London Review of Books

Yes, “Empson” in his “I think x is wrong because” mode, imitating the texture of his thought, which seems so often to produce a logic so opaque as to have to be taken on faith (enjoyable as it is) is probably a v bad idea.

Do you dislike Lockwood specifically? Or is it the wider set of what I consider new strategies in say Maggie Nelson for uncovering meaning or allowing it to emerge from adjecancies rather than more structured or linear argument? (That in itself may be opaque so I can expand if necessary)

i like empson. i also like that he loathed derrida -- who i also like and feel often took his stands on quite similar ground (inc.style viz " a logic so opaque as to have to be taken on faith (enjoyable as it is)")

I think 'everybody likes Empson' - literally there are dozens of different people who have written very favourably about him and I can't think of anyone who has done the opposite. I have read Michael Wood's whole (naturally hugely favourable) book on Empson.

So I like him also. And I keep reading SEVEN TYPES OF AMBIGUITY. But it is very slow going, very clotted. While I can see things to admire, I can't say it's usually saying something very clear.

If there is a simpler or more straightforward Empson, maybe it can be found in his LRB contributions?

Derrida, a few years ago I realized I did not really understand, so stopped.

Lockwood, I have found dreadful.

Not sure I have read Nelson but what I read about one of her books gave me the impression I would think the same about her.

Fizzles presented two ways forward for the LRB - more self-indulgence and more straightforward strong opinions. I guess I am saying the latter sounds better.

empson is an all-time favourite. forceful. strong. funny (cf the famous portrait of shakespeare which gives him the impression shakespeare has just come from a large banquet where he has had several rounds of wine, but is keeping his assurance such that he might say “I’ll be all right if I’m not joggled” to an anxious lady). almost magical at times (that opacity). his dismissals are almost thrilling. he’s constantly *at it* - pushing it, looking visibly using his considerable intellectual tools - argufying is a good term for him.

i think both would be good. i think the times call for more strategies and methods being used. naturally i wouldn’t call their style self-indulgent. tho i would note that certainly nelson, briggs, galchen and to a degree in the last samurai dewitt have all written about the need to have a writing structure and approach that can accommodate having a child, the interruptions of the world, of other needs, into the main focus of work. this obviously contra the pram in the hallway. that i would agree could be called indulgent, even self indulgent but not of course with any of the moral judgment of rules not being adhered to the phrase normally implies.

xxp

"more self-indulgence": lol this is a highly contentious and loaded interpretation of what fizzles in fact suggested, given the context of his and my discussion!

(caveat: i haven't read the lockwood piece, probably bcz it touches on things i have possibly non-straightforward strong opinions on -- viz how to engage with newly emergent models of information exchange, and what they night be doing to us -- so i don't to leave it till i'm sleepily in bed as per usual)

semi-related disgression: does the LRB still run poems? i have got so used to never ever reading them in all the time i've been reading it (since 1983 i think) that i didn't spot if/when it stopped -- there seem to be none in the most recent issues to hand?

fwiw i should say i don't think the internet piece fully worked. she herself points out it was a lecture and it's clear it would be better suited to that format, but i was pleased to see it there.

it does. but perhaps less frequently (and the lockwood piece also triggered a similar thought - what space is this occupying in the editor's mind?). iirc there was one bloody seidel poem in the grenfell issue, can that be right?

actually it had four poems in, including a Seidel.

and the latest one also does, tho like the pinefox i have not yet received mine.

I don't think I have ever really enjoyed or appreciated a poem in the LRB.

I have often disliked one.

My point about Empson is: we can all stand around saying he's great, but what about his tendency to be incomprehensible?

I would like more of the straight talking strong opinions that Fizzles values in him, less of the involution.

semi-related disgression: does the LRB still run poems? i have got so used to never ever reading them in all the time i've been reading it (since 1983 i think) that i didn't spot if/when it stopped -- there seem to be none in the most recent issues to hand?

― mark s, Sunday, 3 March 2019 14:44 (two hours ago) Permalink

There are a couple of poems every issue. Anne Carson has one in the latest and she is almost always great (although I haven't gone through the full archive: https://www.lrb.co.uk/contributors/anne-carson)

Rebecca Tamas -- who is often good on twitter and has a collection out soon -- had one published a while back and again this is another example of the LRB sourcing new voices: https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n19/rebecca-tamas/palermo

seven types of ambiguity (all of them bad) by william empfox

Bringing things back once again to Powell/Proust/Anderson, here's an Anthony Powell entry on Empson that I just read in the last volume of his journals (this one is from 31.3.1992):

I read William Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity, never done before... Empson is always enjoyable, although, as with all professional literary critics, one cannot share the excessive hair-splitting of meaning, although Empson's humour is always immensely enjoyable. When he makes quotations, Shakespeare to Omar Khayyam, he always has something both funny and apposite to say (for instance, Proust's novel being like a description of a novel that unfortunately has been lost.) Wish I had known Empson beyond meeting him once (perhaps a couple of times), when I was able to tell him how pleased I was when he referred to something Templer said, as if everyone ought to know who Templer is.

(re poems in recent issues: i have apparently trained myself so well not to read them that i no longer even see them when looking right at them)

I like that description of Proust. Surely it's not in SEVEN TYPES?

I can't quickly find out, because my copy of SEVEN TYPES has a publisher's note pasted in the front saying that it doesn't have an Index even though Empson says it does.

From LRB archive:

William Empson and ‘Advanced Thought’
SIR: One thing about Sir William’s very peculiar piece (LRB, 24 January): unless he has access to Greville’s notes, he cannot know that Sidney said ‘need’, for Greville in his book says ‘necessity’; he, not I, preferred the long fussy word.

Frank Kermode
King’s College, Cambridge

William Empson writes: I am sure Kermode is right. If I had checked, I would have ascribed the mistake to Greville. Everyone who recalls the legend says ‘thy need’, and that is what Sidney would have said.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v02/n02/letters#letter4

Empson writing about things I actually already know about: comprehensible and fun in the way we all like.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v04/n15/william-empson/the-ultimate-novel

(that is, I understand him here - maybe when I don't understand him it's partly because I just don't know the field.)

"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."

p249 of 7ToA as made available here: https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.215758/2015.215758.Seven-Types_djvu.txt

also this version has an index, though the page numbers may not be right for yr edition

Wish I could read the whole review. Never thought of Ulysses as sad, though, not even comic-sad.

I can't disagree with that.

I did make the effort to read the whole 2-part review online; my recollection is that it only initially pretends to be a review and then becomes a 20,000-word Empson statement on Ulysses, offering a bizarre biographical and sexual reading. In fact I think this material may appear again in Empson's USING BIOGRAPHY.

I gave up on that Lockwood piece halfway through - it seems I'm not as Extremely Online as she is, or not in the same way, so many of the points raised were things I couldn't identify with and others were things I couldn't see why she was so worried about. I understand the diffuseness is part of the deal, but I dunno.

lol now you've amde it a competition i'm going to have to read it

I liked the Lockwood piece. I’m also not as plugged in as she is, I only got a Twitter account this year, but I could relate a bit to the evocation of online meme culture, even via the little bit that filters into ILX.

the lockwood piece is not for me

i think she's a brilliant writer but pretty much only when she's not writing about the internet

see: her poems that are sorta internet jokes vs. her poems that aren't related to the internet at all

in an irritating sort of way way i feel this discussion is proving my point.

also

Attn: Subscribers. Due to a machine breakdown at our fulfilment house last week some issues of 41/5 were a little late going out. If you haven't had your copy yet it should be with you in the next day or so though (in the UK). Sorry about that and thank you for your patience! pic.twitter.com/uYUAmoelPL

— London Review of Books (@LRB) March 5, 2019

They're still sending me emails every other day, even though I cancelled my subscription and twice asked them to remove me from their email list.

Isn't there an unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email?

I liked the Lockwood piece a lot - the internet makes you smarter, but it also pulverizes your brain.

Possibly, I've never reached the bottom of one of their emails I usually delete them automatically.

Yeah, I am online-clueless, but that Lockwood piece was such a pleasure sentence by sentence that I didn't care.

carry on at this rate Tom you’ll get your first LRB in a couple of weeks despite cancelling and them having the wrong address. cue huge dumper truck piled high with perry anderson screeds pulling up outside your Palais de Tom D.

Yes, I, like Tom D and Fizzles, quite often have trouble obtaining my copy.

Fizzles, how is the discussion proving your point?

i felt the split of intelligent, literary and well read people itt on the recent lockwood piece indicated that it was generating judgment about approach and style in a way that say a standard highly authoritative piece can preclude. i think this is a good thing.

the reason i felt it was a bit cheeky or unhelpful to say this is there probably can be a bit of a slippery slope that says “if it’s controversial it must be good” which wouldn’t be my intention to recommend.

i do think experimenting with new methods to tackle, represent and analyse the contemporary world is a valuable thing the lrb can do, and that this was doing that.

I also felt that Lockwood’s more conventional piece on Cusk *was* good, and unconventional in its manner, and more representative of the mode described above, enabling the personal world of the writer to be present as part of the essay or analysis.

speaking as editor of wire long ago i strongly felt it was right and proper that at least some of the coverage also took experimental* form: esp as (A) the wire is/is a mag dedicated to the understanding and exploration of, among other things, the experimental, and (B) too much writing abt the avant garde is bad not good bcz the formal underpinnings and conventions of the writing run counter to the the formal underpinnings and conventions of the cap-E Experimental. and this is a clash that’s under-addressed bcz the unspoken demands of quality in the writing bleed back into how readers come to understand the avant garde. hence the wire is a journal that covers the avant-garde but almost never in any sense an avant-garde publication

the problem being that editors who can judge both are far and few between if they exist at all, and what you actually tend to get — as you get in the LRB, as we’ve established — is a formal subdivision within the magazine between the “experimental” (which PF is calling “self-indulgent” and the LRB largely refers to as “poetry”) (or “new short story by john lanchester”) so that you don’t read both sections as if they have purchase on one another.

AND MAYBE THEY DON’T, bcz they are not treated as if they ought to. So I suppose we are exploring the question “how would things work if they were so treated, and in fact how would we even bring this about, with the tools to hand as we understand them?”)

adding: it suddenly occurred to me as I was writing this that — since one of the consequences of major shifts in information delivery, viz the arrival of the book, the arrival of television, the arrival of twitter, is significant traumatic estrangement between generations* — that the function of editing and sub-editing for “quality” is a highly routinised management of potential readership-trauma lol, and that this is both good not bad and bad not good…

*arrival of the book —> 30 years war inc. english civil war, among other wars, invasions, colonisations, erasures and worse

the tricia internet piece is one of my favourite pieces of writing in years, it truly spoke to my experience lol

(or “new short story by john lanchester”

i would like to make it clear to the committee that this is a mode i in no way endorse as “a method for tackling the contemporary conjuncture”.

I see there is a new podcast, called The State of... This month features John Lanchester, discussing 'the internet'.

fizzles's cunning plan proceeds apace

soon lanchester will be the only mode. lanchester on bloby the logos.

i saw there was an entire f’ing lrb podcast interview with lanchester about “the wall”, by david runciman, someone who keeps nosediving further and further down in my estimation (from a fairly high point i should add - i used to find him very useful on politics and now feel pretty much everything he says is suspect or in some way bogus). i couldn’t bring myself to listen to it.

i mean i think the thing is they very evidently ARE trying to address the "contemporary conjuncture” issue via lanchester :((((((((((((((

i think the o'hagan/grenfell piece also fell into this zone (and also that in the past he's been pointed at "conjuncture" stuff with varying levels of result: bitcoin, assange, a piece on farming many years ago which i remember liking, a piece on "the disappeared" in ref fred west (bcz i think he knew a victim or else someone who vanished who may have been a victim), and (again a piece i felt i liked at the time) something on kids and cruelty after the bulger case...

I see there is a new podcast, called The State of... This month features John Lanchester, discussing 'the internet'.

Patricia Lockwood's on it too!

Her recent piece on Lucia Berlin was also excellent: https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n23/patricia-lockwood/sex-on-the-roof

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dwd6ZfJU8AA9lmg.jpg

'Rău, rău!' Patricia kept shouting

I am sad that you haven't listened to the podcast, Fizzles. There was a good bit in which JL was talking about (NB DODGY SUMMATION OF POINT FOLLOWS) how fo course he knew all this unnecessary detail about the world as depicted in his fiction, but the skill was to leave so much of it out; I enjoyed the thought of you spluttering at that.

speaking as editor of wire long ago i strongly felt it was right and proper that at least some of the coverage also took experimental* form: esp as (A) the wire is/is a mag dedicated to the understanding and exploration of, among other things, the experimental, and (B) too much writing abt the avant garde is bad not good bcz the formal underpinnings and conventions of the writing run counter to the the formal underpinnings and conventions of the cap-E Experimental. and this is a clash that’s under-addressed bcz the unspoken demands of quality in the writing bleed back into how readers come to understand the avant garde. hence the wire is a journal that covers the avant-garde but almost never in any sense an avant-garde publication

It strikes me that with whatever we might call experimental music - possibly experimental literature, too - there's probably more of a demand from readers to have things explained via translation into a non-experimental language, i.e. ppl feel they're not "getting it", or not fully anyway, and tend towards conventional, accessible explainers more than they would if you're writing about Stax or whatever. Which I get must be frustrating for initiates.