Taking Sides: the TLS v. the LRB

I came across this piece from Al Alavarez's (someone I hear about now and then but never in an interesting enough way to actually read up on) ex-wife today, reviewing Al's account of their marriage:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v04/n10/ursula-creagh/first-chapters

It has that tediousness of the literary brand of gossip, but its a one of a kind too.

enjoying the big piece on robert louis stephenson and henry james in bournemouth -- which i think does the spadework to establish how a long gaze at entwined biographies can in fact be illuminating

(if only bcz it notes -- claims? -- that henry jekyll of jekyll and hyde fame is in fact a. based on his close friend james ftb same initials and b. kind of a critique of james' attitudes to the world and to writing?)

(also bcz fucksake it's fascinating that these two writers were so close)

i thought the hardwick reaches of the lowell-affair essay were also interesting, tho very VERY buried in much too much material abt lowell, who always elicits a massive #whocare from me -- not that i give much of a fuck abt poetry at all but with him it's like "what if beat poetry but dully posh?"

Might fuck about with the Christopher Rick's archive:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/contributors/christopher-ricks

(Read the piece on Empson's Using Biography last week, which I did enjoy. I finished Gulliver's Travels recently so his piece on Swift is just in time)

A lot of swearing going on here.

I very much agree with Mark S's post except his spelling of RLS's name.

Is RLS in the TLS or the LRB?

LRB, in May.

woops

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n13/amia-srinivasan/he-she-one-they-ho-hus-hum-ita

I’ve​ had the wrong pronouns used for me – ‘he/him’ instead of ‘she/her’ – by two people, as far as I know. One of them was an editor at this paper, who I am told used to refer to me as ‘he’ when my pieces passed through the office. In his mind only men were philosophers. The other was Judith Butler. I had written a commentary on one of her books, and she wrote a reply to be published along with it. In the draft of her response, she referred to me by my surname and, once, as ‘he’. Just a few lines later she wrote: ‘It is surely important to refer to others in ways that they ask for. Learning the right pronoun ... [is] crucial as we seek to offer and gain recognition.’ I wrote her a meek email – this was, after all, Judith Butler – pointing out the error. She replied not twenty minutes later: ‘Sorry Amia! I always did have trouble with gender.’ Swoon.

Dreadful, dreadful first paragraph. The highlighted sentence is very offensive, all the more so in the context of what follows. I made it a couple more paragraphs in but I've decided not to continue.

Can you explain to me, what's wrong with the sentence, the paragraph, or the piece?

I'm a little curious as to your thinking here.

I laughed at the bit highlighted (guess the editor either moved on or took it with good grace).

That was one the best things the LRB has published this year. Great essay on language and politics and one of the few things that should be read by more people and re-published in places like The Guardian xp

The sentence attacks another, unnamed, person, without evidence.

The attack is based on hearsay - 'who I am told' - rather than any written evidence seen by the author.

The attack is false - as anyone who is an editor at the LRB will be able to name several women philosophers. Including Judith Butler, who writes for the LRB.

The basis for the attack is undermined further in the next sentence, which notes that Judith Butler made the same mistake. The author doesn't then state that in Butler's mind, only men were philosophers.

Personally, if editing the work of someone whose gender I didn't know, I would check it. I think that people should always be careful about this kind of thing. Maybe this editor wasn't caeful, and should have been (but then, the editor's behaviour is purely hearsay - most things reported third hand are unreliable).

But the primary reason that any UK editor would make this mistake, in this particular case, is simply that 'Amia' might not be such a familiar first name to them. Personally I am not sure I have encountered another person with this name, apart from this author. I would assume that a name ending in 'a' was female or feminine, as that is quite conventional - but hardly universal.

Even if you supposed, hypothetically, that the unnamed editor, unsure of gender, had defaulted to male -- something that one should not do, and could be worthy of criticism -- then this accusation should be stated as such, not confused with the hyperbolic and false allegation in the sentence. Hyperbole and falsehood tend to obscure the real issues that need addressing. For instance, the fact that more men than women get to publish in the LRB.

My comments are on this paragraph - I make no comment on the rest of the article.

Sometimes people report others behaving in ways that seem alien or wrong-headed to you, because these are not ways you could ever see yourself or imagine yourself behaving, therefore it's incomprehensible to you that others might act that way. (Such as not checking an unfamiliar name on a byline.)

In these situations, is your reaction to assume that the person describing these experiences is lying, or mistaken, or otherwise just plain wrong? Or is your reaction to think about the ways that people who aren't like you, might have access to experiences that are quite different from yours, that you have never encountered?

Because I think the latter technique is really important to understanding what pieces like this article are *about*. What if instead of that "this must be a hyperbolic lie", you thought "this person is a woman, and I am not; this person is Asian and I am not. Maybe they've had different experiences that led them to different conclusions?" and went along reading the rest of the article with that understanding in mind? They might not be wrong, they might just be different.

Because it really is a very good, very interesting article about the challenges of grammar, and about getting stuff right, and about how to behave when you accidentally get stuff wrong. When Judith Butler gets your pronoun wrong, that's *funny* - and the humbling of a person who is considered an expert on gender actually provides a lovely intro to how other people, who are less smart than Butler, can also learn to negotiate that grammar.

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 🌍🌏🌎

Zhou Enlai and Barbra Streisand has been the most enjoyable double bill in a while

pleased to see perry taking my line on the cultural revolution lol

Will dive in later to see if there is any mention of O'Hagan's piece on Grenfell.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n19/james-butler/this-much-evidence-still-no-charges

there's only this very indirect implied mention: "An opposing argument eventually emerged in the press, insisting that the council had been maligned: beneficent and detached patricians, lumbered with an ungrateful tenantry and incompetent TMO, their sins were, in the scale of things, minor."

i imagine this wording is the result of negotation with his editors, everything else about the piece seems cogent and toughly expressed (that it's been run at all is a tacit admission the earlier piece was a blunder, tho not of the scale of the blunder -- let's see if they run any letters about it)

does it signal a changing of the guard? butler has a “contributing editor” for several months (there are 19 and i believe he's the newest); o’hagan is these days termed “editor at large” -- there's only one of these. i don't really know what these titles entail*, my guess for o'hagan is “senior staff writer with wide-roving focus”, while the “contributing editors” are regular reviewers who are encouraged to offer readerly input comment and advice on items run and general direction? (this is literally a guess).

*to be fair no two publications deploy the staff-name designations the same way lol

thanks to a curtailed teenage encounter with jude the obscure (most witchy titled in a bound set on a bookshelf on a rain-best family holiday in wales), hardy is someone i am not at at all likely now to be drawn to (novels *or* poetry), but i have to say i'm getting a lot out of the matthew bevis piece on him: as a much more anxiously strange figure than anywhere i'd placed him* in relation to the fireworks of the first part of the 20th century

*probably unjustly but probably not totally unjustly lol

That Hardy piece says he "must be the first, I think, to have smuggled the word ‘whang’ into a poem", in 1924. Perhaps but in the next issue we read of William James' "sun [...] whanging down", from 1868. A back issue search also finds this joyful title: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v14/n10/ian-hamilton/whangity-whang-whang