Taking Sides: the TLS v. the LRB

LRB 19.1.2023.

Geoffrey Wheatcroft on so-called 'Chips' Channon - no-one ever talks about how he gained this ridiculous name - adding to the publicity around this figure over the last year or so. Very long, very indulgent, on a character utterly odious and malicious, who was also a Nazi. The work is edited by a journalist who has made vile false allegations that socialists support Nazi policies: perhaps he got the idea from these diaries.

It's true that an accurate view of the world requires bad news, and an understanding of bad and nasty things - privatization, nuclear conflict, climate change. Often the LRB brings us those. But this is vice with no point and no lesson. Channon wasn't even causally significant, like Pinochet, Mussolini or Thatcher. In a world of finite space and coverage, there is no justification for spreading his foulness over so many pages.

I'm only part way into Iain Sinclair on sewers, but seems to me that this is a mismatch of author and subject. Sewers are important, technical, unpleasant. They don't have much to do with ley lines, 1960s poets, Allen Ginsberg at the Roundhouse. They're not illuminated by saying 'All the mysteries of London now tend towards Barking Creek' and 'I wonder about the psychic damage being inflicted on London as a living organism'. Actually London isn't a living organism (it contains many), and doesn't, itself, have a psyche that could be damaged.

We might well benefit from someone telling us the facts about sewers, but Sinclair's elliptical approach isn't going to tell us the facts very economically per page.

It's curious that he talks so much of the danger of London being swamped by sewage - a phenomenon that actually isn't very apparent. London must have been much dirtier in 1850 (when streets were full of manure) or 1850 (when skies were full of smog) than it is now.

Still, I have a long way to go yet in this outsized article. Maybe it changes.

The opening line of that sewer piece, meant to give some sense of scale, was meaningless to anyone not a Londoner, so I skipped it. Already find Sinclair a bit of a pain, so this was not hard.

re chips channon: i googled around a bit to uncover the "chips" backstory and it seems to be that when was at christ church as a student he palled around for a while with a lad everyone knew as "fish". this is often how lasting nicknames work so it may well be true but it seems of a piece with his general contribution to world history (negligeable bordering on risible)

i first encountered the name when christopher hitchens would drop it into his 80s essays abt the abdication the the royals -- which tells its own story, i guess, that channon was an unbridled gossip full of spiteful passion, and that for journalists (of every politics tbh) that's always a godsend. wheatcroft does touch on this: that what probably placed him in front of people was his relatively unbuttoned diary style in the 50s and 60s, still a very buttoned-up time (compared e.g. to example harold nicolson for example, also mentioned but deprecated as timidly establishment). probably a better focus at this late date for the review might have been the pros and cons of relying on and valorising such sources for the first draft of history (and how the sources in question then end up in the second and third drafts despite being no more than once-useful blabbermouths).

i suppose i would also maintain -- as i now and then have also done with alan bennett -- that diarists are useful *bcz* of the ego that drives them rather than despite: malice and a sense of the ridiculous don't really have a politics of their own, and can act as a filter against whatever the fashionably earnest tide of collective seriousness at a given moment is picking and choosing as that which matters and doesn't. but once deployed it's hard to wash them back out again i guess, and in the long run it seems to enable the heffers (and the hitchenses) of the world much more than is seemly…

Re: 'Chips', you do learn quite a bit about how the English upper classes carried on, and these are the people on the losing side in their own time as well. It's a piece of history with some detail. The picture of how women were viewed/what they did in relationships seemed quite interesting. And you needn't enable Heffer by just reading this review and not the book in question. Surely that's the point of the LRB, you are highly unlikely to buy most of what's reviewed.

Mark S: nothing against diaries as such, whatever. Diaries can surely be good, useful, informative, and more.

This extremely long diary just happens to be by a foul individual.

probably a better focus at this late date for the review might have been the pros and cons of relying on and valorising such sources for the first draft of history (and how the sources in question then end up in the second and third drafts despite being no more than once-useful blabbermouths).

Good argument. You should write that.

"The opening line of that sewer piece, meant to give some sense of scale, was meaningless to anyone not a Londoner"

Looking again: I didn't especially understand it myself, but the point of the line seems to be not scale but gradient: the apple would go from A to B because A is higher than B, whatever the distance between those points.

But thus far in what I've read, IS hasn't really explained much about actual sewers.

I wrote: "London must have been much dirtier in 1850 (when streets were full of manure) or 1850 (when skies were full of smog) than it is now."

The second date was meant to be 1950.

his essays on london always arrived a wee bit in the form of "other ppl and their unlearned requirements, pshaw, those of us in the know scry very different energies" (at which point it veers off into tales of john dee or whatever)

i don't much mind this -- you hire sinclair bcz you want to hear from a guy who thinks london has a psyche distinct from (tho interconnected with) the aggregate of the psyches of those who live in it (for example it encompasses the psyches of all those who no longer live in it)

nevertheless the thing abt this essay is that at root it is basically a local beef abt the bins disguised as something more mystically penetrating: and it does not quite say -- when he's e.g. talking abt "wild swimmers" on the beach at hastings -- that *he* is one of the ppl who made the move from his beloved hackney (which he is now bored with) to hastings, where he now resides. when i visit my sister in hastings, she has pointed out the building he lives in, a tall maritime art-deco pile of flats right on the sea-front, and thus overlooking the beach and, well, the outflow of all the local sewers (tho surely not of the london sewers)

there's a real issue here and no doubt there is a kind of hubris about tackling it without really talking about it clearly in public -- which is part of his implication i think -- but i don't feel that he is talking about it clearly in public either! he's weaving a spell of "oh those silly londoners and their unspoken obsession with drains, now if we hark back to gog and magog… "

ps seaside swimmers are not "wild" swimmers, i don't care who says they are

I think that he wrote about Hastings - and acquiring this home there? - in a book that I own but have not read, DINING ON STONES, which has said building on the front cover.

I am not sure whether he has actually left London, though. I have been, only about 9 months ago, to the square where he lives or lived - it looks incredibly desirable and expensive now, though may not have been 50 years ago. Don't think it would be financially wise to sell that property unless you were moving somewhere possibly even more ambitious than ... Hastings.

So my sense is that maybe he owns two homes. Possibly it is unseemly even to speculate about this.

It now strikes me that when Mark S talks about people moving from their beloved Hackney to new locations on the coast, he is engaging in mildly sublimated autobiography.

i should write a diary and be the chips channon of 2080

- it looks incredibly desirable and expensive now, though may not have been 50 years ago.

Seem to recall in one of his books he lets slip that his father gave him the money for the house in Hackney in the 70s.

This article https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n02/deborah-friedell/everyone-is-terribly-kind is a classic example of not saying anything at all about the two books under review, as far as I can see.

The opening line of that sewer piece, meant to give some sense of scale, was meaningless to anyone not a Londoner, so I skipped it. Already find Sinclair a bit of a pain, so this was not hard.

I find Sinclair's fiction undreadable but when he's at his best (*Lights Out* *London Orbital* *Edge of the Orison*) his non-fiction is utterly compelling. Fwiw - and this is partly ageist generalising - I think he's part of a herd of critics who seem to be allowed to roam where they please in the pages of the LRB.

Essentially agree with Chinaski.

I think Sinclair a great writer, one of the most gifted and important of his generation. There is on that basis a case for saying that the LRB, or whoever, should let him write what he likes, as it will be in some sense important or worthwhile (but I won't persuade anyone of that case, and they do it for Colm Toibin and he mostly writes rubbish).

But Chinaski is dead right: Sinclair's *fictional* imagination is clotted, distorted, awkward, doesn't work for me. The value is in the non-fiction. But the non-fiction has its flaws, as people justly say - the repetition, predictable views, conservatism, cliqueishness, etc.

Michael Wood on Rimbaud is just terrific. Kind of a counterpart with the 'Chips' piece lol.

I love some of sinclair's earlier writing, i even managed to digest (somewhat) and enjoy two of his novels, downriver and radon daughters. i do wonder what i'd make of them now - but either way i find the mad sparking electricity of his earlier prose entirely absent from these lrb pieces.

DOWNRIVER for me was a rather embarrassing, though ambitious and epic, effort in its grand guignol mode ... very similar to Salman Rushdie of all people. Basically I think I'd say IS does not do satire well. Problems of tone.

I suspect that others of his novels are less satirical, more modernist and minimal, and it might actually work better.

I remembered that one highlight of the Channon article is Wheatcroft's giving repeated lessons to Heffer about basic errors in the footnotes: 'this is clearly a reference to Keats's "Ode to Autumn"'. That was worthwhile.

"I love some of sinclair's earlier writing, i even managed to digest (somewhat) and enjoy two of his novels, downriver and radon daughters."

Same here. I got into him bcz of former Wire contributor Ben Watson's writing on him.

Then I started reading his pieces published in the LRB and interest just died. Discourse around psychogeography didn't help.

London Orbital is a masterpiece, and Sinclair's prose matches the Quixotic nature of the endeavour. I think he has suffered from diminishing returns ever since, but I do enjoy his shorter pieces in the LRB, even if he probably could do with a firmer editor.

Sinclair remains the only writer to ever cancel an interview with me at the last minute due to "a dodgy prawn curry" and for that alone I'll always like him

Having finished Sinclair on the sewer, I can state that a relative strength is that it's not as long as I feared it would be. He doesn't outstay his welcome.

Its main weakness is that it doesn't really stick to the topic of the sewer, and doesn't suggest that IS has really learned the salient facts about the sewer, let alone how best to convey them to us, an audience who don't already know them.

To put it in words, not just screenshots:

Very happy to say I have joined the London Review of Books (@LRB) as Head of Audience.

This new role is about imagining how the LRB can and should exist on the internet, from https://t.co/DQwHpzGRuu to email, Twitter, Instagram & beyond

— Jay Owens (@hautepop) January 25, 2023

@hautepop reading my old ilx posts abt this topic 👍🏽

this is an interesting development bcz i know her as a writer and (very good, clear, smart) analyst of trends but i'm assuming she's in an editorial-restructuring-as-comms type of role here?

anyway we shall see

Her piece on AI as aid to novel writing last year was a pretty brilliant look at how things might change and stay the same.

Oh no

swore off reading any more Prince Harry stuff but this Andrew O’Hagan review is so good! https://t.co/j71IpZqkTc

— Brandy Jensen (@BrandyLJensen) January 26, 2023

it's not the worst thing he's written!

tbh he'd be much better writing abt lillian ross et al for gawker than for the lrb, the Higher Gossip™️ is the mode where he's at his most engaged

It's a really good piece.

LRB 19.1.2023.

John Lahr on Buster Keaton: I historically don't like Lahr, but must admit that in 2023, "I knew Buster Keaton. I carried his ukelele" is a strong opening to be able to pull off. Further, the article is actually full of finely succinct summations of points. "[industrial] speed was what the slapstick cinematic chase both celebrated and satirised"; "Keaton was almost all show and no tell"; "these clowns brought with them unexamined emotional baggage, which was part of their droll and poignant aura"; "On his own, Keaton had been an innovator; within the studio system, an employee". Clear thinking is briskly conveyed. The prose is journalistic yet intelligent.

I hadn't known that Keaton married Natalie Talmadge, beautiful (naturally) sister of the beautiful Norma and Constance. Lahr gives the article a happy ending.

Catherine Nicholson on Katherine Rundell on Donne: this is useful as a clear narrative of Donne's life. I learned things. Mark S was correct to point out that it's another piece of LRB insider dealing, a mostly fawning review of the work of a regular contributor. In this context, the odd thing is that almost every phrase or passage directly quoted from Rundell is actively bad. Among numerous other examples, Rundell says that Donne's joy is "so violent it kicks the metal out of your knees". My knees are not the best at this point, but they do not contain metal.

Donald Mackenzie on online advertising shows how www use is carbon-intensive (but is this specifically true of advertising, or just general computer use?), and is practical about how this could be improved.

Deborah Friedell on Dorothy Thompson: when I first saw this headline I assumed it would be about E.P. Thompson's wife.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Thompson_(historian)

It wasn't. I learned about a different Dorothy. Above, poster fetter stated that the article was "a classic example of not saying anything at all about the two books under review". When the article quoted the books and mentioned their authors, I thought: no, it's not quite like that after all; it does talk about the books. Then I looked back at what had actually been reviewed. The books were not about Dorothy Thompson. She is not in the title of either of them. Yet the article is entirely about her. In this unexpected sense, fetter proved quite correct.

Fridell on p.26 writes of Churchill asking the US for fifty destroyers.

Tom Stevenson on p.27 writes of Churchill receiving "fifty old destroyers", a good bargain for the US.

Stevenson, as usual, is knowledgeable, brisk, cool in his assessments of Western military and intelligence. A great LRB asset.

He doesn't mention the oddest thing about "Five Eyes", that most people (not all) have two eyes and thus, for a better image, five subjects with eyes should really add up to "Ten Eyes".

Maybe the most troubling thing about Five Eyes is the fact that the US is so much the senior partner, it takes what it wants and leaves others in the dark when it likes. This may not be surprising. It's the kind of reality that Stevenson is good at showing us.

Eleanor Nairne on Joan Mitchell: on balance, not bad for an LRB art review, but every LRB art review tends to leave me the same sense of dawdling and pointlessness.

Jeremy Dibble on Frederick Delius: I knew nothing about this character, was a bit surprised to read that he was English. The article is somewhat informative then gets too distracted into a political critique of one aspect of the composer's work. The article uses musical terms like "undulate between keys" that I might potentially understand, but not having heard the music, I probably don't really know what's being said.

The editor of the TLS logging on to ILX every day, hopefully clicking on this thread and being disappointed again and again.

The TLS is pretty great this week! Good and informative Tim Parks esssay on Calvino's collected non-fiction, a nice appreciation of Ronald Blythe by Richard Smythe and some reviews of interesting looking novels and poetry collections. Some of the reviews are a bit perfunctory but I get more out of it most weeks these days than I do the LRB.

Ronald Blythe by Richard Smythe

people i might always get confused if i had heard of either of them

haven't read the delius in full yet but "undulation between keys" is an attempt at a non-technical invocation oif the concept of BITONALITY, as discussed a little (wikipedia-style) here

by the rules of orthdox classical harmony from pre-bach to round about the time of liszt, a work is in an established key. its local harmonies may wander far and wide through other keys -- this was a romantic speciality -- but there is a home key, and how far or how close you are to it supplies the musical equivlaent of narrative tension ("are we there yet dad?" "nearly home now kids")

delius was one of several post-wagner composers -- others were debussy, stravinsky and bartok -- who explored the idea of a piece of music being in two keys at once (aka bitonal): stravinsky and bartok drawing on slavic folk forms to supply a kind of percussive and propulsive rocking effect (all senses of rocking lol), as the two keys clash against one another, each refusing the other mastery; debussy and delius to deliver (by contrast) what simon reynolds would call an "oceanic" undecideability, as the two keys blur into one another

my guess is that this review originaly went with the technical language (it's bitonal!) and an editor said "our readers won't understand that" and the reviewer glumly opted for a handwavey rewording rather than a long explanatory digression: just like the technical jargons of economics, music theory is almost mystically opaque to many otherwise knowledgeable readers, bcz it's so hard to explain what's going on without breaking out the diagrams

This is true— perhaps the best compliment given to me as a music journalist (when I was one) was when a more seasoned writer said, “you use enough technical language to please the nerds and enough quotidian language to please a regular reader”

"Good and informative Tim Parks esssay on Calvino's collected non-fiction"

A collected Tim Parks on Italian lit would be my jam.

That's a good clear description, Mark S, and I like your droll Reynolds reference, though I'm not sure what being in two keys at once would sound like.

There is a collected Tim Parks on Italian lit: https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Literary_Tour_of_Italy/Nn5jDwAAQBAJ?hl=en

Thanks!

pinefox asks what being in two keys at once might sound like?

At the harsh end check the Petrushka fanfare here (e.g. the phrase played by two clarinets): it’s a C major chord and an F# major chord played against one another. Petrushka is a puppet, agile but also somehow broken, a mocking, annoying, somewhat pitiful figure that’s very much being jeered at by his own motif. As keys, C major and F# major are as “distant” from one another in standard harmonic terms as it’s possible to be.

At the non-harsh blurry end, well, I’d probably be shouted at by an orthodox and qualified musicologist here for calling this bitonal — not least because for convenience I’m simply reaching for a piece I know well — but if it isn’t strictly speaking bitonal it’s definitely in the run-up towards it: Debussy’s Claire de Lune. Which is ostensibly — via key signature and eventual resolution — in Db major but constantly flirts with being in Fminor. Now (as you know) Db major and Fminor are extremely closely related: as chords they basically largely overlap, and entirely overlap once you look at 6th or 7th chords (and Debussy can’t keep his eyes off 6th and 7th chords). So describing as “bitonal” a piece that hovers between these keys is really really stretching a point. But if it’s not both-at-once like Petrushka, the piece is just so dense with meltingly deliberate playful ambiguity: harmonically it’s constantly saying “is it? isn’t it?” and deploying sequences that amplify blurred undecideability despite the resolved conclusion.

And of course — like Delius and also Britten (another composer often put in the “bitonal” bag) — Debussy is very associated with sea pieces and water musics. “Undulating” (rather than e.g. — technical term — “modulating”) often seems a good semi-poetic description of what’s going on in the harmonies?

I don’t really know Delius’s work at all and when I hunted the internet for which pieces or passages are termed bitonal, I did find some but also found a lot more homework than I have time for this weekend tracking down the relevant sections and links to examples etc. But the above at least sketches the two contrasting zones and feels I had in mind.

(This btw is the first piece on Delius I’ve *ever read* which doesn’t talk abt Eric Fenby his amanuensis: Delius was blind so Fenby wrote out his music scores for him, and in all the time I’ve ever known the word Fenby is the only person ever given the job description “amanuensis” — which is basically just a fancy word for assistant or secretary… )

(i mean it's not a bit relevant to the piece so fair enough! it's more a sign of a cliched the writing was that i absorbed when i was young and studying this stuff officially)

Samuel Beckett used to be referred to as Joyce's amanuensis!

!!

By who?

Well, possibly by Richard Ellmann, for starters. Usage of the term for that relationship has been very common - but perhaps more so in decades past than now.

I wasn't sure what Mark S meant about Dbm and Fm, so I actually just tried it on a piano - even playing both at once.

I do hear a resonance (overlap?) between them, but also a dissonance, some elements that don't belong together.

My experience of 'composition' - I wouldn't even claim that word - is merely of writing songs, not the kind of advanced thing that Delius presumably wrote, so I'm not sure that I really understand how one would write in two keys at once, whereas I suppose I can understand writing in a key that is a blend of two different chords.