Taking Sides: the TLS v. the LRB

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

Nick Cohen used to write for them

I am also caught up, but only because I am now waiting for 4 issues to actually show the fuck up.

Christopher Tayler quite generous to Amis.

Clair Wills surely too generous to Ali Smith.

I was interested to learn (from the Backlisted podcast, not deep knindie knowledge) that Andrew O’Hagan was once in The Big Gun, whose single I am sure I once owned, but don’t seem to own anymore:

https://youtu.be/JuDI1X84sHU

the cohen contributions (3, all 1998-99) seem like relics from a difft order: back when he was mainly known for being a critic of blair?

i mean i could actually read them but

lol Stewart Lee sent in a letter

Avoid reading on Amis and Smith and if you are starved of literary coverage read this excellent piece on Chinese classical poetry instead.

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/10/08/du-fu-li-bai-poems/

i am finally reading the papyrus forgery story omg 🧐🤪😳

(the story is amazing, the piece so so)

I like Tim's post though am unsure whether 'knindie' is his coinage.

(It is, I thought it looked funnier than “nindie knowledge”)

Is 'nindie' a recognised word, then?

did anyone read Andrew O'Hagan on Soho from back in the summer? Terrible nonsense of the first order, naturally I came here to post it so we can all have a good laugh https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n14/andrew-o-hagan/seventy-years-in-a-colourful-trade

The piece that unwrites itself: "When it’s over, when your youth is gone, you wonder what those times were all about, but there’s no point asking. They were about Soho and a whole lot of nonsense you’ll never hear again."

i am so old i remember when o'hagan was an interesting writer (i shd go back to those pieces and see if i was just a bad reader)

he seems to be putting together a lot of stuff on literary gossip and the scenes that engender it (as a massive gossip myself i am not immune to the pull of some of the tales tho my attitude to jeffrey barnard being unwell has always been #whocare)

there were the seeds of something interesting there- I think Julian Maclaren-Ross is a figure worthy of examination- and maybe Soho of yore deserves purple prose, but THIS purple?

His first book from the 1990s on missing people was very good, but that was long long ago.

yes it's the essay that led to that missing people book that i'm remembering i think, also -- was it the same piece? -- something on how sociopathic children can be w/o it being abnormal exactly

(also also a little booklet on farming round the time of BOVID SPONGIFORM, which i bought my mum as a present, and did start rereading more recently -- but i don't recall my recent conclusion)

Yes, I read the Soho article. I agree that it was purple, or perhaps just flamboyantly casual. I didn't really buy it.

The one thing I've liked by him was: James & Stevenson.

re gossip, he wants to stress that he is part of the group of gossips, and party to the gossip. He is very keen to emphasise how often he has met Norman Mailer and everyone else.

I didn't mind the Soho article as a piece of uncritical nostalgic fluff. I feel oddly attached to that particular version of the Soho mythos.

Made me think of bullshit like this
https://youtu.be/cjRLhkBi1gI

I read O'Hagan on New Romantics. (He uses a brief para to say the name doesn't matter and means nothing - an unhelpful attitude. He could at least have noted Duran's actual use of it in a song.)

It's mostly not *factually* wrong, as far as I can tell. But it's characteristically obnoxious. This writer almost always comes across as arrogant and as writing too fast and carelessly.

It also has the problem, first diagnosed on ILM, of A-level cliché. "If you think about it, New Romantics were braver and more outrageous than indie musicians!" would hardly have been a new thought at the start of Tom Ewing's poptimist movement 20 years ago -- it doesn't bear repeating as a new thought now.

really enjoyed emily wilson’s piece on three new translations of the oresteia. vivid descriptions of the mechanics of metaphor and politics, and in particular the role of women in the play and the translations.

i have seen the oresteia performed and i admit i struggled despite a vivid presentation. wish i’d had this to guide me at the time and it makes me want to read the trilogy, tho admittedly in greek rather than in translation.

also includes an angry attack on diversity in classics academia and the translations under review themselves.

It also has the problem, first diagnosed on ILM, of A-level cliché. "If you think about it, New Romantics were braver and more outrageous than indie musicians!" would hardly have been a new thought at the start of Tom Ewing's poptimist movement 20 years ago -- it doesn't bear repeating as a new thought now.

What struck me is that this argument, unlike something Ewing would write, didn't actually talk about the music at all - it's the subcultures he's comparing, where indie fans = political scolds and new romantics = more radical because they were messing with sexuality. This is an unconvincing binary, but also the way he sets it up is very old fashioned because today's kid subcultures are clearly a synthesis of these two - both highly politicized and interested in queerness.

Emily Wilson's piece is terrific, the discussion of the politics of translation is really striking better notes. Bet the letters in the next issue will be a laugh.

Emily Wilson: good when she analyses the texts, demonstrating her considerable expertise.

Bad when she attacks others for being 'elderly'.

Maybe one day she'll discover that getting old isn't that much fun. It probably isn't made better by people complaining at you for the sin of having managed not to die yet.

Emily Wilson (49, not old or young) was making a point about the demographics of translators of classical literature. That did not stop her from enjoying the translation by a 77 year old man the most.

Is there anything good on the politics of New Romantics? Couldn't understand it from what O'Hagan was talking about. He made this link with Brexit that seemed the laziest you could do.

I'd like to think someone like Penman would at least re-listen to the records.

simon price wd be my go-to here i think: dave rimmer's "like punk never happened" is very readable and i'm fond of dave -- i stayed in his berlin flat a couple of times in the 80s and he's chums w/biba kpof of all ppl -- but it kind of smash-hitses round the politics tbh

or my adam ant book if i ever get it together lol

xyzzz otm on Wilson, she's not attacking the translators for being elderly any more than she is attacking them for being white or men

49 is young, sorry if this offends

comments? closed!

*types in the box, pressing send to check whether I have been banned (for a week)*

Meanwhile this is what the former editor of the TLS is up to:

https://www.thebookseller.com/news/john-murray-reveals-forthcoming-books-podcast-stig-abell-1222179

Looking forward to having David Baddiel tell me about American Classics.

Excellent set of pieces on a novel that could be read alongside The Oresteia:

‘The unknown woman herself becomes the threshold between spheres and appears to initiate her own erasure.’ Matthew Turner on the architecture of fascism in Ingeborg Bachmann’s novel ‘Malina’ https://t.co/SJchAMrUTf pic.twitter.com/3arn3SmfzW

— frieze (@frieze_magazine) September 17, 2019

Merve Emre is good:

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/10/22/ingeborg-bachmann-meticulous-one/

Timely! I literally just read that the Basque translation of Bachmann's 'Simultan' ('Three Paths to the Lake' in English) won best translation prize this year. A collection of five stories I've not read yet. Thanks for that link btw.

np. Three Paths to the Lake is not covered in Emre's piece but it's good not bad.

Vaguely related: I am reading Adam Mars-Jones's new novel(la), BOX HILL, a very funny and engaging story of a frankly monstrous relationship.