Taking Sides: the TLS v. the LRB

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.

I had a friend who allegedly used to walk her dog (or somebody’s) with Beckett while he walked his in Paris but I never had the nerve to ask her about it.

it's amanuenses all the way down

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

i am also historically inclined to be disappointed by john lahr (i read his orton biog 40 odd years ago and was at the time underwhelmed)

however i think his keaton piece is excellent -- good as a pocket biography of an important figure and art-form and actually one of the best slices of pop-culture criticism i've read for a while (and possibly ever) in the lrb, describing expertly where silent-comedy slapstick came from, how the clowning worked and what its power was, and why and how it was leeched away (including into various reaches of the official avant garde: inc.artaud and brecht and beckett)

ALSO -- this isn't in the piece but i just discovered it when looking up how old lahr is (81) -- he is the second (and better)* of connie booth's husbands :0

*my opinion but clearly also hers as they have been an item for c.35 years now

I've not read much of Lahr's work but that was an excellent review and thoroughly enjoyable piece. I started watching some Keaton over Xmas so good timing.

mark, I’m afraid your ALSO find got scooped by ILX0r Josefa over on this thread: Old time actors and directors that you were surprised to find out were married to each other once upon a time

visited my aged aunt today (90, sleeps mostly) and passed the shop where i bought my first ever LRB (18 11 82, cover = drawn portrait of the young neal ascherson)

https://www.lrb.co.uk/storage/400_filter/images/3/3/3/1/6151333-1-eng-GB/LRB-0421-01.jpg

Extraordinary - to have a drawing of a contributor!

Glad they don't do this now.

FALKLANDS LITERATURE sounds useful.

an intriguing aspect of those early years -- and i think their covers game was generally actually really strong in the 80s, bold cryptic black-and-white -- was that you very often didn't know who or what the picture was until you'd bought it and peered inside, since the explanatory caption was on the inside front cover. they liked super-minimalist contents teasers! (this would be karl miller's choices i assume)

viz the rest of that year (mostly issues before my first ever): https://www.lrb.co.uk/archive/v04

The old covers were much stronger than this sort nothing splash of colour they have now.

i mean!

https://www.lrb.co.uk/storage/800_filter/images/3/2/3/2/6152323-1-eng-GB/LRB-0918-01.jpg

RETVRN

If that's not Bernard Hill then I don't know who it is.

even as a known non-fan of james wolcott i found the giuliani piece exhausting

LRB 2.2.2023.

Jonathan Rée on Hayek: I don't usually relish Rée but this is the exception - the best thing I've ever read by him. Hayek doesn't sound at all something to relish, either, but Rée does a tremendous job of narrating the prehistory of Hayek's neoliberalism, through Ludwig von Mises. For a philosopher, Rée's grasp of economics in this essay is remarkable. Hayek surprisingly emerges as more thoughtful and sensible than you'd expect, a bit like Adam Smith said many communalist things.

Michael Wood on Zeffirelli: one of MW's better film reviews for some time, with some characteristic Woodian passages: 'we wonder for a while if the movie isn't going to include a few songs' - though the last paragraph or so lacks much meaning . I am now reminded to mention MW's line in his previous Rimbaud essay on the virtues of walking around academic libraries.

Andrew O'Hagan on Prince Harry: I don't like O'Hagan, a preening poseur of a writer, who often writes phrases to sound tough or impressive despite their not being true. But in this particular case he does repeatedly get to the point, a good point or two, about Harry being contradictory in wanting normality and royal privilege, criticising royalty without fundamentally doing so. One of O'Hagan's best performances in a long time.

Mary Hannity on interwar psychoanalytic thought: reminds me that I'm glad that psychoanalysis is not my world.

Maureen McLane on H.D.: H.D. can't have been discussed much in the LRB in 15 years, so this seems like a good topic. But the review is sometimes obnoxious and almost all the poetry quoted seems bad.

Owen Hatherley on Battersea Power Station: a strong critique. From limited experience, that vast building site of Vauxhall has been an awful thing. OH gives the impression that it's all been for no good.

I'm quite a ways behind this thread, but just wanted to say that I enjoyed the Iain Sinclair piece on the London super sewer. My familiarity with Sinclair's output is mostly limited to the book Rodinsky's Room that he co-authored, but his style in this piece seems basically the same, despite the passage of years and difference in subject matter. I don't feel like Sinclair is a writer to read for facts or in fact to learn anything in particular. His prose only superficially resembles journalism, and beneath the veneer of professional respectability is a roiling sea of free association and bizarre juxtaposition. Its more like prose poetry to my mind, and is best enjoyed for its rhythms and imagery.

This will sound fighty - and I think it's a magnificent book! - but Sinclair is at his worst in *Rodinsky's Room*, or at least his style, his repertoire of tics and riffs, come off poorly against the stark background of Lichtenstein's story.

It's been a while since I've read it, but I do recall that the contrast in styles between the alternating chapters was stark.

The Wood piece seems entirely characteristic in ending up with the observation that we are watching real people, not just characters, but completely failing to include the fact the said real people have recently and loudly talked about how they felt used and abused as sexualised children by the director and the film, something that would have been interesting and pertinent, but would have required some research.

LRB 2.2.2023.

Loads of articles I have now read and will not comment on, except:

* the Spanish badger who discovered a hoard (p.27)
* numismatics languishing beside heraldry as an 'auxiliary science of history'! I haven't even thought of heraldry this way before, as an ongoing academic discipline. (p.25)
* article (pp.26-7) on the Rosetta Stone and / or reading hieroglyphs in general. A case of the LRB bringing in someone very expert on a field, giving them a short space to explain it - he does a good job, but mostly it's still, predictably, beyond me. (The appearance of Derrida in penultimate column further livens it up but is never likely to clarify anything.) I expect that Mark S will claim to understand it.

oi

Last couple of pieces I've read :

Michael Ledger-lomas on Vivekananda, who was an interesting figure in the development of yoga in the early 20th century, and how that tradition translated to the West. Sort of funny to read an account of (mostly) Western women who fell under his spell (though he wasn't a cult leader-type), how they dote on him. Overall, as someone who does a lot of postural yoga and who knew of Vivekananda as someone who was dismissive of it I found it quite informative on the person and his journey.

In the latest issue there is Ian Pace on Hugo Wolf. This pianist-musicologist -- who is a very annoying liberal who yes has now picked the usual culture war bigotries on twitter -- imparts his knowledge on the course of late 19th century music, with not uninteresting stuff on the various factions. What gets lost is Hugo Wolf and why should we care?

yes, i wanted a lot more on the shifting importance of the "song" as a valued form within the classical aesthetic, and (the curve would not be same shape). the shifts in its popularity also even back when i was studying music for a-level (mid-1970s), wolf was basically shunted into a halfway house: "important composer (know his name!) except also not important (he only wrote songs and we never analyse songs!)"

my own hurried theory of the decline in presence classical parlour song would address shifts in the focus of amateur musical activity (incuding the decline of parlours and of pianos in parlours) alongside the rise of recorded music (which introduced alternative forms of song and song-practice) -- but these actually probably impinge only indirectly on the attitude that high critical aesthetics took to the "song" (high critical aesthetics was slow to recognise recorded music as an instrumentality to pay mind to, and rarely gave a fvck abt amateur activity)

better still someone could explore it all who knew what they were talking about

(in conclusion: i'm not sure we *do* need to care abt hugo wolf, but that fact is interesting in itself)

full stop before "the shifts" s/b after "its popularity"

also s/b less pompous in delivery but i'm tired and can't write properly apparently

I was once in a seminar on Roland Barthes' essay 'the grain of the voice', and someone fairly knowledgeable said that this was all about German 'lieder' which I believe were some kind of song.

I add that small fact to Mark S's history of classical song.

yes that's right -- lieder is the normal german word for song (any song) but in the correct context very much means the kind of art song that eg dietrich fischer-dieskau would have sung

what i'm calling parlour song is a much broader (and tbh much vaguer) term which (i feel) functioned as the larger cultural space in which the lieder (dieskau mix) could flourish

I saw a piece a while ago around arts cuts/how could classical survive. I don't think it mentioned a return of Lieder.

Standing in a small group in somebody’s house listening to a person sing is a hell of a lot more cringey than listening to someone play the piano.