Taking Sides: the TLS v. the LRB

Read the piece by Adam Mars-Jones piece on William Gaddis (online) a couple of days ago. While I do like this rubbing up of attentiveness to past novelistic technique that M-J can bring to anything there is also a feeling that he is inadequate to tackle what deviates in a significant way. A lot of the points are about organisation, or lucidity of sentence - he mystifies a "feeling for the medium" when comparisons to novels that apparently make points better and have been forgotten are run through, just in case they fall flat (which they often do, I like half of the sentences M-J says are bad, and sometimes he will miss the point of them). Goes without saying that a lot of this could be written about Ulysses, but which he'd never get past an editor at the LRB today. So he needs to be careful, M-J needs to give his due to modernist-era writers who are already in the canon. so, 'Pierre Menard' has vast interior spaces. That's just the natural order of things. But Gaddis? He can't write 'literary prose', which appears to mean M-J has to read a sentence more than once to parse some meaning.

He likes JR more, but he starts his discussion of this book with a comment on Joy Williams' intro. So it seems that one woman has taken interest in Gaddis!!! Its one of the most disgusting things I have ever read in a book review in this paper and they should be ashamed to pusblish it.

JR fails the bechdel test

Say what?

joke: the novel JR by william Gaddis consists exclusively of dialogue from crank phone calls made by a boy, therefore it trivially fails the Bechtel test as there is no scene where where two women talk about something other than a man—because there is no scene where two women talk (actually i forget if there is even one woman in the novel). xyz is offended that adam Mars-Jones’ review (allegedly) implies that zero women like the writing of william gaddis, contrary to the evidence that at least one woman (joy Williams) claims to like it. the fact that JR fails the bechdel test, a minimal (yet clearly superficial and inadequate) test of a works’ feminism, is offered tongue-in-cheek as a reason why women don’t like gaddis

here’s the passage in question

Joy​ williams’s name on the cover of JR (she wrote the new introduction) is proof that an almost caricaturally male enterprise, and the challenge of yomping across vast inhospitable tracts of literary terrain, has appealed to at least one female sensibility in the 45 years since the book’s publication.

I've finally picked up a copy of the BRIXTON REVIEW OF BOOKS.

It's free!

I will read at least part of it with interest.

the novel JR by william Gaddis consists exclusively of dialogue from crank phone calls made by a boy

Er, no it doesn’t

It does have at least one woman character, a love interest, who is not well drawn iirc - it’s not a novel of rich characters tbf

i see that terry e gets schooled on matters wittgenstein on the letters page of the newest LRB so maybe i went overboard assuming he actually has knowledgeable interest in him (but he did write the screenplay for the jarman film)

can it be Mark S of this parish writing in the LRB blog?

🎻🎻🎻🎻

I've probably said it a few times: writing on the blog is probably the best way in to writing in the paper.

(Apart from other measures like having affairs with the editors, doing a postdoc at All Souls College, etc.)

I have read Mark S's post.

I don't know the music he mentions. It's impressive that he knows so much about this.

I find this comment quite shrew and convincing:

But Bartók is no more a Classic FM regular than Hendrix is, and Kennedy is fighting on this noisy battlefield too far away from two rather different fronts. Inviting black musicians and then having them play black music risks affirming precisely the divisions to be challenged (as Chineke! were perhaps hinting to the Guardian). You can expand the repertoire or you can tackle the lack of diversity in professional orchestras but it’s hard to do both at once, even when the issues are so intimately related. People love to insist that such stunt projects are breaking down barriers – but as popularity often also makes for unfashionability, they may just be moving them instead.

I quite like it when he talks about people on TV in the 1970s.

The one part I can't quite make sense of is this formulation:

"aggressively unrespectable spectacle, the opposite of counter-revolutionary string-driven gentrification"

as being respectable and being counter-revolutionary and gentrifying sound like part of the same thing, rather than opposites.

*SHREWD, of Shrewsbury

It does have at least one woman character, a love interest, who is not well drawn iirc - it’s not a novel of rich characters tbf

― siffleur’s mom (wins), Sunday, 19 September 2021 bookmarkflaglink

JR is a satire, strong characters is not a thing that it does (MJ compared it to a comedy, which seemed like a basic error to me)

LRB 9.9.2021.

Rosemary Hill on Constance Spry's flower arranging at the garden museum: quite good to see this covered. Notable that ms Spry had a complete career teaching health to women in Ireland, before this artistic and horticultural turn.

Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite on the coal industry and deindustrialisation: one of the best things of its kind in the LRB in ages. I like the way this essay builds up from basic facts, including the nature of coal itself, and tells a chronological history of the industry. It explains why working in it was tough; why nationalisation was good; why things changed c.1970s-1980s. It carefully insists on distinctions and precision. It makes clear statements. It's just what such an article should be like.

Blake Morrison on Simon Okotie's detective novels: I'm quite surprised that old stager BM still does so much for the LRB, and quite touched. He can still do a good job. His description of these novels is very fine, and conveys much. Where I'm sceptical is that he doesn't indicate that the humour of this concept or conceit wears thin after a while, whereas for me it had done so by the end of his review.

pleased to see that comments on my blog are all abt resale prices of an old ELP record

Really great -- and much better than the LRB's -- review of Said's biography. It gives so much space to the intellectuals in the global south he argued with.

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/unexamined-life-omar

yes it's very good indeed

LRB 23.9.2021.

Christian Lorentzen on Sally Rooney, whom I haven't read, but I watched all of the terrible TV version of her novel. I think it's good that they gave this to CL (someone now more distant, in the US), and respect the fact that he has expressed scepticism. Broadly most of what he says sounds accurate to what I know about this writer whom I haven't yet read. He conveys a sense of boredom and blandness that corresponds well with the TV version.

I don't think that CL quite nails down his critical response to SR's seemingly quite bad and bland political critique of consumerism. CL goes into emotional extrapolation here but doesn't really explain why what SR's character says is wrong. I suspect it's not really wrong, more that it's quite bad writing.

I like CL's review, but I think that he could say more about SR's writing, as writing, and why it's bland, as it seems to be. He doesn't really nail that down either; he's fairly fixated here on characters and what they do.

It's noteworthy that SR has written for the LRB, but has here received a bad review. Even if you like SR and think CL is wrong, this is a rarity. The LRB is full of pals' puffs and log-rolling. It's good that for once they broke that cycle.

i think this is a good counter (it's something i've seen irish readers say about reviews of rooney by ppl who aren't a bit irish): https://www.gawker.com/culture/sally-rooney-is-irish

caveat: i am not irish, i haven't read her books, i quite liked the TV show mainly for its feel and pace, and for its sense of a place i don't know and am not competent to judge a portrait of

as for PF's second point, now that i'm "in" the LRB, they shd hire me to TAKE DOWN LANCHESTER (who is apparently a director of the parent company lol so this wd be a wise and hilarious move on my part)

I have seen, online, the claim that "we need to reassert that Sally Rooney is Irish".

I think everyone knows very well that she is Irish.

It's practically the most obvious thing about her.

Yes, Mark, I would enjoy seeing you do that. :D

Let's not forget that Dion Boucicault, author of THE SHAUGHRAUN and THE COLLEEN BAWN, was actually Irish.

i mean the burden of the gawker counterargument does go beyond the four words contained in the URL -- and definitely gets at something absent from christian lorentzen's review which lorentzen isn't even aware is missing? but as i say i haven't read the novels and am therefore leaning on the positions of others who have (whose opinion in this regard i very much trust, but i can only ventriloquise so far)

It's noteworthy that SR has written for the LRB, but has here received a bad review. Even if you like SR and think CL is wrong, this is a rarity. The LRB is full of pals' puffs and log-rolling. It's good that for once they broke that cycle.

― the pinefox, Wednesday, 29 September 2021 bookmarkflaglink

This is not the case. She has two articles, both published in 2018. It's clear both of them have moved on. She is a high selling author - she'll never write for the LRB again so there is just no way this was part of the calculation.

Meanwhile the TLS actually got Michael Hofmann to bulldoze Colm O'Toibin's latest book. That would never get published in the LRB.

"the book is provocatively underedited"

i only met dave keenan once that i know of, and i don't know remember where it was

sorry: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n19/paul-mendez/screwdriver-in-the-eye

Pleasingly scabrous review that. Who's got the time to read 808 pages of David K33nan? The only review I've read of this was Andy Mi11er's, which was so ecstatic in its register, it wasn't really a review at all.

"stiff little fingers – post-punk chroniclers of the Troubles"

dude they are NOT post-punk, get a grip

they are new wave

I remember reading in some music paper decades ago that the earliest version of SLF were a "cabaret metal band". NOT REAL PUNK! A metalhead I worked with used to play their cds in the van, but I stopped complaining because it was that or Chris Moyles.

my dead father haunted my dreams – until I drowned his caul

https://amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/oct/06/a-moment-that-changed-me-my-dead-father-haunted-my-dreams-until-i-drowned-his-caul

gotta respect the grift

Started that bestiality article in the LRB and I feel like I'm back in high school and some kid is trying to show me shit on rotten.com

I've only read "Normal People" but it seems Lorentzen's view of that book at least is a bit uncharitable, or at least it didn't give me a very good sense of why people might like it. I guess her new book is supposed to be more political, but I'm not sure she's trying to convey a coherent and specific political theory of the world in the way Lorentzen seems to want her to.

The best review of Sally's latest was in The Nation.

I really enjoyed this piece on Uwe Johnson. It's where LRB writes about a book years after it was released really pays off though in this case it's a book about the writer who wrote the book (Anniversaries, which is nearly 2000 pages and got some panicky reviews at the time the translation came out).

It also writes nicely about 'Real England'. Lots of little things in it.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n20/patrick-mcguinness/outside-in-the-bar

Yes that was a very good piece, it made me want to investigate both Johnson himself and the book's author, Patrick Wright.

Highly recommend Wright's On Living in an Old Country, which also writes nicely about real and unreal England.

The Village that Died for England is also very good.

LRB 23.9.2021:

Adam Mars-Jones on William Gaddis proved to be outstanding, the best thing I can remember reading in the LRB all year.

LRB 21.10.2021:

Patrick McGuinness on Patrick Wright somewhat informative on the content, but wildly extravagant in its praise for the book, and doesn't make Uwe Johnson's own very long fiction sound good. Not very keen on this reviewer.

(I have used Wright's OLD COUNTRY many times but his later work has the feature that every book is massively long. I have THE VILLAGE ... on a shelf, it might as well be a doorstop, can't see that I'll ever actually get through it.)

Owen Hatherley on Soviet architecture very sound: not just knowledgeable but well-turned.

Lorentzen on Richard Powers: having no great investment in the author, I enjoy such a take-down. Again I note CL's boldness in doing this.

Deborah Friedell on Franzen: a good contrast: after 20 years, a great, refreshing relief to read something on Franzen that doesn't mainly sneer at his extra-curricular statements, but actually thinks about what's good and distinctive about him as a novelist.

Maggie Kilgour on Milton: serviceable review, but surely people who truly work on this stuff aren't going to get new material from a biography at this stage?

Hatherley was good. As was Milton, but I wasn't sure I learnt a lot from it.

Also really liked Emily Wilson's review of Aristophanes. Just the range of reference she brings on a very difficult comic playwright for modern audiences. It's good they are using her more despite Burrow's somewhat cautious review of her translation of Homer a year or two ago. It was actually a way in for her, she had hardly contributed before.

Maggie Kilgour on Milton: serviceable review, but surely people who truly work on this stuff aren't going to get new material from a biography at this stage?

For people who truly work on it, I guess I can imagine someone working on Milton-as-poet or Milton-in-the-Restoration not knowing the detail of the 1630s, or its recent historiography?

But as an interested amateur/ex-semi-pro, I was wondering the same - I'm not sure where the space is if it's basically the Campbell/Corns biography (2008), only longer. Might be a bit more narrative both on Milton & the 1630s - c/c is most comfortable being scholarly iirc (but this new one does not sound pop). May read it.

Ahead of its publication in the next issue, I offer this essay on Andreas Malm, climate politics, fossil fascism and direct action on today's #COP26GDA

Why not read it on the way to an action near you? https://t.co/GxxsH4hZpI

— James B (@piercepenniless) November 6, 2021

Adam Mars Jones' hatchet job on the booker winner, the book sounds pretty bad (and classic booker material) but AMJ sure has some funny ideas about what you can and can't do in novels.

Yep, I felt the same about AMJ's Gaddis review - incredibly prescriptive about what a novel can and can't do, or be, and seemingly oblivious to the idea that a writer of 'experimental' fiction like Gaddis might deliberately be frustrating certain readerly expectations about consistency of form, style etc.

Looking at the wiki. A collected short stories back in the early 80s, a novel and an unfinished trilogy (last vol in 2011), shifting then to a book on Ozu's Late Spring and memoirs of a difficult family history, which basically sounds like he has the contacts to indulge him.

There is more than a hint of frustration in the reviews that time has passed him by.

he's been a fixture in this terrain of reviewing since the mid-80s at least, i remember -- and do not forgive -- the dismissive TLS review he gave dave rimmer's like punk never happened lol

has anyone here read any of his fiction? (obviously not me)

i used to see him on the bus a lot. idk his reviews can be entertaining and good at picking out why some things 'work' but yes often the point of writing is not to work but to resist, disrupt, unmake and his approach is least interesting when unfriendly in which case it can seem uncomprehending and constipated.

Would like to see more reviews of this:

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/graeber-wengrow-dawn-of-everything/

i just finally read sheila fitzpatrick's piece on perfume east and west and -- as i always do with SF -- came away informed and interested. i think PF is correct that the throatclearing stuff upfront is not especially deftly handled, she should just have been blunter quicker: "what is smell? you ask. i don't know and it doesn't matter bcz what's actually interesting in this story is the tale of two women in very different systems who were not as different as you'd think, and above all, WHAT DID THE WIFE OF THE SECOND LONGEST-LASTING OLD BOLSHEVIK GET UP TO?"

her basic subject-matter has always been the texture of life in the USSR as was and this is more of that