat different culture. But we would need evidence for the claim that it is financially unsustainable.

The LRB's underwritten by Mary-Kay Wilmer's family fortune - low estimates are about a million a year. I think… accounts show a £3m loss last year..

(fwiw I think it's an excellent way to use an inheritance)

Mary-Kay Wilmers' father was a successful Belgian industrialist which helps fund the LRB and lets it operate at a loss (a good use of the money, I would say). It has a wide circulation for a magazine/journal/paper of its kind (bigger than the NYRB, maybe, if we incl Europe?) but I don't think it's a profitable enterprise (maybe because it's never felt as much pressure to be it hasn't had to make sacrifices or changes to aggressively try).

I remember reading that the NYRB was successful year over year (not sure if this is still the case), but I think it has a wide subscriber and institutional sub base that keep it afloat. Also there are maybe more ads? Or am I just cranky and noticing them more?

I definitely am more sympathetic to the LRBs politics and while, yes, there is a generational thing think it's mostly among their old guard of regular contributors (Perry, Tariq, etc.). I think some of the younger contributors they've been bringing in are better engaged with different currents in the left (Benjamin Kunkel, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Adam Shatz - also in the NYRB but mostly just writes about jazz, Joanna Biggs, Emily Witt). It's not the same, but they do also publish other good younger writers on their blog. The NYRB on the other hand seems pretty firmly fixed in its leftish early 90s post-Cold War liberalism which - with the notable exception of some individual writers - seems fairly out of date.

(I didn't read the Grenfell issue though was discouraged after hearing some of the critiques about its treatment of it).

Even though I read both much less frequently, I hope both remain sustainable in one way or other, whether it be as the recipients of public funding/a benefactor or by subs/ads. I

mary kay wilmers subscribe to my patreon

Largely agree with Federico. FWIW I'm not sure that Adam Shatz is young.

There was a moment, perhaps about 2007, when the LRB tried to bring on board n+1 writers -- Batuman, Kunkel, at least. That was one of those moments of partial generational transition, which was something of a precursor to the present with Witt, Heti, Diane Williams et al in it regularly. We probably discussed it on here, over a decade ago.

Though people often complain about the same old names, it is fair to say that for good or ill, it is a different paper from what it was. Kermode, Rorty, McKibbin, Sturrock, James Wood, various others used to be regulars; several are now dead. It's largely a different generation now, with continuities (Collini) and new staples (Runciman).

The copy-editing has declined (Mark S and I both see this), and possibly parts of the writing are also worse. I don't think either of these will damage it commercially at all.

The closest thing the LRB has to a regular / old guard US 'cold war [?] liberal' type, who would tie it in with the NYRB, is ...

David Bromwich.

I don't much like him and I'm glad he no longer appears very often.

twitter is claiming that buruma is out at NYRB

Confirmed: Ian Buruma is out as editor of the New York Review of Books, following much criticized decision to publish piece by Jian Ghomeshi. "I can confirm that Ian Buruma is no long the editor of The New York Review of Books," said a spokesman

— Cara Buckley (@caraNYT) September 19, 2018

:D

Must be a real trip to reach the apex of your profession and then lose all credibility with your entire organization in one fell swoop.

aww I was kinda looking forward to my first angry cancellation letter

it’s not too late

I don't know the story here, or whether IB should go over this particular incident -- but I'm instinctively inclined to be glad about this, as I remember him writing a regular Guardian column, maybe 15 years ago, that I found unpleasant and reactionary.

It seems puzzling to me that someone should publish an essay, presumably after lots of discussion, copy-editing, official agreement, etc -- *then* be told (by bosses?) that it was unacceptable.

Wouldn't or shouldn't they have made this clear at an earlier stage?

lol kicker in the NYT story about it

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DneaxZFVYAAA4rW.jpg

Note: the Brixton Review of Books doesn't seem to have any content online?

i would guess that robert silvers published whatever the hell he wanted, so there may have been no apparatus overseeing buruma editorially. i would also guess that his publisher (and buruma himself, obviously) had no idea what kind of firestorm it would bring. i don't know what the NYRB's last major public fracas was, but i'll bet it happened before twitter was available to magnify things beyond a series of angry letters over the following issues

i was a NYRB subscriber from ... 2010 to 2015ish.

i was always a month or three behind reading them. the ability of their US politics writers to make predictions that, in the time it took me to get around to reading the article, turned out to be laughably wrong was notable. i'm sure i'd feel the same way about other politics writing if i read it on a 3 month delay. but the tone was so above the fray that i kind of felt/feel they should do a better job than the news.

their science (and history of science) coverage was (and perhaps is) excellent and afaict unique (serious, accessible, humane, etc.)

daryll pinkney being the fossil they wheeled out (and perhaps the only person on their roster) capable of reviewing ta-nahesi coates earlier this year doesn't bode well. (it was a good review though.)

i've never had an LRB subscription but i read more of their stuff these days via the web. e.g. i have saved 5 LRB pieces this year, and zero NYRB (unless you count the odd blog post, e.g. https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/06/17/world-cup-2018-the-yob-swagger-of-inger-land/ was fun).

*Darryl *Pinckney

also: i liked it more when i didn't live in new york. when i lived in mitteleuropa it felt like they might know lots of things i didn't, but it seemed more obviously out of touch when i moved to NYC and had more direct knowledge of the culture/institutions it covers.

Well, look at that...

This is certainly an opportunity for them to re-think the mag and have a more considered approach to who takes over the editorship (I think in large part Buruma was named because he was there and regularly contributing for so long).

I think it would be swell if they went back to two editors and perhaps opted to not continue only under the helm of an older white guy. I don't know if I'm optimistic this will be the case, but you never know...I think they are self-aware enough, like the Paris Review was, not to do it but, you never know.

Note: the Brixton Review of Books doesn't seem to have any content online?

― the pinefox, Wednesday, 19 September 2018 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I know its very small, only 2/3 issues and I've only seen it sold in our local 2nd hand bookshop lol.

I pretty much read the NYROB for Elizabeth Drew.

i was always a month or three behind reading them. the ability of their US politics writers to make predictions that, in the time it took me to get around to reading the article, turned out to be laughably wrong was notable. i'm sure i'd feel the same way about other politics writing if i read it on a 3 month delay. but the tone was so above the fray that i kind of felt/feel they should do a better job than the news.

Can believe that although iirc Michael Tomasky was dispassionately assessing Trump's chances and wasn't discounting him.

I think these two papers are not much better than the general media in terms of analysis and prediction (trying to think of Adam Shatz (writing for the LRB) on Egypt but I'm too exhausted to check and assess).

This is all happening while two new magazines have launched this week in this island of ours. Centre-right Drugstore Culture and democratic socialist Tribune.

It seems puzzling to me that someone should publish an essay, presumably after lots of discussion, copy-editing, official agreement

i don't know the set-up at the nyrb but i think it unlikely -- and have never imagined -- that there were people senior to IB that he generally had to clear content with: even given his plan to "democratise" that mookieproof cites, he would have been the moral, intellectual and aesthetic conscience and the buck would stop with him

(at least this is what i'd guess: not all publications work like this but it is normally what "editor in chief" means)

in the slate piece he said it had been discussed with his editorial staff and some had said no: but then it was decided and everyone went along -- i forget the exact words but this could well have meant that his staff, or anyway some of them, strongly demurred, and he put his foot down and they acknowledged force majeure and went off to do their jobs muttering to themselves "on yr head be it"

it hadn't -- in my judgment -- been edited, beyond routine proofing for spelling and grammar: to be publishable at all in the context buruma claimed for it in the slate interview it need two or three more serious rewrites and rethinks, with tough editorial notes requiring a whole bunch of stuff (like -- minmally -- accurate descriptions from ghomeshi of what he'd been a accused of!) but clearly none of that had been done

who can say -- there would have been a furore either way -- but i suspect what truly sunk him was the interview, which was jaw-dropping to the point of being weird. (this is what i wrote on the other thread, to save retyping it all):

it's one thing a good editor defending running a strong piece of writing that argues a very bad political line (perhaps even an evil one?): but here we have a self-confessedly* bad editor NOT really defending an eye-stretchingly BAD piece of writing arguing nothing more than he jian ghomeshi is the real victim here.

*buruma stating in public that the facts in the case are "not my concern" undermines all his staff and all his writers, and (obviously) spits in the face of his readers, who have the absolutely right to expect otherwise. he might as well have said "i am entirely incompetent and very out of my depth." if he doesn't resign pretty quickly it will destroy the magazine i think.

my guess is the revolt -- and the demand for his resignation -- came from below not above: editorial staff maybe (tho they had -- so he said -- signed off on it) but much more than that, other contributors threatening to walk, and of course readers

this is the first time i've ever actually posted an angry letter or email demanding someone resign, so this is a gratifyingly quick result! maybe i should write more! (obviously i choose to believe mine is the one that did the trick, it was 🔥 🔥 🔥

The NYRB is for people who think Colm Toibin is a good critic.
er..the people at the LRB think so:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/contributors/colm-toibin

― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, September 18, 2018 1:06 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha i was gonna say

i also wrote an email, as did at least a couple other ilxors. i suspect they got a lot more reader feedback than they're used to

I’m looking forward to the Apology Issue

they will run my email on the cover i expect

i wanna read everyone's angry emails tbh

Colm Toibin is a poor critic? News to me!

nyrb ppl think he's good, lrb ppl think he's bad: it's like melody maker versus nme in the late 80s, and grebo

i wanna read everyone's angry emails tbh

― macropuente (map), Wednesday, September 19, 2018 6:04 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i would buy this issue

I'm reading Toibin's review of the Gunn collection and so far it's not bad. I've liked several of his novels and have never minded his criticism.

nyrb ppl think he's good, lrb ppl think he's bad: it's like melody maker versus nme in the late 80s, and grebo

― mark s, Wednesday, September 19, 2018 6:08 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

in what way do lrb people think he’s bad? he’s in like every other issue

I don't like the Grenfell piece, but I don't think it represents the political stance of the whole LRB (certainly not all of its contributors) -- more the political stance of its author.

O'Hagan is one of the LRB's 17 million contributing editors, who as far as I can see can publish whatever they like.

That NYRB issue hasn't even been published yet: I wonder if they'll actually run the article that blew up in their faces.

Interview with Buruma:

‘I am embroiled in a big scandal, in the middle of storm on social media,’ said Ian Buruma on the phone from New York. ‘It is rather ironic: as editor of The New York Review of Books I published a theme issue about #MeToo-offenders who had not been convicted in a court of law but by social media. And now I myself am publicly pilloried.’

really makes you think

it's a pity he was a man

Twitter runs the NYRB now.

new editors: shanley and the helldude

Flopson: yes, I know that Colm Toibin writes a lot in the LRB. I have said this twice on this thread. That is one reason that I said that my original comment was deliberately glib. The fact that he writes in the LRB is also the reason I have read loads of his essays, and think he is a quite bad and extremely overrated essayist.

Nonetheless, I think that Mark S's joke also has something to it -- I think that CT *is* more respected in the US than the UK. He works there, and anecdotally I have met American scholars who think he is wonderful and couldn't believe I didn't think the same.

The question re whether he is actually good or bad, in any individual's view here, should probably better be discussed on another thread. I think I have probably already said what I thought about it somewhere on this board.

Despite my typical great frustration with his essays I did read his book on Bishop. I'm not sure now if I thought it was better than the essays.

I have read two of his novels - I think they would need separate judgement.

It would be a pretty amazing own of Buruma by the disgruntled members of his former staff if the next issue was indeed composed entirely of the angry letters/emails and, of course, tweets of the last few days.

As a reward for making them see sense on this NYRB should commission mark s to review the dril book.

Update, September 20 at 9:36 a.m.: Buruma spoke briefly about his departure to the Dutch outlet Vrij Nederland, saying that he has “been convicted on Twitter, without any due process.” He also claims that he resigned from the position and that university presses, who advertise in the NYRB, were threatening a boycott because they feared adverse campus reactions to the Ghomeshi article.

tfw you tweet something p sour abt the buruma affair to a twitter pal and one of the signatories of the open letter protesting it (who i entirely forgot follows my twitter pal) faves yr tweet

maybe bcz they now regret signing? or bcz skullduggery in gathering said signatories? anyway they didn't sign the stupid harpers letter (tho naturally buruma did)

pssst...The New York Review of Books (@nybooks) has a new website. To celebrate, the full site (including the archive of 50+ years of articles), is unpaywalled from now until Nov. 3! https://t.co/cjeZB9HPLe pic.twitter.com/rzoKcAG6zo

— NYRB Classics (@nyrbclassics) October 19, 2020

Moderately distressed to find that the mention of me in the NYRB didn’t make it to the site because it was in a little call-out box rather than the main article :(

The website is beautiful.

Started reading a few pieces last night. I didn't realize Empson wrote a couple of pieces for them including an exhausting review of a book on Donne by John Carey.

having a look now. will definitely “do the donne” but please post any good articles people itt find during the free period. (i get access via an institution normally but don’t make anywhere near enough use of it, so re ups for old pieces gratefully received as well)

gonna send an email congratulating them on the new website but complaining about the lack of tim tbf.

classic empson letter

The first thing we need to recognize, because modern Christianity goes to extreme lengths to hush it up, is that the moral character of God had become very hard to defend, and that this was widely known, by the time Calvin and Luther had followed Aquinas.

The chief new defense invented for God is that he intends to resign, and will do so as soon as he conscientiously can, as soon as a workable alternative to his rule has been prepared.

also the review (of a Raymond Williams book on cultural vocabulary, that starts

The book is continually interesting; never more so, from my point of view, than when it is plainly wrong; but it is usually right, I could not deny.

love the way he starts from the position that any book reads is in likelihood wrong. always looking of course to pick an argument with a book.

Part of the gloom, I think, comes from a theory which makes our minds feebler than they are—than they have to be, if they are to go through their usual performance with language. The entry on the word interest is a good example. Our modern uses of the word, he explains, derive from capitalist procedures, and at first ranged from “compensation for loss” to “investment with a right or share.” In medieval times, usury was forbidden, but compensation was allowed, so there could be a gradual development of capitalist practices; interest in the modern financial sense had arrived by the end of the sixteenth century. But the “subjective” use, for curiosity or attention, is not clear before the nineteenth century:

The question is whether this sense of an object generating such interest is related to the active sense of interest—of money generating money…. It seems probable that this now central word for attention, attraction and concern is saturated with the experience of a society based upon money relationships.

I went straight for some Helen Vendler but would absolutely welcome recommendations.

I did not know that Michael Wood wrote the original review of Gravity's Rainbow! https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1973/03/22/rocketing-to-the-apocalypse/

thse guys also have their lore

time to ilx it up imo

Will fuck about with The Charles Rosen archive:

https://www.nybooks.com/contributors/charles-rosen/

donne piece contains a section of pure Empson, arguing a controversial textual reading via dramatising an imaginary but commonplace scene (he does this with Shakespeare a few times):

Whereas, if we look at the matter the other way round, every step is intelligible. One evening around 1600 Donne’s boss, the lord keeper, was giving a dinner party for some other top legal figures and invited his secretary to read them a few of his poems afterward, before the music. Donne felt that this poem, put among some more romantic ones, would suit the old buffers very well, so long as the point of it was left out; as a porner they would like it, but they would feel positively insulted if told that the affair was innocent. So, while dressing for dinner and considering what to read, he drew a line through due to and wrote “much less” over the top, merely to remind himself on the occasion. He could speak these words so as to sound encouraging and conniving, though they might look bad to a reader; he had no intention of altering his poem permanently. Maybe he crossed out the addition next morning, leaving a complete bafflement for the copyists.


it makes you gurgle at the effrontery and audacity of it, almost trolling, and the thing of it is, that i think his reading is (must be actually) the right one, which reverse engineering from that conclusion means he may well not be wrong in his scene (or if not the scene, the motivation for the emendation).

couple from the archive: pieces by john gregory dunne on policing in LA, written just after the king beating but before the uprising

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1991/10/10/law-disorder-in-los-angeles/
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1991/10/24/law-and-disorder-in-la-part-two/

also everything by freeman dyson is at least good fun, if not better

https://www.nybooks.com/search/?size=n_10_n&filters%5B0%5D%5Bfield%5D=author&filters%5B0%5D%5Bvalues%5D%5B0%5D=Freeman%20Dyson&filters%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=all

this was true of lots of people who wrote for the nyrb but most notable to me in dyson, perhaps because he lived so long -- the fucking ground they covered was just incredible. dyson would be like 'this one time i was having beers with niels bohr and enrico fermi . . .' yes please tell me everything about your personal interactions with a guy who won his nobel 90 years ago

Ha, I just dipped into his review of the James Gleick Newton biography and

“We knew that the fat young man was second in command to Sir Oswald Moseley in the British Union of Fascists, and if his friend Adolf had successfully invaded England he would probably have been our Gauleiter. Being well-brought-up English children, we listened to the fat young man politely and never showed him our contempt.

When I was bringing in the harvest and listening to the fat young man, I did not know that he had been the owner of the Newton papers. I learned this two years later from the economist John Maynard Keynes.”

Lmao perfect

lol

Even as a long-term fan, I was beginning to find Patricia Lockwood insufferable in the LRB, but her piece on Nabokov in the new issue is simply delightful.

I ended up sorta logging boring reactions to my read of the Charles Rosen archive (with links to the relevant pieces)

Terrific piece on Burton and 17th century prose, time to chase protestants:https://t.co/tMURjGOVXR

— non consumiamo marx (@xyzzzz__) October 26, 2020

Are you still able to read NYRB pieces? For some reason I can't log on..

Is it really the “New York Review of Each Other’s Books”?

short answer: yes

Oh my God? https://t.co/cMhQTen7ne pic.twitter.com/7b8yYqnz7p

— Brandon (@blgtylr) May 20, 2023

🙃🙃🙃