London ILB - FAP?

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n22/michael-wood/presence-of-mind

oh! and you have to say that's magnificent.

meanwhile:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/06/annie-lennox-feminist

A good evening! Think we pretty comprehensively dealt with Mills & Boon, Tolstoy, The Magi, Norman Cohn, Nik Cohn, CS Lewis, Alasdair Gray, Paul Morley, Owen Hatherley, Jonathan Franzen, DFW, Tom McCarthy, Zadie Smith, James Wood and Michael Wood. What was the name of that 17th century troublemaker you mentioned, p.o.v - somebody Coates?

Back on Wood's WBY book: it's marvellous compared to most literary criticism, but it does repeat elements that were frustrating to me and, I think, Mr Wooof in the original essay:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n16/michael-wood/yeats-and-violence

The crack-pated dreamers of ‘Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen’ by contrast are ruined by hindsight, they were only dreaming, and it is not ‘enough/To know they dreamed’, and not just because they are not all dead yet. Even death will not convert their errors into anything but folly. But why is this? And who are they?

They are a class, as Roy Foster says, the old Ascendancy in Ireland. Elsewhere Yeats borrows a phrase from the poem to talk about Lady Gregory, who is said to be ‘indifferent to praise or blame’, a quality attributed to the law that was one of the pretty toys ‘we’ had when young. But then their youth in this sense goes back a while, at least to the 18th century, as Foster suggests, and by the early 20th century that class was nervous rather than idealistic, and many Protestants were arming rather than dreaming. Foster also invokes England and the Pax Britannica, and I think Yeats is skilfully creating a movable moral and political community, English, Irish, international, a now defunct club to which anyone who was wrong about the world can claim to have belonged. Or can be accused, by themselves or others, of having belonged to. Members would be, for instance, all the casualties of what George Dangerfield long ago called the strange death of liberal England; all the Irish people who hoped for a non-violent progression to independence; and in the club’s most capacious definition, all the inheritors of the Enlightenment, in Europe and across the world, all the believers in some sort of moral progress running alongside the 19th century’s manifest advances in science and technology.

Did such a club exist, except in a retrospective arrangement, to borrow a phrase from Joyce? This is hard to say, since the evidence comes mostly from the club’s repentant and guilty members, in instances full of self-parody.

I've always this pretty misleading and unnecessarily muddy, and Wood repeats it in the book. It's OK as a paraphrase of what WBY seems to be saying, but I think it misses the probable incoherence of WBY's thought, the fact that what he says likely doesn't add up and is full of special pleading.

So:
- the Irish Ascendancy shouldn't be identified with these other groups
- the Ascendancy is internally incoherent anyway, or is an idea (dear to WBY) rather than a real sociological group. Some Anglo-Irish were nationalists, some were unionists - they can't really be run together politically.
- once you get to 'skilfully creating a movable moral and political community, English, Irish, international, a now defunct club to which anyone who was wrong about the world can claim to have belonged', you are admitting that the group isn't real, is just a Yeatsian construction, and that it has little real connection with the Ascendancy. But in the book he throws in references to the Americas here too!
- Enlightenment? But WBY was in many ways an anti-Enlightenment figure! He believed in magic, gyres, myths etc! Once you let him stand as part of a pro-Enlightenment group you've lost whatever coherence was left in the construct.

I guess I'm saying MW is too generous to WBY here, and thus makes himself look much more historically naive than he surely is.

ps / WBY was not a liberal either, though admittedly in Ireland he struck positions that were comparatively liberal, partly in the name of an idea of Protestantism

Yeah, I think it was that paragraph, and especially the point about the enlightenment that tripped me - it accelerates from mild hey-wait-a-sec confusion into real incoherence. The attempt to reclaim him for a humane, liberal, fairly sensible worldview can't really work - like he's not a MacNeice - the nonsense, the self-dramatising (and the self-dramatising picking apart of the self-dramatising), the dodgy politics are where part of the energy and complexity come from. But to be fair Wood's alert to that elsewhere, so yeah maybe that par is a bad slip. Surprised that it was carried over into the book.

Maybe if we'd written letters of protest about this para to the LRB at the time, we could have stopped this material from reappearing!

Had a lovely time last night - was thoroughly vexed beforehand, in high dudgeon, and the evening proved just the tonic I needed. It's a total pleasure to listen to the conversation, and, er, boozily interrupt with the sketchiest of comments. Thoroughly enjoyable.

Sorry Stevie, missed your question - Titus Oates was the troublemaker.

Feel like we barely got started on Owen Hatherley & the world of Zero Books.

Hatherley is in need -

If I might, errm, 'crowdsource' for a moment, if anyone has a title better than either/both Razzmatazz or The Joy of Pulp, please please let me know in the comments...

dear me.

link here, btw.

Was thinking about that Christopher Hill essay on the 'The Mad Hatter' today.

Lovely evening - did way more listening then had to go, shame I missed woof's table banging?! Can't quite picture it!

Both those titles are appalling.

Simon Reynolds once asked his readers for a title, then, as usual, gave his book a crass tasteless one that he could have thought of in 30 seconds. I mean, even apart from Rip It Up: Bring The Noise and Totally Wired? I think this character, though seemingly intelligent in many ways, also has a bizarre lack of nuance at some level.

I remember Elastica had a much-trumpeted name-our-album competition in the nme, which was won by something like 'xxxxxxxy' (their sex chromosomes) - then they just called it 'Elastica' anyway.

Can we do this another day? I missed it.

Hi PJM - I'm sure we will do it another day. They tend to happen once a season(?)

Spring Is Icumen In ILB FAP? Arrival of child #2 in April means this month may be my last chance for fancy book-larnin' chat for some time.

Any night of the week preferred?

Possibles for me in March would include

Fri 4
Tue 8
Mon 14
Thu 17, could be a good one
Wed 23
Thu 24
Sat 26
Sun 27 ...

March 17 is good for me. It is St Patrick's Day but I doubt the Royal Oak attracts many Guinness hats.

17th seems to be ok for me. I think. I'm sure the pinefox can be relied upon to wear one.

17th should be ok.

Think I'm in for the 17th.

PJ Miller will you be able to make it?

I'll tell him about it on Facebook...

Thursdays are difficult for me because her indoors has popmobility or something and gets very irate if she can't go. Otherwise I would be well up for it. Bang up for it, in fact. Who is Portrait of Velleity?

Is Weds 23 easier for people?

actually it's not so good for me after all.

I ain't no-one you know (probably), just a man on a message board. Was checking since you'd expressed interest upthread, & more = merrier.

Weds are difficult for me, tho' I have just been gifted the 30th.

I thought you might be some kind of alternative identity for The Pinefox.

Probably best not to change plans for me, cos I am quite likely to "pull out at the last moment" as some of you have experienced in the past.

22nd - 24th March is no good for me, btw - but go ahead if you need - should be around early summer, etc.

May as well stick to the 17th I think.

So is it this Thu and do we know where?

I'm not drinking right now but maybe I can change by then.

I had a rather heavy weekend and am still not feeling like drinking at all. Also I haven't read anything for what seems like eons. So basically I'll be sitting over a glass of lemonade saying nothing. Or I'll just drink too much and talk shit like usual.

Anyone else around? I seem to remember c# major expressed an interest at some point in the past.

I am up for this. The Royal Oak again?

I am def on for it, & Royal Oak sounds good, poss even 'traditional' by now.

Have come down with my 4th or 5th illness in as many months - illness for me is now becoming like war for C21 neo-cons, it never really abates - and my feeling about drink is much like Ron Rom's. But hope to attend.

Cool, see you all tomorrow round 18.30 - 19.0

yup, will get there around 7 i think.

just got out of an overrunning meeting by saying I'm really sorry, got scoot, I'm supposed to be somewhere. well it's true isn't it.

On the golden rocket to the royal oak as we speak.

ILB FAPS - get you out of boring work meetings, get you drunk, make you laugh and bang the table, and fill your brain with half remembered names, books and info. is there anything they can't do? it's practically a reithian vision of society.

Good to see you all last night. Further to the extended discussion of management speak, it turns out George Saunders' Four Institutional Monologues is online:

http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20090619161519/http://thegodparticle.com/2003_08/01Saunders.html

Yes, that was fun; I just seemed to be stricken with heavy humours, or Lenten gloom. Frustrating. Sorry I had to leave. Had been feeling dopey all day.

Well, the conversation was quite dystopian!

Had a good time as well.

Thanks for that Stevie, I'm looking forward to reading it - although some of the emails I've been getting today...

Hi Gamaliel

Thanks for your usual clarity. Its helps focus my mind.

[...]

We'll have a chat to ensure we are singing from the same hymn and to discuss any potential staging.

Thanks again

Cheers

A Manager

Later on another person, separately, said 'to make sure we are singing the same song'. Still, I'm looking forward to that potential staging. Sounds like it shd be fun.

Thanks everyone.

Looks like a lot of people want to secretly join a choir happen to also work in management.

Thanks for that link Stevie.

i am glad it was fun! it would have been so nice to be there, i shall hold out hope for the next.

How about a drink next week? or is everyone away?

I'm away till Friday.

I'm away till Friday.

That should not have posted twice (twice).

Might Thur 29th be a good day for this? Would be nice if anyone is about.

Could potentially do monday 26th, too. Confirm in a week.