Taking Sides: the TLS v. the LRB

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

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.