Taking Sides: the TLS v. the LRB

I really liked this piece, tbh, and wish more stuff by Srinivasan was in the LRB. Her cephalopods article was one of their best.

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/andrew-o-hagan-the-great-chip-pan-fire-novelist-of-the-age-1.4338597

Speaking of social media, O’Hagan had his own experience of “cancel culture” in 2018 when he published a long essay on the fire at Grenfell Tower, London, which had killed 72 people. In it he was “disgusted that the Tory government were manipulating this fire for political purposes. I went into depth on how international companies had been able to flout British safety laws for their own profit. But those things still didn’t please my friends on the left, because I also pointed to their unfairness.” He rejected the idea that the Conservative council in whose borough the fire took place did not help the victims and their families, and he was critical of the response on the night by the London Fire Brigade and of some of the activist groups that claimed to speak for the residents of the tower block. “It was obvious,” he says of his critics, “how few of them had actually read the piece. It was 65,000 words, and within 45 minutes of it being published, thousands of people were online, quoting each other, saying I should be shot.”

What rubbish.

His granny seems sound though.

Frances Stonor Saunders seems to have published an entire (short?) book in 3 issues of the LRB.

Avoiding most of it has been a good way of catching up on LRB issues.

Jenny Turner really is the best the LRB has. This write-up of the Feminist movement is so good and comprehensive with some nice reflections as a (somewhat, sometime) participant (losing books by Feminists through so many house moves). Really necessary.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n18/jenny-turner/dark-emotions

jenny T and i once got chucked out of soho's the FRENCH HOUSE for running up its narrow stairs too noisily when the upstairs bit was in fact closed

when oh when will i write up my tales of the wild 80s

900-page biography of Warhol, reviewed at great length (as always) by Colm Toibin, who mainly just tells the story of AW's life, apart from a pretentiously digressive non-linear (ie: later event) opening that doesn't go anywhere or have any positive structural effect.

What is the point?

the element in that wound me up most: he's arsey abt the biographer's mundane attempts at art crit but while he quotes some much better crit (the generally good wayne kostenbaum, the reliably great gary indiana) he delivers none at all of his own, no toibinesque insight or perspective

i mean i think the precis IS the point -- you read this so you don't have to read a full 900-page warhol biog, i use LRB this way a fair amount -- but if that's all you're doing you don't really get to cast sneery shade at the person who handed you the materials you're boiling down imo

David runciman's talking politics podcast used to advertise some website that would summarise dreadful airport pop sociology books so you could get the jist in minutes. It came in handy when I had an awful boss who used to prescribe these as part of my job and actually quiz me on them.

Mark S: yes, I agree, the worst thing about the article is that it offers no insight at all of its own.

For you or me, writing for the LRB would, frankly, be a big deal. We would give it our best shot. In that perspective, to do it as lazily and badly as Toibin is insulting.

It's astounding that F. S. Saunders ended up using her three very long episodes to transcribe letters saying things like 'Oxford, 1949: Are you coming up for the summer hols?'

Toibin's recent piece on having cancer was ace. Haven't read the warhol article because it now takes even more forevers for issues to arrive in Australia. Still waiting for the last 3 to get here.

Adam Mars-Jones explains in detail why he doesn't think an acclaimed book works well.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n18/adam-mars-jones/cows-are-more-important

One of the finest literary reviewers of the age.

Dreadful, arrogant, entitled 'diary' on leaving an academic post:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n18/malcolm-gaskill/diary

One of the dumbest things about it is that it conflates changes in the academic world (which it's often reasonable to complain about) with changes introduced specifically, at short notice, to deal with the pandemic (which nobody in HE, including the best-paid managers, wanted or foresaw).

It used to be more interesting. In 1993, Keele still bore a resemblance to the world Malcolm Bradbury captured in The History Man

holy shit

Among other things:

So when my wife accepted a job in Dublin and I took a career break to look after our children, settling into non-academic life was easy. I didn’t miss it, any of it.

The facts here are basic to what he is talking about, but he passes over them.

His job was in Norwich. His wife took a job in Dublin. Did he go with her? Did he stay with the children in England? Did her job finish and she return to England? Without these basics, you can't make sense of the practicalities of his decision. On the face of it, it sounds like he has a nice new life in Dublin, supported (he does say this) by his wife.

Note that he took a 'career break' two years ago. Did that break finish? Was it still ongoing when he left his job? Was he being paid again at that time, or had he been on unpaid leave for over two years by the time he resigned? Again, any proper account of such a momentous life decision would need to explain these things.

It is worth emphasizing that most people do not feel *able* to quit their career aged 53. The fact that he can do this makes him very fortunate.

There are lots of other bad things in the article.

that history man quote needs expanding:

It used to be more interesting. In 1993, Keele still bore a resemblance to the world Malcolm Bradbury captured in The History Man (1975): lecturers taught whatever enthused them [...] and the cooler professors held parties to which students where invited

if you haven't read it, the cool professor in the novel who throws parties is a sociopath and rapist who destroys the careers of students and staff.

it might be less vapidly self-absorbed if he'd made some slight effort actually to exemplify (and better time-locate) a few of the generalisations. it's a blur of sweepingly unspecific contrasts, against a distant backdrop of imposed changes perhaps good perhaps bad. if he wants his retirement to be bracing not torpid, maybe he needs to slay a few of the very particular dragons he's so vaguely hinting at -- mabe even name some names? did he sign NDAs?

i mean it's maddening because the genuine shapes of some things bad and good are discernible somewhere under this clumsily twitched blanket --political, sociological, pedagogical, even personal -- but if he himself has any good sense of how these systems interact now and have interacted over time, he's not letting on

(my unkind guess is he doesn't really, bcz he isn't terribly interested? if he was he'd find it hard not to talk abt it, NDA or no NDA) (even more unkind: i started thinking "justified imposter syndrome strikes again")

(responding to ledge: yes i was thinking "the good old days! where we could fuck students, or else just them up")

s/b "the good old days! where we could fuck students, or else just fuck them up"

I like the wording of Mark S's post. One of his best little commentaries in a while.

It's plain that THE HISTORY MAN is a terrible precedent, and unselfconsciously saying 'I liked university when it was like THE HISTORY MAN' is dire - but, despite the author's awfulness, he seems *not* to mean things like sexual harassment. He's certainly not explicitly harking for that.

But he does say, with unpleasant casualness, "Provided he – and it was usually a he – turned up fully dressed and sober and didn’t lay hands on anyone, the crazy lecturer could be an inspiration." True. But the sentence gives too many hostages, implying that these bad things *might* easily have happened in the older world.

Actually, implying that they typically did or even that people were often 'crazy' is inaccurate and unhelpful (even to his own case against change). The truth is that if you're going to raise weighty topics, like sexual harassment at work (including education), you should take it seriously and state facts. Or don't raise it at all. Innuendo won't do.

None of which, as we've seen, even starts to cover how bad this article is.

Oh, the other thing I was going to say to Mark S was: I wish he had signed an NDA !! It's outrageous that he's quit, taken a pay-off (unlike, probably, what most people would get on leaving their jobs), and then turned round and written an article (for yet more money) criticizing his old job and citing (though not naming) former colleagues, saying that many of them also wish they could leave.

This is - I'd like to say 'unprofessional' behaviour, but the author has just blithely walked out his profession. Well, it's bad behaviour, and it might have been appropriate for his pay-off to include a contractual ban on such things.

Adam Mars-Jones explains in detail why he doesn't think an acclaimed book works well.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n18/adam-mars-jones/cows-are-more-important

One of the finest literary reviewers of the age.

― the pinefox, Sunday, 20 September 2020 bookmarkflaglink

So the last review I read by him +of a Dag Solstad novel, a writer I like) also unfavourably compared the work it to Nabokov iirc. That aside, my problem is that it feels like I'm in a creative writing workshop, with set ways of creating tension, of making psychology work, of provoking you into a state of shock. When it doesn't meet that criteria this is marked down.

And it's incredibly boring to read.

I thought he did a good job on joy Williams where he seemed particularly charmed by her idiosyncratic approach to storytelling mechanics and upending them. Didn't feel rigidly disapproving, but I generally only read his bits when I run out of things that look more immediately interesting and I'm on holiday or something

I read his articles when I am ready for a treat.

I read many of the others as a duty.

Did anybody read the 3-part suitcase thing? I have no idea what it's about and if it's worth reading given it's ultimately the length of a short book.

Nope, no one here has. Just did a quick search on twitter and a few people have enjoyed it..

but I generally only read his bits when I run out of things that look more immediately interesting and I'm on holiday or something

― plax (ico), Wednesday, 23 September 2020 bookmarkflaglink

It's terrible that he monopolises their fiction reviews (it's not exactly a Penman-esque domination but it looks like he is its main reviewer), then again I seldom go to LRB for their fiction coverage.

It's terrific that he reviews fiction for them often. He's wonderful at this particular job.

But numerous other people also review fiction for the LRB. Christopher Tayler is one of the best but seems to do less at the moment.

James M: I read lots of the Suitcase project without properly engaging with it. It looked like a massive bout of self-indulgence.

But numerous other people also review fiction for the LRB. Christopher Tayler is one of the best but seems to do less at the moment.

― the pinefox, Wednesday, 23 September 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Yes and they are trying to give newer voices some space: Lauren Oyler, Emily Witt and Patricia Lockwood..

I rediscover this article, which I saw given as an LRB lecture:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v39/n08/michael-wood/fritz-lang-and-the-life-of-crime

Looking forward to rereading now I know a bit more about Fritz Lang.

cheers, pinefox. Skimming it did not help me work out what it was ABOUT. A bit of context wouldn't have gone astray.

James Lasdun essay on Christian forgery - more entertaining than expected.

Tove Jansson letters - good topic.

don't read adam mars-jones very often for what is possibly a silly and even a spiteful reason: many many years ago he reviewed chris cutler's "file under popular" and dave rimmer's "like punk never happened" for the TES: the first is an interesting but quite poorly written collection of essays (on music and technology and the politics of both, among other topics), the second a superb i-was-there jab by a smash hits writer at a chronicle of the rise and fall of the new pop… amj gave the latter a poor review (he didn't really get it) and the former more of a thumbs-up than it deserved, very much as if to say "more of the latter less of the former" plz. i disliked the bumptious way he apoproached this task and strongly took against the idea of him…

… and here we are 35 years later, with me still holding those 600-odd ancient words fiercely against him! the effect is that i read his review here very much assuming he was missing the point and that everything he declared was bad must be good. i probably need a better -- much more recent and relevant -- calibration, like his review of a novel i've read, to see what he's bringing to it that i'd miss and where his tastes in fiction are located in relation to mine.

a subsequent edition of "file under popular" is rewritten and better, bcz cutler's girlfriend was to be the translator (into german iirc) and told him she refused to translate it until he made it read better 👍👍👍

she told me this at a garden party we were all at -- thrown by members of AMM lol -- which was funny bcz he was sat beside her not saying anything. i've given both editions a bit of a dusty review at different times so he probably feels abt me much the way i do abt adam mars-jones. this is the shape of the world 🌍🌏🌎

What is AMM?

A musical group

you wouldn't like them pinefox

Lol

I relate to mark's anecdote because I'm still kind boycotting Vice in the year of our lord 2020 because it seemed shit in 2004 (tbf recent threads have suggested I'm not missing much)

There is quite a lengthy digression on AMM, in the context of a mini-chapter on Cornelius Cardew, in the context of a larger chapter about Eno's Obscure Records label, in the forthcoming Paul Morley book on classical music fyi, so The Pinefox may possibly soon become more au fait.

"… and here we are 35 years later, with me still holding those 600-odd ancient words fiercely against him!"

No no this is good not bad.

Actually what am-r's method reminds me of is Nabokov's lectures, which I spent a bit of time with earlier this year. It's a page-by-page reading that merely verifies whether a novelistic technique and logic is thoroughly applied but I often feels that even if pages are often wrong the book overall can be really good. In other words, a novel is not a piece of furniture!

But I have never studied writing (or anything artistic) either in a formal setting or as a hobby so that's where the irritation comes from

xxp vice has some ok reporting but I pretty much do a pick and mix of what comes from my twitter.

Neal Ascherson on break-up of Britain stuff. I'm reluctant to criticize him as he's such an old stager, but I find him too figurative and imprecise a writer to do this well. He creates generalities (Britain and England) to make an argument when they might as well be reversed.

He's also wrong to think that no-one in England cares about the union with Scotland. On the whole he writes on this stuff from too much inside his own self-confirming bubble. And when will people, from the great Perry down, stop citing Tom Nairn's deeply uninteresting and unhelpful coinage of 'Ukania' as though it's a brilliant and witty insight? (They won't.)

Enjoyed this account of Gornick's writing, which is nice to read in parallel with Turner's piece I linked last week:

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/10/08/vivian-gornick-desk-daring/

Bee Wilson on wheat: one of the most tedious and impenetrable LRB articles I've read.

And compounded by starting with 'During lockdown, my Cambridge neighbours have been helping each other buy flour to make their sourdough bread. Isn't it interesting how during this uncertain time, we've all returned to the joy of baking'.

I'm now in a position I can hardly remember ever being in: Have finished every backlogged LRB and passed them on and have no current LRB at all until the new one arrives.

It's a rare pleasure, bask in it.

i can send you my login if you like, so you can start again at the beginning