Taking Sides: the TLS v. the LRB

i just had a quick glance at the last six months. there actually doesn't seem much evidence what i claimed as a push to be more culturally modern -- i know there were a couple of pieces i noticed at some point last year (or the year before?) which made me think "oh, they wouldn't have had THAT in the old days" but i can't remember what they were lol (i didn't read them) and it evidently wasn't in recent months. i only spotted three pieces by two writers i think of as must-read (j.hoberman and garry wills, plus jacqueline rose as chairman alphie notes), which i will probably go back and dig thru -- as well as several i think of as must-not-read lol. most contributors i don't know either way (bcz out of touch).

judging by the exchanges on the letters pages american history is still busily being re-litigated in a post-1619 context (adding: sean wilentz is one of my must-not-reads tbh). i think down the years american history is probably what i've learned most abt from the nyrb (james macpherson and so on; wills again)

i generally find their essays on classical music and fine arts and 19th century authors useful if rarely sprightly bcz they're thoughtful and information-rich even when (and hence bcz) they're a long way from my own tastes and sensibilty (jenny uglow i see is a regular contributor and i'm right now consulting her very good little book on the (british wing of the) art of book illustration). the PEN-adjacent cultural-political backslapping i wd probably mostly skip over: it looks like there's a still a lot of it but it hardly has the salience it had in the 1980s ffs

three pieces by two writers = three pieces by two writers

ilx shd start using the "An Exchange" formula when starting threads viz

"whats the most unacceptable thing to come out of yr ass: An Exchange"

i went back a bit further and found pankaj mishra contributes now and then: he's one of the ppl i had in mind when i said "expanding in a better direction"

I'd guess that the typical age of NYRB contributors is higher than the LRB's.

Yes the LRB carries long-stagers like Anderson and M Wood, who would raise any average age, but it also seems very deliberately to publish younger people, 'chasing the millennial vote' etc. I don't generally think that these younger writers are good.

I reflect: I'm not sure that Perry Anderson has ever been in the NYRB. If true, that would say something about the NYRB vs the LRB.

The typicalGolden Age of NYRB is 10 Issues for 10 Dollars

^I forgot to capitalize “Is.” #onethread

"i generally find their essays on classical music and fine arts and 19th century authors useful if rarely sprightly bcz they're thoughtful and information-rich even when (and hence bcz) they're a long way from my own tastes and sensibilty"

The Charles Rosen archive is superb and almost a good reason for getting a subs for a year. Devoured a lot of it over a week when they opened it up.

yes rosen is great

LRB 26.5.2022: seems printed on different paper, in accordance with previous article on threat to the Finnish paper supply.

It doesn't seem, by my lights, an exciting issue. James Meek on civil wars is good, especially for taking the bold line of asking when civil wars and violence are justified and good. He fills a gap which I've always felt in the 'storming the Capitol' outrage: basically that many of us might think that storming the Capitol is a good idea, if the right people do it at the right time, but this has been completely occluded by the understandable liberal horror at what happened.

Clare Jackson on Elizabeth Stuart: after a few pages of this I'm not quite sure who Elizabeth Stuart was.

Francis Gooding on Levi-Strauss: this is a good worthwhile topic. I'm not sure I can make sense of the claims made for the 'wild thought' but the article builds to an impressive crescendo.

Edna St Vincent Millay should be good to read about. Some of the rest does not look so appealing.

There were some strange complaints in the Elizabeth Stuart review as well. Like that we didn’t learn enough about her son Rupert’s dog. Who cares? The book is about Elizabeth!

I admire your attention to detail, Tracer. I haven't reached the canine complaint yet.

I enjoyed the James Meek article in the LRB as well. I almost didn't read it, because the cover title "The Case for Civil War" made it sound off-puttingly simplistic, but thankfully the article itself was much more interesting and nuanced than that.

I've subscribed to the NYRB for a long time, and have accumulated a rather distressingly large backlog of unread issues, which I keep in the hopes that someday I will find time to read them. I think I posted above that I find it to have declined somewhat noticeably since the change in editorship, but I think it's been a gradual decline. It is somewhat obsessed with US politics and tends to review lots of books on the same subjects over and over, but perhaps that is just a reflection of the state of publishing. I did read an article in it today (well actually from last July) which I thought was interesting: Fara Dabhoiwala reviewing three books on the strange persistence of 19th century justifications for imperialism into the 20th century and even up to the present day.

I finished the Elizabeth Stuart review and concur with Tracer Hand. This review spent ages talking about some previous biographies by other obscure people, then, as Tracer says, complained that we didn't hear more about a dog. At no point did it just pause to tell us who this main subject, Elizabeth Stuart, actually was or why there should be a book about her.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Boye_pamphlet_1643.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cc/Boy_and_roundhead-propaganda_pamphlet_1643.png/440px-Boy_and_roundhead-propaganda_pamphlet_1643.png
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/Boye_Marston_Moor.jpg/440px-Boye_Marston_Moor.jpg

bite him peper

That is a lot better than said review.

this shd be the LRB's tagline*: "carefully taken by the LRB for that purpose implored by some of the Quality in the city of LONDON"

*once they begin to put right all the things we feel are wrong, where we = "the Quality in the city of LONDON (and elsewhere of course)"

LRB 26.5.2022.

Jan-Werner Muller on EU after invasion: pretty offensive attacks on the far left and people who are cautious of war.

Ferdinand Mount on Ottoman Empire: the sort of thing that Mount and the LRB could issue for ever, but well done; suave and knowledgeable as usual.

Olympia: a Cultural History - didn't give me much sense of what and where Olympia was.

Edna St Vincent Millay: a worthy topic, a writer we don't hear much about now, via her private diaries.

Tim Parks on Tisma didn't do much for me; more promising is Alex Harvey on the political French romans noirs by J-P. Manchette.

Freya Johnston on Christine Smallwood: sounds dire.

Anne Enright on Joyce: not keen on aspects of her style and manner, but at least deals in some concrete facts.

Not a vintage issue I admit.

But I still haven't read Rosemary Hill on ... Woolwich? Can't miss that.

Tim Parks on Tisma is fine but it didn't sell me on the trilogy. Just not something that aligns with my interests.

Frances Gooding's discussion of a new translation (replacing one which had a troubled history) of Levi-Strauss' La Pensee Sauvage is one of the better things I have read in the LRB in quite a while. Loved the account of this project, which details the ambition and where it's taking the reader. It is an amazing book to write about. Really interesting detours on Surrealism (hardly something that excites me these days) and French intellectual history of the time. Might actually get a copy, and I rarely say that about any of the items reviewed in the mag.

LRB 9.6.2022.

Desert Island Discs article mostly enjoyable, rather out of place in the LRB?

J Meades on royal family: really demonstrating his continued ability to find artfully varied phrases, adjectives, nouns, to express disdain, disgust, incredulity, for a few thousand words. A feat.

William Davies on sociology and its eclipse by historical thought, especially re: debt and inheritance: really profound, thought-provoking, and clearly expressed. One of the most major statements on social thought in the LRB for a long time.

Colin Burrow on Cavell: I have to hand it to blokeish old Burrow, who gets to review almost everything: here he delivers. He explains the places of Wittgenstein and Freud in Cavell's thought with much clarity and sensitivity.

D MacCulloch on Reformed Protestantism from Switzerland: doesn't seem my cup of tea but the quality of the review delivered for me, made these nutters vivid.

A Clapp on the Greek Revolution of 1821 and beyond: informative, weighty. Frankly I think this particular revolution is one that many of us know nothing about.

Sarah Resnick on The Candy House: couldn't really tell how far the novel was good.

J R Lennon on diaries of D Sedaris: I sympathise with the exasperation with the self-indulgencce; not sure he should have bothered being as indulgent to it as he is.

Tom Shippey on idea of dragons: interesting material.

A much better issue overall, with Davies and Burrow making for a very strong run in the first half.

LRB 26.5.2022:

finished with this issue by at last reading Rosemary Hill on her ancestors in Woolwich - and Eltham? and Blackheath? I'm afraid I became confused by the territory, though this is also roughly where I'm from, which is why the article had some appeal. Also difficult to keep up with the family members, but all together it does produce a sense of what working-class life was, 100+ years ago -- a world in which people would run away to sea, or suddenly get blown up, and life would go on.

(i sent a mild email note in to subs management that the glue on the new wraparound sometimes sticks to the cover and tears it if you aren't super-careful)

https://i.imgflip.com/6ke2em.jpg

It certainly does.

I also enjoyed the Desert Island Discs article from the June 9 LRB. As an American I didn’t know much about the show, and thought the lightly comic tone of the article was well judged. It felt very British to me in a good way. I loved the expression, re Plomley, that he died “in harness”. I started the article on the royal family but abandoned it, because it’s hard for me to feel very strongly about it either way, but marveled that the author clearly does. I will try the sociology article again given pinefox’s glowing review.

just received replacements of the LRBs that were glue-torn, handsomely packaged in large-size bubblewarp jiffybags!

LRB 23.6.2022 did turn out to have some interest. (As everyone who has seen it remarks, it is badly printed: my assumption is that this relates to the paper strike mentioned in the past.)

David Trotter on Sylvia T. Warner: I don't think I find Trotter's oblique narrations the easiest to follow, and he also has a peculiar tic of introducing a pet word or concept and then letting it pervade the text. Here there is a trace of his pet theme of 'signal' but also 'Umwelt', a seemingly unrelated and irrelevant foreign word that he introduces and won't let go of.

Jacqueline Rose and Sam Frears on EastEnders: finding this in the paper was surreal. I couldn't bring myself to read it all. I have been informed that the second author, an actor and café owner, is the son of the former LRB editor.

Julian Bell at the BM writes on The World of Stonehenge, an exhibition I've actually seen. Bell does this very well indeed, with eloquence and historical perspectives, and frankly makes it more interesting than the actual exhibition is.

Deborah Friedell on the history of Roe vs Wade: to me very informative, surprising, useful. I admire the dispassionate character of this article; that it works at narrating information rather than falling into sarcasm or polemic (which one can get elsewhere).

Mike Jay on hitchhiking: actually quite good, though the question 'why don't people pick up hitchhikers anymore?' still seems to be really obviously a matter of safety (for the driver and passengers); though that admittedly doesn't explain why they used to.

Thomas Meaney on FREE, an Albanian memoir: I found this review very good in its thoughtful critique of the tones and modes of the book, but the author has riposted in the latest issue.

Rachel Nolan on corruption in Brazil: yet again an informative, useful article on an important subject!

J-P Stonard at the Barbican: POSTWAR MODERN is the exhibition: I didn't really like it much and don't care for the review either.

Clare Bucknell on TRESPASSES: feels very over-familiar and the review feels awkwardly aware of that.

I generally appreciate GP Gavin Francis but didn't like this particular review on 'functional disorders'.

Richard Shone on Lydia Lopokova: one of those personal accounts that is valuable for the historical archive.

The hitchhiking article mentioned the demise of milk delivered in bottles. You can (we do) still get milk delivered in bottles in birmingham. You can also send your children to grammar and/or single sex (state) schools. (We hope not to but might not have a choice, of a mixed school anyway.)

BTW in rare TLS news: excellent brisk well-turned review of GEOFF DYER on ROGER FEDERER by ... TERRY EAGLETON.

An odd end to Michael Wood's somewhat bloodless TOP GUN: MAVERICK review. It's not totally clear whether he's just telling us the film's message or endorsing it but it looks like the latter - the message being that instinct or intuition are better than a reasoned approach because they are 'prompts of good faith', and 'prudence is always unappealing, but in a danger zone it looks like a criminal delusion.'

I agree!

Michael Wood should not be anywhere near the film column in the LRB, they should get an actual film critic to do it

my time to shine

👍

Michael Wood was a film critic something like 50 years ago for NEW SOCIETY. He also worked on at least one feature film. He has now written film reviews for the LRB for maybe 20 years. He has published at least 3 books, that I can think of, on film.

It seems logical to say that someone who has done those things is ... a ... is a ... a ... a film critic, whether one likes any of his film criticism or not.

ha ha yes, that's fair enough! I don't like his film criticism, it's true, which I think is just poor. For me he's similar to Eagleton or Sinclair, an old stager who just gets to write for the mag because he always has done. But no doubt others see merit where I don't.

Reflecting on all this, I have been formulating the thought: "After MW stops doing this, the job should be shared among multiple film reviewers".

But I've ended up cancelling this thought as I've realised I can't think of any LRB contributor whose film review I'd like to read, let alone four or six.

MW is 86, so people who don't like him probably, to be honest, don't have that long to wait till he stops.

maybe getting some younger contributors would be a good idea, and that thought applies across to their coverage the board I think.

garbled but you see what I mean!

some younger contributors

and my time to shine dims once again

Neil S: I have now posted TWO replies to your views and ILX will not post them.

I will try one more brief time and say:

When they do hire young people, they're usually bad.

But I agree that in principle they should be more open to people they don't already know, of whatever age or background.

to summarise then: more young people (but good not bad) but also mark s, is the ILX line on LRB's editorial policy

it may not be the pinefox's line :D

Mark S is correct.

I think it would be OK for Mark S to be in the LRB, if other people I know and like were also in the LRB. I don't think he should be the *only* person in the LRB. Except for the *Special Issue on Mark S Studies*.

I don't think that age should be a key criterion either for publishing or not publishing someone. I think that openness to outsiders is the thing that the LRB (by choice, I suppose) doesn't have. That could include 75-year-old West Indians as well as 22-year-olds in Inverness.

I think that if senility, laziness, being out of touch, etc, are occupational hazards of being old, then by the same token there must be occupational hazards (for a writer) of being young, which I will not now trouble to list. The list perhaps writes itself.

Different people like different LRB contributors (if they like any at all). The three that poster Neil S has listed as bad happen to be three of my favourites. Possibly I dislike his favourite three.

fwiw I do like Sinclair, even if he definitely has his (walking) schtick that he leans on rather too often.

I also like Stefan Collini on intellectual history (old-ish white bloke), William Davies on policitcal economy and sociology (middle-aged white bloke), James Butler on politics (young-ish white bloke) and Patricia Lockwood on literature and "internet culture" (youngi-ish white woman). Make of that list what you will.

yes I agree that age shouldn't be a prime determinant, it's just that for film in paritcular it would be nice to get some other perspectives now and again, regardless of the merits or otherwise of M Wood.

"Walking schtick" for IS is good.

I like reading Collini (met him once, he said the LRB was a mystery to him), Davies (often very insightful).

I don't like Butler because of some of his political statements, and I don't like Lockwood.

I agree that a pluralistic, multiple-reviewers approach would be logical and productive for film coverage in future.

It used to be the complaint about Sight and Sound, under the previous editor, that there was a predictability about assignments - ie if it was a new horror film, Kim Newman would automatically be given it to review. In general, editors like that kind of reliability, of opinion and perspective as well as actual delivery of content, so I can see why LRB have stuck with Michael Wood as the (only?) person who gets to regularly review new movies. I'm sure he turns in clean, legible copy that fulfils the basic requirement - tell us what this new film is like - and requires minimal fixing. An easy half page. But sticking with Wood alone gives the impression that the LRB doesn't really give a toss about films and film culture. In fact, a more focused column on, say, writing and cinema might be more interesting than a 'new films round-up' that you can still get from plenty of other places online or in print.

While we're talking about age, I think the one LRB writer who has truly entered a new plane of writerly existence with age is ... OK, one is Alan Bennett. But the other, that I had in mind, is Fredric Jameson. He's 88, he is perhaps now allowed to write what he wants, when he wants (well, he probably always was), and he writes quite random things that contain very little clear intellectual content.

Still, I don't really want to see someone like FJ banned from the LRB, even when he writes this way. Maybe better to let him keep going as long as he can, adding to the late record of his work, as you would have done for Freud, Adorno, Yeats, et al.

gives the impression that the LRB doesn't really give a toss about films and film culture

But this shouldn't just come down to the 'new film review' slot. If they did give that toss, as you say, then what they would and should do would be to publish much more full-length essays (of the usual kind) on books about film (of which there are of course many).

It's the fact that they don't do that much (as far as I can see) which is the bigger indictment than their film review feature.