Nicholas Joukovsky The secret of Modern Love

Ben Hutchinson Scandalous Peter Handke

Ferdinand Mount Britain's hunger for houses
Matthew Cobb Science and art on the ant heap
JUNE 152007 No 5437 www.th e-tls.co.uk THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT UK £2.70 USA $5

Dear Engin ... I was very sad after

our last conversation. Remember what
you told me about the water wheel;
and think back, friend, think back.
We may seem to be moving slowly,
but the point is, we're moving ...
James Baldwin's letters toJstanbul
James Campbell
I
 ILS
2

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that George Meredith ' s great

sonn et sequence, Mod ern
Love, is ba sed on his wife' s
affair with the painter Henry

I t is twenty ye ar s since
James Campbell began his
biography of the Am erican
writ er , James Ba ldw in, Talk-
ing At The Gates (1991 ), a
book that brought about a
landmark Fre edom of Infor-
mation victory aga inst the
US government for literary
researchers. On ly after a
nine-year struggle d id Camp-
bell succeed in showing the
extent to which Baldw in, the
author of The Fire Next Time
and a prominent civil right s
campaigner, had to live
under FB I sur veillance dur-
ing his day s of triu mph.
Si nce the success of Camp-
bell v. US Department of Jus-
tice in 1998, Campbell has
kept up a clo se int erest in the
changing reputation of his
subject; and in the TLS this
week he unv eils the remark-
able letters wh ich Baldwin
wrote between 1957 and
1976 to the T urkish actor,
Engin Cezzar. Baldwin' s
letter s hav e been called "the
one great Ba ldw in ma ster -
piece waiting to be pub-
lished ". A co llection of them
will app ear in Istanbul later
th is year, and is introduced
for the fir st time her e .
Also in thi s week's re-
designed TLS , Nicholas
A. Joukovsky argue s aga inst
the gen erally accept ed view
Walli s; instead he proposes
that the poem s wer e inspired
by her earlier relationship
with a prominent Chri stian
Soc ialist. Thi s is Joukovsky' s
first piece in the TLS since
his pione ering account in
2004 of Mary Meredith' s
final outcast years.
"T he spiv wa s the demon
figure of the age - like the
hedge funder toda y" , writ es
th e noveli st and critic
Ferdinand Mount, reca lling
Britain ' s age of au sterity
aft er the Second World War;
the philosopher of science,
Dav id Papineau, distin-
gui she s between playing
poker and writing about it;
and the authority on Martial
and Catullus , Wi lliam
Fitzgerald, reminds us of the
mirrors on the bedroom wall s
of Rome.
PS

TLS J UN E 152007

Room in the East
lames Baldwin' s correspondence, soon to be published in Turkey, ranges from
civil rights to social gossip, Martin Luther King to Marlon Brando
n the late 1980 s, as part of the research
I for a biography of James Bald win , I
travell ed to Turkey to meet the no veli st
Yashar Kem al at his home on the out-
skirts of Istanbul. As we were talking, a lon g-
legged black cat entered the room, padded
silently across the floor bet ween us, and
ex ited by the opposite door. Kem al chuckled
and said something in Turkish to the inter-
preter who was facilitatin g our excha nge .
Th e latter turn ed to me: " Yashar says the
eat' s name is Jimmy - named after the other
Ji mm y". We all laugh ed. Whil e he had call ed
succee ding ge nerations of cat s "J im my",
Kem al' s nickname for Baldwin, the ori gin al
"tight, ten se, lean , abnor mally intellig ent ,
abnor ma lly ambitious, hun gr y black cat" (his
own description), was "Arap" , simply Arab.
"A s far as I was concern ed , Bald win was not
black " , Kem al told me, "for there are no
blacks in Tur key in that sense . We don 't have
the categor y. Th ere are onl y peopl e with
darker skins."
Baldwin treated Istanbul as a plac e of ref-
uge all throu gh the 1960 s. He rent ed various
hou ses in the centre of the cit y and out side it
- o ne, kno wn as the Pasha' s Library, over-
look ed the Bo sporu s - acquiring unexp ected
and oft en unr espectabl e friend s, and carin g
for depend ant s, such as the painter Beaufo rd
Delaney who had been his mentor when an
adoles ce nt in the 1940 s, and whom he look ed
after as dem enti a clouded the older man ' s
mind. Baldwin' s novel An other Cou ntry is
datelin ed " Istanbul, Dec 10, 1961" - the date
of its completion - while another, Tell Me
How Long the Train 's Been Gone (196 8),
was largely composed in the cit y. Though he
postponed his proj ected visits repeat edl y, he
was apt to stay lon ger than planned onc e he
arrived, sometimes for up to a yea r. He sa id
he felt he could "breathe" in Istanbul.
Th ere are oth er sides to the equation, of
course. Kem al - a big-h eart ed , humorous
man - is a Kurd , and has been imprison ed on
at least four occ asion s for political activities
in Turkey. He told me, " Baldwin used to say :
Yashar , I feel free in T urkey . To which I
wo uld repl y: Jimmy, that ' s bec ause you 're an
Am erican". (Bald win was onc e imprison ed
in France, in a ca se of mi stak en iden tit y
invol vin g a sto len bed sheet. Th e farcic al epi-
sode is related in one of hi s best essays,
"Equal in Pari s".)
Th e person who con veyed the question s
and answe rs back and forth that mornin g was
Engin Ce zzar, a Turki sh actor, co-d edic atee of
Tell Me How Long the Train 's Been Gone ,
and the man respo nsible for pro vidin g the
troubl ed writer and civil rights activist with an
unlik ely hidin g place in an Islamic country
which had experienced a milit ar y coup in
1960, the year before Bald win' s first visit.
Th e pair met in New York in 1957 , a yea r
after public ation of Bald win' s second novel,
Giovanni 's Room. Still a teenager, Cezzar was
LETTERS
JAM ES CAMPB ELL
study ing with Lee Strasberg at the Actors'
Studio where a stage version of the novel was
given a workshop airing, under Stra sberg' s
supervision. Wh en it failed to gra duate to full
produ ction , Bald win rewrot e it, with the help
of Cezzar, whom he envisaged in the title role.
Giova nni's Room never did make it to the
stage (nor to the scree n, despite the ex istence
of at least thre e scree nplays , including a still
unpublished one by Bald win ) but the friend-
ships with Cezzar and Kem al were to endure
until Bald win' s death thirt y yea rs later.
A sma ll coll ecti on of letter s bet ween
Bald win and Ce zz ar (for which I have writte n
an introduction ) is now to be published in
Turkey . Coming after the app ea ranc e of Sol
Ste in 's Native Sons, a memoir-cum-scrap-
book which included ten Bald win lett ers in
fac simil e (rev iewe d in the TLS of October 15,
29.5.07: Le Havre, France
W hile Nicolas Sarkozy views the
latest presidential photograph
destined for French government offices
around the world, other observers have
noted his return to the traditional symbol-
ism of the library. The new backdrop of
leather-bound books on imposing shelves
is a reminder of the imag es preferred by
the Fifth Republic's founder, Charles de
Gaulle, and mostly abandoned since then.
In 1974, Valery Giscard d'Estaing chose
to be pictured before a simple tricolore.
In 1995, Jacques Chirac stood outside in
TLS J UN E 15 2007
2004 ), thi s is a we lco me development. In the
yea rs since Bald win ' s death , interested indi-
viduals have been callin g for a full y anno-
tated edition of the corr espondenc e. At a
public ga thering some years ago, the theatr e
critic of the New Yorker, Hilt on Al s, made a
plea for the release of "the one grea t Bald win
mas terpiece wa iting to be published".
Wh eth er or not they con stitute a ma ster-
piece would be for readers to judge, but
letters ex ist in large qu antities, both in public
and uni ver sity libraries and in pri vate hand s:
to actors such as Gordon Heath, who pla yed
Oth ello in a BBC production dir ect ed by
Ton y Rich ard son in 1955 and whom Bald win
had in mind for the lead role in his fir st play
The Am en Corn er; to writers such as Lan g-
ston Hugh es and Rich ard Wri ght ; to his
tru sted publici st at Knopf in the early 1950 s,
Willi am Cole (incl uding lett ers about his
qu arrel with Wright); to critics such as Alfred
the Elysee grounds - with grass and sky
behind him . In 1981 Francois Mitterrand
sat before a single line of books - with a
copy of Montaigne's Essays in his hands.
President Sarkozy's own favourite books
are said to include Celinc's sulphurous
novel, Voyage au bout de la nuit, and
Albert Cohen's Belle du seigneur, the
chronicle of a doomed love affair amid a
hopelessly malfunctioning League of
Nations. The new photograph is by
PhiIippe Warrin. The other viewer is
Antoine Ruffenach, Mayor of Le Havre.
3
Kazin and the editors of Partis an Review,
Phi lip Rah v and William Phillips; and to
age nts, publi shers and civil right s worke rs,
not to mention famil y memb er s and lovers.
During the writing of my book, publi shed as
Talk ing at the Ga tes in 1991 , I ga thered
about 300 pages of Bald win lett ers in Xero x
form , with ro ug hly a hu ndred added since,
including despatch es to tho se mentioned ,
datin g from the ea rly 1940 s, whe n he was a
precoci ou s teen ager trying to negoti ate the
haz ardou s passage from Harlem do wnto wn
to Gree nw ich Vill age, to the mid-1970s, by
which tim e he had found a mor e permanent
retr eat than Turkey on the Cote d' Azur. In
the first of his letter s to Cezzar (November
22, 195 7), he writes : "One of these da ys, I'm
goin g to build myself a plac e to live and
work at the side of a mountain or at the edge
of the sea" . Succee ding lett ers are writte n
from New York, Pari s, Tel Aviv, Barc elon a,
Dakar, " in the air , where I see m to be mo st
of the tim e the se present days" (1962) , and
fin all y from his hou se outside Sa int-Pa ul-de -
Venc e, near Nice, "at the side of a mountain
... at the edge of the sea" .
A full edition of the correspondenc e would
displ ay Bald win ' s con cern s, eve ntually
knitt ed into novels, essays and plays, in their
first form. In a lett er to Gordon Heath on the
effort to find a the atre to stage The Am en
Corner in 1955, Bald win suggests that it
might be better "to attack Lond on " fir st,
before ex ploring New York :
Without for an instant supposing the English
. . . to be free of preju di ce , I ye t sus pec t tha t
they have fewer misappre hensions concerning
Negroe s . . .. This is not becau se they are more
intelligent, or more moral, but simply because
they have not had, until very recently, anything
resembling a Negro problem on that island.
Such a coll ecti on might also crea te renewed
intere st in a writer who has had less attention
in recent years from the comm on reader than
the cultural theori st - Bald win ' s rac e and sex -
ualit y havin g pro vided a doubl e do se of
"difference" - ironicall y so, considering that
all his life he so ught freed om from the
confinement s of colou r and sex ua l categor iza-
tion. He par ticularly di slik ed the term "gay" ,
and refu sed to identify himself as such. Until
recentl y, ho wever , the Baldwin es tate,
headed by the writer 's sister G lor ia Karefa-
Sm art-Baldwin , forbade the publication of
any lett ers, on the gro unds - from one point
of view quit e reasonable - that sentime nts
ex presse d in pri vate, for pri vate con sump-
tion, should rem ain so.
Ce zz ar's book , Dost Mektuplary (Lette rs
to a Friend), publi shed by the Istanbul hou se
Yapi Kredi Yayinl ari , is made out of rou ghl y
a hundred pages of Baldwin ' s lett ers, comple-
ment ed by Eng in's repli es and by Bald win' s
not es for their work togeth er in the theatre.
The earlies t communication is writte n from
Continue d on page 4
4

Continued f rom page 3

LETTERS 3 James Ca m p bell Room in the East - James Baldwin' s correspond ence the MacDo well writers ' colony, New Hamp-
shire, in late 1957 , whe re Baldwin we nt to
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 6 Senate House rules, Climat e science, Modern Handel, etc work on the dramatized vers ion of Gio-
vanni 's Room and on the early draft s of
HISTORY 7 Ferdina nd Mo unt David Kynaston Austerity Brita in - 1945-51 Ano ther Country. "T he moment I found
myself among the se o ld Ne w Eng land hill s
POEMS 8 Geoffrey Hill The Peacock at Aldert on and tre es and breathed so me ge nuine air, 1
14 Carrie Etter His Pantou m began to feel human and op erative again." In
30 Bernard O 'Donogbue Dun an Oir New York , Engin was to iling in a record
CLASSI CS 9 Willia m Fitzgerald Shadi Bartsch The Mirror of the Self shop, awaitin g news about the script, being
Victoria R im ell Ovid' s Lovers passed round various theatr e dir ectors. " Bad
news from [lash] Logan ", Baldwin writes on
LIT ER ARY CRITICISM 10 Elizabetb Eger Susan Staves A Literar y History of Wom en' s Writing in Britain , Ju ly 29 , 195 8. " He feel s ' let down ' by the
1660-1789 pla y, do es not find the ' electricity of the
Andrew Had field Robi n H eadl am Wells Shakespeare' s Hum anism no vel' in it, do es not ' care at all ' about the
boy and girl" . Sinc e Giovanni's Room is
LITER ATURE 12 Ben H utcb inson Peter Jami n Der Handke-Skandal princ ipall y a boy-meet s-boy affair, we can
Peter Handke Kali. Spuren der Verirrt en im agine Bald wins puz zlem ent over Log an' s
concluding rem ark; " Also I found the ending
COMM ENTARY 13 Nicbolas A. Joukovsky Ma ry Ellen ' s fi rst affair - New light on the biograph ical background to very inconclusive and som ehow the tra ged y
Modern Love of the boy' s death invaded the po ssibl e happi-
Mic bael Greenberg Freelanc e ness of the girl and bo y" . Bald win : " It sounds
T be n and Now October 5, 1962 - Michael Hamburger on Gunter Grass as though he ha s rather misread the play" .
Still, there wer e other dir ectors and oth er
ARTS 17 Jo hn Stokes Mic hae l Dobson, ed itor Perform ing Shakespeare' s Traged ies Today stars ; "One good th ing , we ' re not likel y to get
Dav id Bevington Thi s Wid e and Universal The ater
a rejection from Brando, simply bec au se he
Shakespeare King Lear (T he Court yard Theatre, Stratford-upo n-Avon)
never an swer s anybody" .
Toby Licbtig Oladipo Agboluaje The Christ of Coldh arbour Lane (Soho Theatre)
Ce zza r was hop eful of rem ainin g in Am er-
Keitb Miller Self-Portraits from the Ufliz i (Dul wich Picture Gallery)
ica and of bein g ex cuse d milit ary dut y bac k
Andrew Porter Giuseppe Verdi Macbeth (Glyndebourne Festival Opera)
hom e, and a full -scale production of
Giovanni 's Room might ha ve convert ed his
FICTION 19 Mic bael Sa ler Mic hae l Chabon The Yidd ish Policem en ' s Union
wishes to reality. By the sum me r of 1959 ,
M . Jo h n Har r ison Dave Eggers What Is the What
how ever, hop es were thinning. " At lea st
Terri Apter Alice McDermott After Thi s
we 've starte d at the top , ha ving elimina ted -
Pa ul Owen Peter Behrens The Law of Dream s
or be en eliminated by - both Gad g [Elia
Mic he lene Wa ndor L10yd Jones Mister Pip
Ka zan] and Jo sh" . Four months later;
J udith Fla nders Deborah Moggach In the Dark
" How would you feel about an 01'1'- B ' way
Katharine Hib ber t Joanna Kavenna Inglorious
production of Giovanni?" Ev entua lly, Engin
SCIE NCE 22 Mic hael Peel Marcus Chown The Neve r-ending Days of Being Dead returned to Turkey, wh er e he met his wife
Bryan Ap pleyard How To Live Forever or Die Trying Gulriz Sururi, an actress , and did his milit ary
Mary Roach Six Feet Over serv ice. Th e later lett er s faithfu lly conclude
J. L. Heilbron Will iam T. Vollmann Unce ntering the Earth with " kisses " toward s Gulriz.
To trac e the corr espond enc e from start to
NATURAL SCIENCE 24 Alva Noli Bruce E. Wex ler Brain and Culture lini sh is to follo w a rout e of lost innocenc e.
Matthew Cobb Charlotte Sleigh Six Legs Bette r The earl y ex changes bet ween writer and
actor are full of high spirits. "M ust do some-
SOCIAL STUDIES 26 A. W. B. Simpson Janet E . Ha lley Split Deci sions tbing about my finances befor e March , wh en
Lisa H . Schwartzma n Chall enging Liberalism the current shoes tring break s" , he wrote
David Papineau Anthony Hold en Bigger Deal in Janu ary 1958. A month before, he had
da shed off a not e with no oth er purpose than
MUSIC 28 Paul Grifflths John Tyrrell Janacek: Years of a Life to quote a poem by Mari ann e Moore, which
Stephen Brown John Gennari Blowin' Hot and Cool he kept pinn ed above his desk. It was too
Gary Gid dins Natural Select ion good, too inspi rin g, not to be passed on ;
What is there like fortitude!
POETRY 30 Willia m Wootten R. F. Langley The Face of It
What sap went through this little thread
April Warman Maurice Riorda n The Holy Land
To make the cherry red!
RELIGIO N 31 Jo h n Barton Peter Schafer Jesus in the Talmud Bald win was basicall y a religious man. At
Fergus Kerr Rudi te Velde Aqu inas on God the age of fourt een , he became a boy
preach er in the Fires ide Pent ecostal Assem-
IN BRIEF 32 Davi d J . Han d Informa tion Generation . Mary An n Gillies and Aurelea bly, a storefro nt church in Harl em. (Hi s fir st
Ma hood Modern ist Literature. Eca de Q ueiroz The Maias. novel , Go Tell !t on the Mountain , offer s a fic-
Maurice B1anchot A Vo ice From Elsewhere. W. A. B. Doug las et al A Blue tion alized acco unt, in the Te mple of the Fire
Water Navy. Brinda Bose and Sub ha brata Bhattacharyya, edi tors The Bapti sed .) Di sillu sionment with the church
Phobic and the Erotic . Peter Mortimer The Last of the Hunters. se t in before he wa s out of hi s teen s. " I
Markham J . Ge ller Renal and Rectal Disease Texts. alwa ys wa nted to work in the the ater" , he
would say later , " not rea lizing I had been in
35 This week' s cont ributor s. Crossw ord one all along ." Whil e doctrine failed him , his
spiritual faith remained unt arni shed , a belief
NB 36 J. C. Wh at the ancients ate, Hardy at 85, Metafiction 11 , Poetry babble that peop le "can" - thumping the tabl e - "be
bett er than they are" . It is the essential Bald-
win ten et, the one that red eem s white suprem-
ac y and the New World suffering drifting in
its wake . Throughout his life , in writing, in
Co ver pictur e: l ames Bald win in Istanbul dur ing the summer of 1965, photographed on the old Ga lata Brid ge cro ssing the Go lde n Horn with the Mosque of
spee ches , in conver sation, Baldwin reitera ted
Suleyma n the Ma gni ficent in the back ground . Bald win wa s in Istanbul writing his novel How Long the Train Has Been Gone , whic h was published in 1968 by
the Dial Press. Photograph by Sedat Pakay © 2007; p 3 © Robert Franco is/Aftlvrfetry Images; p5 Sedat Pakay © 2007 ; p9 © Bridgeman Art Library; plO © Art his simple teaching; "There is one race , and
Mu seum C inci nnati, USA ; pl 2 © AF P; p25 © Natural Histor y M useum Lond on ; p27 © Ge tty Images; p28 © Tr istram Kenton /Lebr echt Mu sic; p29 © David Red- we are all part of it" . In a letter written in
fern /R edfern s/mu sicpi ctur es.com 1959 fro m Par is to Ce zza r, who was still in

TLS J UN E 15 2 0 07

New York , he makes a typical, preacher-l ike
reference to a "healing" place in which "the
muck of the Nile, the plane trees of Athens ,
and the Rom an cross will co me together and
be transfigur ed and give us a new moralit y".
All the aspec ts of Baldw in's charac ter are
exposed in the letters. He was mag netic,
co mpulsive ly soc iable, elabora tely extrovert,
darkly introvert ed , depressive, magnificentl y
genero us, self-absor bed, self-dra matizing,
fun ny, furi ous, bu bbli ng with goo d inten-
tions, seldom hesitatin g over a breach of pro-
mise - capable of exhibiting all these traits
between lunch and din ner, and between din-
ner and the last whisky at 4 am . Plans to
reac h Istanbul are shor t-circuited aga in and
aga in by alternative plans. O n a plane to
Africa in Aug ust 1960, he lets fall that he has
"j ust decid ed to skip the Edinboro [sic] Fes ti-
va l, where we ' re due near the end of Aug ust,
and come to yo u . . . by way of Cairo ". By
October , he was back in New Yor k. But :
" will see yo u soo n". A few of the num erous
artistic projec ts planted here - novel s, essays,
movies, plays - spro uted as alien blooms,
while others wilted . Inside Baldwin ' s study ,
as well as outside, thi ngs were seldom bu ilt
acco rding to their design .
By the mid-1 960s, the tone of the letter s
has darkened, refl ectin g the cha nge in Bald-
win's moo d and the incendi ary atmos phere
on the stree ts of America n cities . In 1966,
increasin gly ce lebra ted, increasingly sought-
after, increasin gly in despair - " I ' Il ju st go on
wor king. I' ll pro bably become more and
more famous and I'll manage that way" -
Baldwin once aga in flew to Turkey ; not in
retreat from the characters in his nove l and
play ("the kids" , he fon dly calle d them when
con tentedly cl oistered at Mac Dowe ll) but
from the "d isas ters" , the race riots spreading
n February 1959, l ames Baldwin was
I in Philadelphia, acting as production
assista nt to Elia Kazan on a staging
of Tennessee Williams 's Swee t Bird of
Youth. While there, he attended a preview
performance of Lorraine Hansberry 's play
A Ra isin in the Sun, about which he
expressed his excitemen t to Engin Cezzar in
this undated letter. The "show " mentioned
in the firs t paragraph is Swee t Bird of
Youth; "Paul" is Paul Newman, who
played the gigo lo Chance Wayne ; " Gerry "
is Gera ldine Page. The cas t of A Raisin in
the Sun included Claudia McNeil and
Sidne y Poitier, both of whom turn up here.
Baldwin was thirty-four, young enough to
be thrilled at bein g recogni zed by a stranger
outside the theatre . He was the author of
two nove ls, a play (The Amen Co rner,
which he promised to send to Poitier) and a
collection of essays, No tes of a Native Son.
The novel he declares himself ready to get
"back to work " on is Another Co untry,
published in 1962.
Dea r Engin:
Than k yo u for the mail.
Show is shap ing up prett y we ll, we
ope ned last night to good reviews; some
reservat ions abo ut the scr ipt, though, appar-
ently, it has grea t powe r; so me reservations,
which I certai nly share , abo ut Paul' s per-
form ance; raves for Gerry, and she dese rve s
them. She 's fant astic - and in an extraor di-
LETTERS
James Baldwin in front ofthe Yeni Valide Ca m ii, Eminonu, Ist anbul, 1965
across the United States. Fro m the Pasha' s
Library in Jul y 1966, he wrote to Cezzar,
who still lives near Taks im Square, that he
expec ted to be "hounded" by the Ame rican
press that day , "with their misera ble, cow -
ardly" surveys, and their insistent , wro ng-
headed question: " What does the Negro
wa nt?" On April 12, 1968, on the road aga in,
yet increasin gly entrenched ("got into troubl e
in France , had to fight my way into Eng -
land" ), he wro te: " Between 2 & 3 wee ks ago,
I had to fly fro m Hollywood to N Y to do a
benefit with M artin [Luth er King] at Ca rne-
gie Hall. 1 didn 't have a suit, and had one
fitted for me that afternoon. I wo re the same
suit at his fun eral".
The assass ination of Kin g in Me mph is was
the moment on Baldwin' s j ou rney when his
eyes were cas t out, the stage at which his
naril y tricky and treacherou s par t. So . Sold
ou t for the rest of the run here.
Also: saw ' Raisin in The Sun' and it' s a
very bea utiful show . I' ve rarely sat in a
theatre and f elt an audienc e so inten sel y.
They were rea lly with it from beginni ng to
end, groa ning, laughin g, weep ing, hissing
instructi ons to the actors (, Don 'tforget your
flowers!' they wailed to M iss Claudia
McNeil, who seemed to be about to wa lk off
witho ut them ) and with a real ova tio n at the
final curtain, I came out of the stage door
with Lorra ine Hansberry, who wro te it, to
face a grea t mob of people; ' that's the
author!' somebody shou ted ; and I held Lor-
ra ine 's bag whi le she signed autographs . (' It
comes once in a lifeti me ' , she said, and gave
me her bag and wh ipped out her fount ain
pe n.) Very exci ting: a wi ntry aftern oo n in
thi s dingy city, with white fol ks and black
folk s with burning faces gathered around a
fra il little co lored girl, and a heavy , black
woma n (Claudia). They stoppe d traffi c,
baby. So me of the glory even rubb ed off on
me: ' Aren' t yo u James Baldwi n?' asked a
wor king ma n (I guess he was a worki ng
man; I thou ght he recogni zed me from
school, or something) . He said he' d been giv-
ing ' Notes' away for Xma s for years. So I
signe d his little piece of paper right next to
Lorraine ' s scraw l. It was some thing . The
show has fault s; too much slamming of
doors, maybe; an ove r emotiona l second act
curtain (may be); but it' s, in the ma in, very
TL S JU NE 15 2007
early innocence and hopes for the futur e we re
simultaneo usly lost from view. "Whatever
move I make is, in the eyes of the Ame rica n
gove rnment a political move." The red of
M arianne Moores cherry had liquefied , as in
a cinema tic nightm are, and sprea d across the
floor as blood . He had not foreseen, when
copyi ng out the line " What is there like forti-
tude !" , that it wo uld come to thi s. " 1 repu di-
ate despair: but the dail y necess ity for thi s
rep udiation conta ins its ow n despairin g com -
ment." He continued to try to balance the obli-
gations of writer and spokesman, with dimin-
ishing success . Towards the end of 1968, he
co mme nted on his lengthy battle with prod uc-
ers at Co lumbia Pictures, by whom he had
bee n hired to wr ite the scr ipt for a film about
M alcol m X :
I hope that they have finally understood the
truthful ; it is, incontestabl y, theatre - in the
sense that it drags the audience right up
there on the stage and keeps them there; and
thi s last achievement makes all its faults
see m very unimporta nt. Sid ne y h as fo und a
way of playing his very amb iguous ro le
which ca uses a redeemi ng pass ion to come
throu gh the boy' s rather mediocre ambitions
and infantil e tantru ms; and Lorra ine has re-
written it eno ugh to indicate that his ambi-
tions are, indee d, mediocre , being nothing,
more or less, than the national standa rds.
And, for the res t, Miss McNe il holds down
her end of the stage with an author ity I really
did not think she had. So, the fault s can be
endless ly disc ussed, and will be, but, mean-
while, one has gone through an expe rience.
Whic h is more than I ca n say for 'Compul-
sion' - to take one exam ple at rando m.
I managed to see it - it was sold out - on ly
because 1 ran into Poiti er the night before at
the local Var iety clu b and he gave me his
house seats. In return , I promised to send
him as much of my work as I cou ld get my
hands on. I've arra nged for him to get Dan
Brow n's copy of Mountain . Would yo u do
me the foll owi ng favor ?: get a copy of Notes
and send it to him at the Conrad-Hilton ho tel
in Chicago? I haven 't been able to find it
here. And don't , anyway, have much time to
look ; all I know of Phil adelphi a is the ha lf
block fro m the theatre to the hotel. Finished
Amen - aga in ! - am sendi ng it up to Sydney,
am back at wor k on the nove l.
5
poi nt of my intran sige nce and are reconciled
to the fact that, in essence , they are merely
privileged to pay for a movie which I have
been hired to make. I have never encou ntered
among any group of peop le a more eery sense
of reality. The California sun has scrambled
their brains , the swimming poo ls have clogged
their ears . .. . They are not wicked: they are
simply sublimely incompetent.
The film was never made, thou gh the script
was published in 1972 as One Day When
1 Was Lost (Sp ike Lee ' s 1992 fil m abo ut
Ma lco lm X includ ed a cred it to Baldw in).
Yet there was still the theatre, the are na in
which heroic ene rgy co uld wrestle with
tribul ation and be vindica ted . When Bald wi n
and Cezzar did finall y mount a produ ct ion
together - not of Giovanni 's Room but of the
play Fort une and Men's Eyes by John
Herb ert, at Cezzar's M ilky Way Thea tre in
Istanb ul, with Baldw in as director and Engin
in the leadin g ro le - it was, as Bal dw in says
in the lett ers, "a hit", continuing for ma ny
month s throu gh 1969 and 1970.
Onwards he marc hed , as he always had,
irrep ressi ble, unvanqui shed ; not , by the end,
perh aps, because he con tinued to believe in
"a new morali ty" but becau se it was the only
way his character perm itted him to act. In the
sa me lett er as that in which he co ngratulates
Eng in on the success of Fortune and Men's
Eyes, he already foresees a new project,
anot her play, Will iam Hanleys Slow Dance
on the Killing Ground. "I think that we might
make somet hing amus ing out of thi s fable."
Like many others, the plan ca me to nothin g,
but the remark could apply equally to
Baldwin's life, whic h asp ired to the qu alit y
of fabl e, providin g "amusement", in the
shape of his boo ks, and moral example.
"What is there like for titude !"
Still very exc ited by the intricac ies of
yo ur profession. Thing s go pretty we ll. It' s a
nice com pany - can ' t make any con tact with
Paul , don't und erstand hi m; but get on we ll
with near ly ever ybody else, especially Rip
Torn , who's mad, mad, mad - and a very
goo d actor. Logan' s in the co mpa ny, and
that helps. I avoi d Blackmer, who plays the
rac ist with rea l co nviction - he rea lly
believes all those thin gs he says . Amaz ing.
Go t on bea utifully with the other, darker
Sidney, who seems like a very nice man .
So .
Here we go.
Love,
Jimmy
Kiss Pud for me .
PS: If you get a chance, would yo u put my
navy raincoa t in a tailor shop ? It needs a
cleaning and the belt and the poc kets need to
be fixed. Also: Have a lectur e at Brandeis U.
on the 27th, so I am takin g that weekend off.
Will be in NY on the mornin g of the 28th ,
wh ich is a Saturday , and will stay over until
Monday afternoo n.
I know I do n' t rea lly need to say it, but 1
was very sad afte r our last co nve rsation.
Remember what yo u told me abo ut the
wa ter whee l; and think back, friend, think
back. We may seem to be movi ng slowly
but the point is, we 're movi ng . (And that
does n' t say it very we ll, either , but you
know what I mea n.)
6
Summer book fairs
Sir , - Perh aps H. R. Woudhuysen
was thinking of literary conceits
like l an e Eyre , An Autobiograph y ,
or History of Tom Jon es, a Found-
ling in writing that Robert Paynes
The Wanton Nymph: A stu dy of
pr ide was a novel (June I )? Perhaps
eve n the rath er nond escript pink
dustwrapper (as is the case with my
edition) could only ever con vey the
impression of a novel ? I can assure
him that Th e Wanton Ny mp h is
eve ry bit an acade mic study - and a
very goo d one too - of pride, and
not a wor k of fiction. The revised
edition was publi shed more pro sai-
ca lly in Am eri ca as Hub ris: Th e
study of pride.
Similarly, I don 't kno w if Prof-
esso r Woudhuysen does much
buyin g on the internet, but my expe -
rience is that far fro m drivin g prices
do wn the intern et has driven them
upwards. Last wee k, I bou ght a fine
edition of Th e Poet ical Works of
William Basse, a Jacob ean poet,
edited by Warwick Bo nd (1893)
from a bookshop in Sydn ey for
Au s$75. A similar ex -library edi-
tion is fetching ove r US$5 00 on
Abebooks. But spa re a thou ght for
the Penguin paperba ck title Thr ee
Tragedies by Ren aissan ce Wom en
Writers, which was publi shed as
recentl y as 1998 in the Renaissance
Dram atists series . I bought a cop y
when it first came out for the pepper-
corn sum of a few pounds in
London and, again, a pri stine copy
from the same Sydn ey bookshop
for Au s$5. Well , the sa me title is
now offered - and has been since
last yea r - on the intern et by Am a-
zon UK for the prin cely sum of
£ 1,9 11.67.
However , Woudhu ysen is right to
point out the decline in the PBFA
fair s brought on by the internet. I
used to rememb er the hubbub that
would accompany the major Jun e or
Jul y fair s for both the PB FA at the
Hotel Russell and its poorer cous in
down the road at the Royal National
as recentl y as the late 1990s. Book-
sellers in Char ing Cross Road , Cec il
Court and Bloom sbur y would also
get in on the act by coinciding their
print ed catalogues (Any A mount of
Boo ks, Ulysses) or restocking their
shelves (Quinto) or sprucing up their
shop windows Gust about everyone
e lse) ju st in tim e for the major
book j amboree. The exc ite ment
among collector s was palpable.
AZEEM SA HU KHAN
PO Box 356 1, Nadi , Fiji Island s.
----~,---
Climate science
Sir , - As a non- scienti st I cannot
have read one-hundredth of the
numb er of scie ntific articles read
by Robert May , yet I am famili ar
Senate House rules
Sir, - It would be hard to quarrel
with Joh n North's view ("Senate
House Rules" , Commentary, June
8) that the University of Londo n has
at its centre a group of outstanding
libr aries and research institut es that
are highl y va lued by the Colleges of
the federal Univer sity and by the
wider national and intern ation al
constituencies that they serve.
But libr aries and small institut es
are expensive, and they rely heavily
on publi c fundin g. The University 's
responsibility is to ensure that
resourc es, including space, are used
as effec tive ly as possibl e to ens ure
the survival and continued vitality
of both co llec tions and instituti on s.
Current arra ngeme nts are simply
not sustainable in tod ay' s fin anci al
clim ate. If we are to safeg uard the
uniqu e qualities of these research
environments that are so valued by
those who frequent them , we must
be prepared to sacrifice certa in by-
products of the autonomo us grow th
of the past, such as multipl e copies
of research materi al held in clo se
pro ximit y, in favou r of the esse ntial
values of expe rt staff and research
activity clo sely ju xtaposed with
research co llec tions. The library
con vergenc e policy is a necessary
mech anism to achieve ec o nomies of
sca le and to share professional
expertise ; to mak e mor e book s
access ible to more reader s and,
thereby, to enha nce the acade mic
mission of the Institutes.
----------'~,----------
with at least a score (each citing a
sco re more) que stioning key parts
of the theor y that there is a threat
of catastrophic man-m ade global
wa rming. So when Lord May claim s
(April 6) that " not one" respected
scie ntist is unconvinc ed , far from
persuading me he only makes me
doubtful of his other claims.
Mor eover, by appl ying the term
"denial" (with all its loaded under-
tones) to sceptical scientists; by refer-
ring to them inaccurately as "well
fund ed" by the oil indu stry; and by
likening those who stress the uncer-
tainties of clim ate science to unprin-
cipled lobb yists for tobacco compa-
nies, Lord Ma y enters on the field of
personal vilification - not a suitable
plac e for a distinguished form er
President of the Royal Society.
There is a grea t deal more money
and acce ptability ava ilable to con-
se nsus sc ientists than to dissenters.
This sugges ts that the work of the
doubt er s should be taken very seri-
ously, since it brin gs with it prob-
lem s both of fundin g and of exclu-
sion from the friendl y embrace of
the Establishme nt. I admire such
people, much as I have admired
other di ssident s like Solzhenitsy n,
letters @the-t1s.co.uk
Professor North's percep tion is
based on the pas t. He does not recog-
nize the resea rch strengths of the
Senate Hou se Libr ary, or know that
it is more used by postgraduates and
aca demic staff than by undergradu-
ates . He is not awa re that the Univer-
sity of Lond on Research Lib rary
Services deli ver key aca dem ic bene-
fits that the Briti sh Library ca nnot,
including miles of open-access clas-
sified book- stock and remotely
access ible e-resources . He appears
not to know that the School of
Ad vanced Stud y has recentl y
created two new research institutes.
It is precisely because of the
qualities of the Senat e Hou se and
Institute librari es that the Univer-
sity, far from see king a new role, is
continuing to play its established
one of fosterin g resourc es to nurtur e
aca dem ic exce llence in Londo n and
beyond. It is fu nded to support teach-
ing and research , not to preserve
Pastor Bonho effer - oh, and Ga lileo
and Darwin.
LEAC H OF FA IRFO RD
Matheso n & Co , 3 Lombard Street,
Lo ndon EC3.
----~,---
The English
Sir, - Ge orge Garnett quite rightly
deplor es Peter Mandl er' s inattention
to the Middl e Ages (June 8) when
the concepts of "English" and "Eng-
lishness" first surfaced, especia lly in
the aftermath of the Nor man Con-
quest whe n the tension between
Anglo-S axon s and "Normans" (add,
sotto voce, Breton s, Flemings Man-
ceaux, assorted French ) was first
acce ntuated and then moderated by
continuing conflict between the
inhabitants of "England" and the
Celts to the west and north. As John
Gillingham and other scholars have
show n, by Henr y l' s reign second-
generation Normans were referr ing
to them selves as "English" in distinc-
tion to both the Welsh/Scots and
"N orrnans" (from Normandy). A
final point : surely Garnett meant
Tweed, not Tees , in the geography of
TLS J U N E 15 20 07
traditi onal bound aries. Adapting to
new circum stances does present
problems; the so lution lies not in
lookin g backward s but in
positive change for the futur e.
G RAEME DA VIES
N ICHOLAS MANN
University of London, Sena te House,
Malet Street, London WC l.
Sir , - John Nor th may not appre-
ciate how important ch ange is for
the actual survival of the central
University of London libraries. The
curr ent proc ess is designed to save
them . There is no plan B. These
magnifi cent libr aries could go the
way of Westfield and Bedford Col-
leges, whose di sappearance also
once see med inconc eivable. Se nate
House Library would have gone
under in the 1990s had UCL not
com e to the rescue. With its
unm atched spec ia l collection s
and its rol e as a com mon resource
for Hum aniti es Stud ent s all ove r
Lond on - both pos tgraduate and
undergradu ate - its futur e should
not be in doubt , yet it reall y has
been questioned. The Senate Insti-
tut es are also vulnerable, eve n if
their current travails do not see m to
threaten their surviva l pro vided
they do not self-des truc t.
DA VID D' A VR A Y
Department of History , University
College , Gower Street, London WC l.
fog: I know, as he does, that medi-
eval Scottish kings cove ted Durham
and Northumberland, but they failed
to make good their claim .
JO HN S. MOO RE
Department of Historical Studies,
Schoo l of Humanitie s, Universi ty
of Bristol , Bristol.
----~.----
Modern Handel
Sir, - I am puzzled by some aspects
of Ian Bostridge' s generally favour-
able review of my book Handel 's
Operas 1726-1741 (May 4). He
seems to imply that the creation of
psyc holog ically convincing ope ratic
characters was unkno wn before
Mozart. Thi s is to take a very narrow
view. Ignoring a possible case to be
made for Monteverdi, Purcell and
perhaps others, he dismisses the char-
acters of Handel' s age as "types
rather than unique individuals". It is
true that Handel' s method differed
from those of later periods and that
he operated within a severely res-
tricted convention, but he surely tran-
scended it, buildin g up his characters
by degrees ove r the course of the
opera. Nor are they static or one-
dimensional. Cleopatra in Giulio
Cesare and Alcina (to name only
two) rank high among the grea t
operatic characters. I cannot see any
link between eighteenth-century aes-
thetics and the "pos tmodem" direc-
tors whom Bostridge considers
particularly success ful in Handel,
and who genera lly play havoc with
plot and characters to serve some
contempor ary or personal whim.
Bostridge blurs a numb er of
distincti ons, for exa mple the extent
to which Handel' s musical material
was transferable between different
characters or sce narios . Excep t in
revivals, when he had to acc ommo-
date new singers, often at short
notice, and admittedly took little
troubl e, this seldo m involved the
music of major characters. There is
a big difference between the com-
paratively rare occas ions on which
Handel passe d off others' compo si-
tions as his ow n and the far more
numerous instances of his using the
ideas of others as a jumping off
point for fresh composition. It
may see m strange that he needed to
do this, but it involves a creative
process, not simple larceny.
W INTON D EAN
Hambledon Hu rst, Goda lm ing .
----~,----
Ruritania
Sir, - When Chris Patten lists
authors who invoke Montenegro in
the second paragraph of his review
of Elizabeth Robert s' s Realm of the
Black Mountain (June 1), he misses
out one important one. "Ruritania"
in Anth ony Hope' s Prisoner oj
Zenda is modelled on Montenegro;
and the plan of late nineteenth-
centu ry Cetinje can be superim-
posed almost exac tly on that of
Strelsau.
MA RTIN CO HEN
In Beechwood Place , Apt 6 1I),
London , Ontario.
----~,----
Looiss
Sir, - J. C. relates ofT. S. Eliot and
Clive Bell: "Lewes, where Bell
lived (pro nounced ' Loo-iss', ove r-
seas readers please note), is a tricky
word to rhyme but Eliot succeeded"
(NB, June 8).
Eliot had enough time to think
about it. He spra ng from St Loui s,
Mi ssouri . This is pronounc ed
"L oo-iss" , overseas readers please
note, not " Saint Loui e" (as in
"Meet Me in Saint Louie, Louie" ).
After all, Missouri has not been
French since December 1803.
GEO RGE STEVEN SWA N
NC A&T State Univers ity,
Gree nsboro, North Carolina 2742 0.

"S tevena ge will in a sho rt tim e
becom e wo rld-famo us", the Mini s-
ter told the packed meet ing in the
Town Hall. He was startled to be
gree ted by loud laught er from the audience .
Th e lau ght er rippl ed out to the 3,000 more
locals outside listenin g to loud speaker s. Th e
Mini ster plou ghed on: "People fro m all ove r
the world will come to Steven age to see how
we here in thi s co untry are building for the
new way of life" . It was no good. Ami d cries
of "G estapo !" and "Dictator !" , Lewis Silkin
left the meeti ng to find that some local lads
had deflated the tyres of his ministerial
Wolseley and pou red sand into the petrol
tank . Soo n after, the Steven age sig ns at the
local ra ilway station we re repl aced by signs
say ing Silkingrad.
Silkin had promised the Hou se of Com-
mons that the New Town s would create "the
new typ e of citize n, a health y, self-res pecting
dignifi ed perso n with a sense of beaut y, cul-
ture and civ ic pride". Clea rly there was still
some way to go. Nor was the resistance
confined to the pleb s. Old Steve nage had
been the setting for Howards End, and
Bloom sbury j oin ed forces with the rou gher
element whe n E . M. Fors ter lament ed that the
New Town wo uld "fall o ut of a blu e sky like
a meteorite upon the ancien t and delicate
sce nery of Hertford shire" .
It was not simply the affro nt to their land-
sca pe, it was the assa ult o n themselves and
their way of life that pe ople resented. This
rese ntment run s as a delici ou s und ercurrent
thro ugh David Kyn aston ' s masterl y account,
Austerity Britain. Onl y an und ercurrent ,
thou gh. For these are qui et and orde rly yea rs,
the years of PC Dixon and The Blue Lamp,
when the socia l an thropologis t Geo ffrey
Go rer found plenty of res po nde nts ready to
decl are the British police "the finest bod y of
men of th is kind in the wor ld", and when the
mos t a Chelsea bur glar wo uld stea l was so me
tinned sar dines, a pound of tea, two pot s of
marm alade and an ove rcoa t.
In thi s age of the qu eue , patienc e was the
vir tue. T he wa iting tim e to have a tel ephone
install ed was anythin g up to eightee n
mo nths ; for a new ca r it was bet ween twelve
mo nths and two and a half years ; a new suit
could take nine months to be rea dy . Peopl e
bec ame so accustomed to qu euin g that when
A lan Sainsbury introdu ced "Q-less shop-
ping ", otherw ise known as self-se rvice , at his
Purl ey store, one hou sewife threw a wire
basket at him, and a judge ' s wife sw ore
vio lently when she reali zed that she was now
ex pec ted to do the wor k of a sho p ass ista nt.
Yet , Steve nage apart, the gru mbling
remained mos tly at a mut ed , pri vate level.
When the Quarry Hill Te na nts Associ ati on
met to protest that their fam ou s mo de l estate
was becoming a dump, littl e bett er than the
slums it had replace d, the Leeds Guardian
rep orted, in a pleasin g literal , that "the mee t-
ing was in unroar", "U nroa r" see ms a perfect
description of the publ ic ' s reac tio n to the
hu ge ambitions of those who procl aim ed that
"we are the masters at the moment - and not
on ly for the mom ent but for a very long time
to co me" - the correct and no less da unting
vers ion of Sir Hartl ey Shawc ross' s famous
boast in April 194 6.
Som e later histori ans have sought to play
down tho se amb itions and present the Attlee
Govern ment as littl e mor e than a gro up of
we ll-meaning but short-sig hted socia l dem o-
HISTORY
Ration book
Distorted memories of the post-war age
FE R D IN AN D MO U N T the dogs, the latter a parti cula r bugb ear of
prog ress ives. Mi dweek grey ho und meetin gs
D avid K yn a st on we re actually bann ed , in theor y to reduce
abse nteeis m and help the ex po rt dri ve, in
AUS TER I TY B R IT AI N truth out of pu ritanical dislike . Labour MPs
1945- 51 like Bessie Bradd ock fulmi nated aga inst
6Y5pp. Bloom sbury. £25. Dior ' s New Look. Th ere was eve n a mo ve to
9780747579854 regul ate hemlines.
By the autumn of 1947, Pries tley was
crats who were und one by their own timi dity. lament ing that the old neighb ourl y coopera-
Yet, at the start, their hopes we re va ulting tion of the war yea rs had go ne . "People are
high. Even Herb ert Morri son , the vo ice of hard er, more selfish, more intent upon look-
do wn-to-earth mod eration , decl ared that ing after Num ber One ." The spiv was the
"part of o ur wor k in politic s and in indu stry dem on figure of the age - like the hedge
must be to imp rove hum an natur e" . Th e pri- fund er tod ay. Joining the Labour Party did
vate goa l of Sir Will iam Haley, the BBC 's not alw ays brin g wi th it much admiration for
Director- General, was that in time the Third the wor king class. "The popul ation is as ugly
Programme wo uld beco me so popul ar that as the buildings" , rem arked the redo ubtable
the Light Prog ram me and the Hom e Service Na omi Mi tchison, after wal king down the
would no longer be required. And when tele- Gallowgate in G lasgow . Harol d Nicolson
vision limp ed on to the sce ne, Haley antici- told Jam es Lees-Miln e that he was becomin g
pated the time when that medium, too, "work- a socialist bec ause socialism was inevit able,
ing wi th all the other benefi cent influences "altho ugh no o ne dislikes the lower orde rs
wi thin the co mmunity will have the capaci ty, mor e than I do".
to make for a bro ader vision and a full er life" . This revul sion, also to be found in Virginia
Margate, June 1948; from th e book under r eview
Alon g with thi s ideali sm we nt a goo d deal Wo olf and Aldo us Hu xley and as far back as
of cont empt for the Briti sh people as they Ge orge Gissing, ex tende d beyon d the faces
ac tua lly we re . In hi s Letter to a Returni ng of the lowe r orde rs to the places they lived in.
Serviceman, J. B. Priestl ey impl ored : In Town Planning, a 1940 Pelic an which so ld
"refuse with sco rn the grea t dop e-dream s of a qu arter of a mill ion copies, the influential
the ec ono mic e mpe ro rs a nd thei r so rce rers pl ann er Tho mas Sharp denounc ed suburbia
and Hollywood sirens. Don't let them inject (w here a qu arter of the po pul ation by then
you with Glamour, Sp ort, Sensati on al News lived) for "its soc ial sterility, its aes thetic
and all the Delu xe non sense". This plea was emptiness , its eco no mic was tefulness ". For
no mo re successful than that of present-day most for ward-l ook ing peo ple, the suburbs
Savonarola Bro wn s demanding an en d to the were , in Priestley' s words , "tree-lined concen-
celebrity culture . Labour Part y docum ent s tration cam ps". Livin g and wo rking chee k by
throu ghout the decade continued to wail jo wl in multi- storey buildings was the only
abo ut "the failu re of the majority of Britain's health y way . We had to build up not out, and
citize ns to enjoy a full life throu gh their only full-bl own nati on al plannin g co uld
lei sur e pur suit s" , pre ferr ing the movies and achieve thi s. After all, had not even that
TLS J U N E 15 2 0 07
7
rISIng yo ung architectura l writer Joh n
Betj eman procl aim ed ten years ea rlier that
"we mu st build office blocks twice as high
as St Pau l' s" ?
Few of the new elite wo uld have ag reed
with Frederic Os born, wr iting to Lewi s
Mumford: "1 don 't thi nk ph ilan thro pic
people anyw here rea lise the irresistibl e
strength of the impul se towar ds the fam ily
hou se and ga rde n as prosperity incr eases.
They think the suburban trend can be
reversed by large-scale mult i-storey build-
ings in the down-town district , which is not
merely a pern iciou s beli ef fro m the hum an
point of view but a delu sion " . The vog ue for
planning an d the revo lt agai nst suburbia coi n-
cided with two other irresistible for ces: the
preference for publ ic ownersh ip ove r private
spec ulative building and, above all, the need
to cop e wi th the desperate ho us ing crisis.
The Attlee Governme nt is best rem em-
bered tod ay for nation ali zation and the
Nationa l Health Service. But , as Kyn aston
makes clear in his wo nder ful melange of
statistics , goss ip and qu otation , hou sing was
eas ily the top issue throu ghout the 194 5
Parli ament and at the 1950 ge nera l elec tion.
A qua rter of Brit ain' s dwe llings did not have
their ow n lavatory, nearl y half lacked a fixed
bath . The shortage of hom es was estimated at
somew here bet ween 700,000 and double that
figur e. In Glasgow, nearl y half the popul a-
tion were thou ght to need rehou sing. An d the
progress made unde r Labour was impress ive .
By 1951 , a milli on new homes had been
built , four-fifth s of them for local author ities .
Wh en Harold Macmill an we nt on to set and
meet a target of 300,000 hom es a year, the
majority too we re co unci l-owned . The trend
co ntinued under later Tory and Labour admin-
istrations, so that by the 1970 s a thir d of the
total hou sing stoc k was ow ned by the co uncil
- a tran sfor mati on of the pattern of hou sing
ten ure more revolutionary in its impl icati on s
eve n than the arrival of the Na tional Health
Serv ice, which was , after all, a developm ent
of ex isting publicly financed health services
along lines set out, thou gh less ambitio usly,
by H. U. Willink (later Sir Henry) for the
war time Coa lition.
The NHS in fact plays a strangely minor
part in Ky nas ton's acco unt - nothi ng like the
iconi c pro minence it occupi es tod ay in our
recollection s. The public reacti on he
describ es was one of wea ry gra titude, wi th
onl y a littl e mutt erin g abo ut the inevitabl e
shortco mings of the service an d those who
abused it. Much the same is true of the other
grea t new arriva l of 194 8, the introduct ion of
the nation al insurance scheme . In the dark
days of the war the Beveridge Rep ort had
sold 630,000 copies, but now the en thusias m
had settled dow n into a placid acce ptance of
wha t were pre tty mo des t levels of benefit.
Altoge ther, wha t strikes one lookin g back
is not any great splurge on the "welfare state"
- a term whic h Lord Beveridge him self dis-
liked as a di stort ion of his inte ntions - but
rather the tight-fi sted caution wi th which it
was introduced. The N HS never looked like
meeting Aneuri n Bevan ' s innocent hop e that
the service would make the nation so health y
that its cos ts wo uld eve ntually co me do wn.
But the govern men t made strenuous effor ts
to co ntrol the cos t overrun (£50 million on an
es timate of £ 176 mill ion ) and did not hesitate
to ove rru le Bevan and brin g in charges
for false teeth and spec tacles . By seve rely
8 HISTORY
rati onin g treatm ent , it pro ved possibl e to
keep the service more or less afforda ble, until
seve ral decades later the ex pectations of affl u-
ence brok e the dam.
Kyn aston is sure ly right in sayi ng that "if
the Tori es had been return ed to office in
1945 , they almos t cert ainl y wo uld ha ve
crea ted a we lfare state not unreco gni sabl y dif-
ferent" . As it was, Britain was spe nding less
of her GDP on soc ia l we lfa re than Belgium,
Au stri a, or West Ge rma ny. Thi s part of
Correlli Barnett ' s arg ument - that the Briti sh
vo ted them selves too co mfor table a peace -
is not who lly co nv incing. After all, the
queues and shortages of the Labour years
we re largely due to the determined diver sion
of alm ost all manufactures to ex port. Brit-
ain's share of wor ld trade in manuf actured
goods actually rose under Labour. In 1950 ,
the Briti sh mo tor indu stry enjoyed a sta rtling
52 per cen t of wo rld ex po rts.
But if the costs of we lfa re did not cripple
the British eco no my, Barn ett was sure ly right
in arguing that imp erial overstretch did . As
Maynard Keyn es bitt erl y obse rved in 1944,
"all our refl ex actions are those of a rich
ma n" , whet her in insistin g that the ster ling
area must play a leadin g role, or that the
atomic bomb must have a Union Jack on top
of it, or that that not a sing le brick in the impe-
rial arc h be aba ndo ned, for fear that the
whole lot wo uld co me tumblin g down. Dou-
blin g defe nce expenditure from the pre- war
level of 7 per cent, to meet the de mands of
the Korean War, was a breatht aki ng piece of
Contemporary Mexican Cinema, 1989-1999:
History, Space, and Identity
Miriam Haddu
. This will be a valuab le addition to the expandin g corpus
of English-l anguage books on Mexican cinema .. ." Pr ofessor
Carl J. Mo ra, University of New Me xico
May 2007 1 276pp 1978-0-7734-5433-0 1 lIB 1£69,95
The Discrepancy Between the Public and
the Private Selves oflndonesian Women: A
Comparison of Published and Unpublished
Autobiographies and Diaries
Soe Tjen Marching
"...She examines what they had to say as well as what the
women in the autobiographies conveyed and questions
Indonesian women' s experiences ..." Professor Tineke
Hellwig, Uni versi ty of British Columb ia
May 2007 1 268pp 1978-0-7734-5435-41 HB 1£69.95
The Earliest Arthurian Texts: Greek and
Latin Sources of the Medieval Texts
(Texts, Translations, and Commentary)
Graham Anderson
.....is a rich treasure trove of enlighten ing and often new
materia ls on the subject of perennial Arthurian legends ..."
Or John Matthews, Independent Scholar
May 2007 1 404pp 1978-0-7734-5376-0 1 lIB 1£79,95
Folktale as a Source of Graeco-Roman
Fiction: The Origin of Popular Narrative
Graham Anderson
"...1warm ly recommend the work to those who are inter-
ested in folktale and sophisticated literature alike .;"
Or Desmond Costa, Univers ity of Birmingham
May 2007 1 272pp 1 978-0-77 34-5372-2 1 lIB 1£69,95
The Edwin Mellen Press
www.mellenpress.co.uk
Tel: ++44(0) 1570423356
emai1: cs@mellen.demon.co.uk
bravado for a country still so ravaged by wa r
and in hock to its creditors.
Yet the most corros ive causes of lon g-t er m
decli ne sure ly lay within the struc tures of
indu stry rather than spring ing fro m the over-
blown pre tensi ons of government. It was not
so mu ch the obsess ion with occupy ing the
co mmanding he ights of the economy that did
the dam age. It was the failure to atte nd to
what was go ing o n down below. In manufac -
turin g, for ex ample, competition on price was
virtua lly defun ct. Co llusive price agreements
covered abo ut 60 per ce nt of output, as
against 25- 30 per cen t before the wa r. The
clearing banks too had co me to operate as a
dozy carte l. Oli ver Fra nks reca lled that bein g
Chairma n of the Midl and Bank "was like dri v-
ing a powerfu l ca r at twent y miles an hour" .
Restrictive practices such as working to rule,
ove rtime bans and the closed shop were
sprea ding fast. And there was more to co me,
as trad e union memb ershi p hit a peak of 9.3
million in 195 1. In the Coventry car plants it
was the shop stewards who ca lled the shots .
Labou r in the dock s had been decasualized,
but far from imp roving as predicted , the turn-
ro und tim e had fallen off badl y. Mo st mana g-
ers had littl e appe tite for refor m, since they
had it relative ly easy in a world where the
United States was still strugg ling to supply its
hom e mark et , and Germany and Japan we re
flat on their backs. Eve n Geo ffrey Crow ther,
Editor of the Econom ist, who denou nced the
British system as "stiff, rigid and unada pta-
ble" , did not grea tly care for the A mer ican
sys tem either, "where to my mind they have
too much comp etit ion and pay too high a
price for their we alth". A ll in all, what Bevan
slighting ly describ ed as "the light cavalry of
pri vate indu stry" see med to be trottin g, quit e
blithely, into the Va lley of Dea th.
Roy Hattersley has co mplained that David
Kyn aston misses the esse ntial po int, that
those years were a time not only of auster ity
but of hope . For tho se whose hopes we re
bound up with the Attl ee proj ect , that was no
doubt true, and such vo ices are to the for e in
hi stori es of the period from that qu arter -
such as Peter Henn essy' s Neve r Again and
Ken neth O . Mor gan ' s The People 's Peace -
but for a grea t part of the popul ation hope
was dull ed by shee r ex ha ust ion. Br itai n was a
desperat ely tired nation , as shor t of energy as
it was of cas h. This over whelming fact glim-
mers forth from every page of Kyn aston , as it
does from other pre decessors in the field,
such as Robert Kees 1945: The world we
foug ht for, T . E . B. Howarth ' s Prospect and
Reali ty , and, not least, from Nineteen Eighty-
four. Orwell wro te, "Everyo ne wan ts, above
all thi ngs, a res t" . Ge orge VI spoke for his
subjects when he wro te to his brother at the
beginning of 1946: " I have been suffer ing
fro m an awful reaction from the stra in of the
war, I suppose, and have felt very tired . Foo d,
cloth es and fuel are the main topic s of us all" .
A feelin g of anticl imax and let-down over-
whelms Nick Jenkin s durin g the victory cele-
bration s in A Dance to the Music of Time.
M ass-Obser vation ' s investigator in Che lsea
remarked after the Victor y Parade how
"almost eve rybody I met on the 10th and
II th, whe ther friends or tradespeopl e or stran-
ge rs in shops, we re say ing loudl y ho w utterly
ex ha usted and was hed-out they felt " . It was
lTMA' s Mon a Lott rather than Vera Lynn
who spoke for the nation now.
This ex haus tion was deepened by the
TLS J UN E 15 20 07
sha bbiness of ever y town and city, eve n tho se 194 8 Lond on Olympics was bann ed from the
that Hitl er had not flattened. Eve ry post-war athletes ' parad e becau se he had lost a leg as a
visitor to Lond on - Christopher Isher wood , bo y.
Ron ald Reagan, Doris Lessing, Dan Jacob- Austerity Britain ha s a mar vell ou s flowi ng
son - was suffoca ted by the smog and di rt sweep to it. Th ose grue lling years see m to flit
and not least the sme ll. Kyn aston ' s exce rpt by. Kyn aston does not press his op inions o n
from the diary of a hou sewife in Surbiton us, but they eme rge sharply eno ugh from the
reminded me how awful the radio smelled we ight of ev idence he marshal s and the ex per -
when it blew up. "This is a dying cit y" , some - tise he depl oys as a leadin g histori an in so
one told Isher wood , and when the snow ca me many different field s: the City of Lond on ,
in the terribl e winter of 1946 - 7, it ca me like cricket and the British wor king cla ss. He is
an invadi ng ene my . There we re tim es dur ing not the first histori an of thi s period to put the
Ma nnie Shinwe ll's power cut s that year Peopl e fir st in what, after all, was meant to be
when all anyo ne had the streng th to say was , their day of days. Mass-Ob ser vati on , rathe r
as Kingsley A mis wro te to Phi lip Larkin, than Hansard or the Financia l Times, is the
"CH RIST IT S BLEE DING CO LD" . prime reg ister of the tim es. Yet David Kyn as-
The prophets of gaiety were few and far ton is, I think, espec ially alert to the way in
between . Eva n Durbin was tragically which the masses resist massification. The
drown ed. Not many other politi cian s wo uld iron y is that M ass-Ob ser vation bec omes a
have sided with the yo ung Tony Cros land, rec ord of the inten se privacy of the Br itish
first elected for So uth Glouces tershire in peo ple rather than a diary of the ge nera l will.
1950 : "I wa nt more , not less spoo ning in the As the politi ci ans blatt er on abo ut plannin g,
Parks of Recreation an d Rest, more abor tion, and the peopl e firml y co ntinue to talk about
more freedom and hilarity in eve ry way; hemlines and the meat ration, it is hard not to
abstine nce is not a goo d foundation for socia l- be reminded of the dying Disrae li's fam ou s
ism " . For thi s was a ser ious and strait-laced wor ds to his socialist inter viewer H. M . Hynd-
nation in which the BBC's Green Book for- ma n: " It is a very diffic ult co untry to move ,
bade any sugges tive references to lod ger s, Mr Hyndm an, a very difficult country ind eed ,
ladies' und er wear, or rabbits, and ruled out and one in which there is mor e disapp oin t-
not only the mild est swearing but the vulgar ment to be look ed for than success" . Perhaps
use of words like "basket" . Unde r the the mos t evocative featur e of thi s unfail ingly
Fourteen -Day Rul e the BB C also forb ade evocative book is the se lect handful of black-
disc uss ion of any matter due to be debated in and-white photos, especially the pictu res
Parlia ment ove r the next fortnigh t. The actor taken by Bert Hard y for Picture Post: wet
who played Jock in Dick Barto n was sac ked stree ts, back-t o-b ack ho uses , men in ties and
for bein g a Communist, and staff at John hats, and in the back ground smo king chim-
Lewis dep artm ent store had to sign a decl ara- neys and stoo ping cranes, a land of lost co nti-
tion that they did not belon g to the Commu- nence, where the wi ndows were too grimy to
nist Part y. The cox of the Briti sh Eight at the see the New Dawn.
The Peacock at Alderton
No thing to tell why I canno t write
in re Nobody; nob od y to narr ate thi s
latt er acknow ledge men t: the self that counts
wor ds to a line, acco untable surv ivor
pain- wed ged , pinion ed in the cleft trunk,
less pett y than a sprite, poi son ou s as Ari el
to Pro spero ' s own kno wl ed ge. In my room
a vase of peacock feather s. 1 wi ll atte mpt
to describ e them , as if for ev ide nce
on which a life de pends. Except for the eyes
they are threadb are: the thread s han gin g
from some lumin ate tou gh weed in Februa ry.
But those eyes - like a Gree k letter ,
omega , fo ssil ed in an Indi an shaw l;
like a shaved cross-sec tio n of livin g tissue,
the edge met alli c blue, the core of jet ,
the white of the cye in fact closer to be ige,
the whole encircle d w ith a black-fringed gree n.
Th e peacock roos ts alone on a Sc ots pine
at the ga rde n end, in blu ster y twil ight
hi s ful gent cloak stark as a wa rlock 's ca pe,
the maharajah-bi rd that scavenges
close by the stone-tro ughed, stone terr aced , stone-e nsurfed
Suffolk shore line; at tim es displays his scream .
GE OFF RE Y HILL

"M irrors were disco vered in order
that man might kno w him self',
declares Seneca, shortly after he
has told us about one Hostiu s Qu adra, a
Rom an who lined his bedro om walls with
mag nifying mirro rs so that he could wa tch
himself " shared between a man and a woman
and expose d to pe netration in his who le
body" . Hostiu s compounds his perver sion by
describing it as a form of self-know ledge:
"No one will think I don 't kno w what I' m
doin g". The mythic al Narc issus also, thou gh
more innocentl y, misappli es the famou s
injunction to "know yo urse lf' inscrib ed on
the Tem ple of Apoll o at Delph i. In Ovids
version of that story, the proph et Teiresias
decl ares that Narc issus will have a long life
if he does not co me to know him self. But
Nar ciss us falls in love with his ow n refl ec-
tion in a pool of water and com es to grief
as a result. In The Mi rror of the Self, Shadi
Bartsch point s out that mirrors, which are
an em blem of vanity, eve n perver sion , in
the ero tic context are instrum ent s of self-
imp rovement in the anc ient philo sophi cal
traditi on. But her starting point for this
rich and ambitious boo k is where these two
cont exts fuse, in Plato , who makes Eros a
motive for philo sophi cal inquir y. The story
that Bart sch has to tell is how the conj unction
between Eros and Sophia (wisdo m), so pro m-
inent in Plato , has turn ed into a dichotom y by
the time of Seneca , the first-centur y Stoic,
and how this shift comes with a ch ange in
the way that self-know ledge is imagined. The
mirro r, real or figurati ve, provides Bartsch
with a focus for those practi ces of self-
knowled ge and self-improve men t that lie at
the heart of ancient ethica l thought.
Self-refl ection is all too famil iar to us
post-Cartesian navel-gazers: we look deep
into ourselves to discover the self to which
we must be true, and find the limit s of what
we can know of the wor ld in the structure of
our own minds. But Bart sch argues that this
kind of introspecti ve self-reflec tion was not
what ancie nt thin kers urged whe n they used
the fi gure o f the mirror. The m irror was the
means by which we com e to kno w our public
selves : the self in the mirror was not so me
uniqu e and authe ntic self, but the self as see n
by others, objec t of the judgem ent of the
community. In this mirror, the view ing self
becom es a jud gin g other, and so begin s the
path of self-improve men t.
For Plato, the mirro r perform s a similar
role, but it is located in the eyes of the loved
one and it reflects not the self as it is see n
by others but the divine self that has contac t
with the truth. The lover sees his own ideals
mirro red in the eyes of the beloved, who in
turn sees his ow n beaut y mirr ored in the eyes
of his lover ; both are spurred on by this
vision of the div ine in them selves to eng age
in the quasi-eroti c activity of philosop hica l
dialo gue and to asce nd to a more dir ect vision
of the divine. Plato' s acco unt of this mirro r-
ing in the Phaedrus is a masterpi ece of co mic
doubl e entendre: a strea m of beaut y from the
beloved wa rms up the lover, wa tering his
soul, which aches and tingles until it fin ally
spro uts the wings that will allow it to ascend
to a vision of trut h.
To an ancient reader this descri ption of
the effects of vision would not see m as
absurd as it does to us. We tend to co ntras t
vision to touch as a more obje ctifying, dis-
tancing sense. But ancient theories of sight
CLAS S rcs
How do I look?
WILLlAM F ITZ GE RA L D
Sh adi B a rtsc h
THE MI R R O R OF T HE SELF
Sex uality, self-know ledge, and the gaze in the early
Roman empire
3 15pp. Universi ty of Chicago Press. $45 ; distr ibuted
in the UK by Wiley. £28.50.
9780226 038353
Vict o ri a R im ell
a VID ' S L OVE RS
Desire, differe nce and the poe tic imagin ation
244pp. Camb ridge Universi ty Press. £50 (US $90).
978052 1862 196
we re intensely physical. A strea m of particl es
flowed from the objec t or person see n to
impin ge on the eye and so to cause vision .
The mutu al gaze of two lover s might be
describ ed as a kind of cop ulation in which the
lovers exchange strea ms of simulacra, and
the evil eye had the power to penetrate its
obje ct; which is why am ulets in the form of
phalluses we re used to neut ralize its effects .
Hostius Qu adra manages to subjec t him self
to yet another form of penetration whe n he
gazes at himse lf in the mirror.
Mos t of The M irror of the Self conce rns
Rome, where visibility was all. The elite
Rom an aspired to be an exe mplary model for
others and guided himself by the exe mplars
of the past. Tri umphs, fun erals, law co urts
and politi cal life all put Rom ans on displ ay.
But bein g in the public eye was a precar ious
situatio n, which subje cte d the public figure to
constant judgem ent by his peers, the popu-
lace and, con sequ entl y, himse lf. Bart sch' s
wide -ranging and fascin ating acco unt of
what she ca lls "the scopic paradigm at
Rome" takes in, among other topics, the
vario us me anin gs o f the Latin word ima go
(fune ral mask, doubl e, exem plary model,
mi rror image), the changing va lues of the
word persona (mas k), and the antino my
bet ween those dangerou sly close figur es, the
ora tor and the actor (the latter a dishon our-
able profession at Rome, unlik e in Greece) .
By the time of Seneca, Rom e had under-
gone a crucia l change of politica l system : in
place of the Republi c, where a sma ll elite of
equals comp eted for honour s and annual
office before the people who elec ted them, the
princip ate introdu ced a virtual monarchy, in
which the Emperor monopolized the oppo rtu-
nities for honorifi c display. Seneca, tutor and
later adv iser to the Emperor Nero, was close
to the centr e of power , and it left a decisive
mark o n hi s thou ght. Hi s ve rsio n o f Sto icism
shifts the arena of visibility fro m a publi c
wo rld no longer offering the rewards or the
opportunity for the competitive display of
virtue that it had previously do ne, to a more
private sce ne. For Senec a, the public world
that had held up to the elite Roma n a mirr or of
his ow n virtus , or lack of it, becomes a sce ne
of inauthenticity, and the sage must prov ide
his ow n audience. We are on the way to some
recognizably modern attitud es.
In Seneca's phil osophic al wor k we find
nothing of the eroticize d dialogue through
which phil osophical discour se is con ducted
TLS J U N E 15 2 0 07
"Narcissus" (c1597-9) by Caravaggio
in Plato. Dialogue is now internalized and
condu cted between the two halves of a sp lit
self: self-exa mination and self-ex horta tion
take the place of Plato' s ero ticized dialectic.
The sage aspires not to ascend to truth
throu gh phil osoph ical dialogue, spurred on
by the reflec ted image of an ideal in the eyes
of a beloved interl ocuto r, but to hold him self ,
by means of co nstant self-exa mination and
hectorin g, to an ideal consonant with the
mor al absolutes of Stoic philoso phy . But
the reso lute detachm ent of the sage fro m
communal standa rds is in danger of looking
psychopathi c, as Seneca himself recognizes.
Bartsch has some intr igui ng pages on the
structura l similarity between the Sto ic sage,
as described in Seneca's philo sophi cal
wor ks, and the monsters of depravity that
peop le his tragedies. In his Medea , the title
charac ter is a hideous di stortion of the sage,
urging herself to com mit crimes wor thy of
her fearsom e name, and declarin g fin ally,
"Now 1 am Medea, my natur e has grow n
throu gh evils". As Seneca ' s villains remind
us, it is as hard to be evil as it is to be goo d,
and equally "authentic" . The Emperor Nero
may lie behind so me of these tragic villains,
and in Seneca 's treatise On Cleme ncy the
ph iloso pher hold s up a "mirror of princ es" to
Nero on his access ion to the throne. Seneca
urges Nero to look in the mirro r and cons ider
hi s ow n power (" I am the arbiter of life and
death for popu lations .. ." , etc). As he flatter s
Nero with this mirror image Seneca asks him
to conside r the natur e of true powe r: any man
can kill, but only the trul y powerful ca n exer-
cise clemency. The mirror of vanity is to steer
Nero in the direction of self-improvement.
The Mirror of the Self is a brilli ant and
thought- provokin g study of the role of mir-
rors and mirr orin g in ethica l thought. While
drawin g the prop er distinction s bet ween
ancient and modern understandings of the
mirror , self-mir rori ng and , indeed , the self,
Bartsch can not help reminding us that ancient
conceptions have not been jetti soned whole-
sale in the march of history. Her boo k makes
stimulating reading for anyo ne interested in
the dra ma of the ethical life, now, and then.
Western philosoph y has been criticized
from a femini st perspect ive for its obsess ion
with mirroring, the "specularization" which
9
cas ts the objec t of man ' s desire as a reass ur-
ing negati ve of his own refl ection : Narcissus
falls in love with him self ove r and over
aga in. In Ovid 's Lovers, Victor ia Rim ell
tackles the author who wro te the ca nonica l
version of the story of Narc issus, an author
who has been both ha iled as a pro to-feminist
and vilified as the poet of rape. Rime ll makes
a convincin g case that, for all its mirro ring,
Ov id's ero tic world is recipro cal, and that
Ov idian erotics are "a constan t battle to tran-
sce nd a compulsive logic of the sa me in orde r
to sustain desire". She read s Ovid ' s work not
through the figur e of Narc issus but throu gh
the more dangerou s Medu sa, the wo man who
return s the gaze to deadl y effec t. As Rimell
remin ds us, the image of the Gorgon Me dusa,
whose gaze turns tho se who gaze on her
to stone, has lately been do mes tica ted in
the Vers ace logo, defini ng "the para doxes
of a co ntroversial new- generation femi nism
which celebrates empowerme nt in the act of
attrac ting and manipul atin g the male gaze" .
Love is the main subjec t of Ovid 's poetry,
but the perspective is always shifting. Rimell's
subtle, quick- witted reading emphasizes the
fact that Ovid ' s oeuvre is itself a hall of mir-
rors. No Latin poet, exce pt Virgil himself, was
so conscious of his oeuvre and his poetic
caree r. But there is no equivalent to Virgil's
reassuringly progressive ascent of the genres
(from pastoral to epic) in Ovid ' s career.
Instead his poems obsessive ly return to the
same sce nes, but from a variety of angles. His
early love poems (Amores) are followed by an
A rt ofLove, in which some of the same scenes
are recycled , but now in the form of advice
rather than expe rience . The A rt of Love itself
reverses perspect ive whe n Ovid decides, after
two books of advice to men, that it is unfair to
arm one sex and not the other; men and
wo men should enter the erotic lists on equal
term s. Then, in the Remedies of Love , we are
instructed how to fall out of love. The re Ovid
sugges ts that one of the fastest ways to achieve
this is to observe your mistress at her toilette.
Sure enough, another poem , the Cosme tics for
the Face, co nsists o f adv ice to w o me n on
make-u p. Rimell' s reading of this poem, per-
haps the least studied of Ovid' s wor ks, is par-
ticularly acute as she traces the ways that Ov id
holds up a mirror to the wo man at the mirror,
at the same time both repellin g and attrac ting
his male readers. Ovid' s magnu m opus, his
epic Metamorphoses, is largely a story of love
in all its poss ible perm utations, where motifs
are echoed , reversed, recombined and divided
into components as story blends into story . In
the Heroides, letters from mythical heroines
to their beloveds, Ovid writes in the female
voice, ventriloquizing, among others, his great
predecessor Sappho. But the single Heroides
are followed by a series of paired letters
where, charac teristica lly, the same situation is
seen first from the pe rspec tive of the man and
then fro m that of the wo man. Victoria Rimell
revels in this hall of mirrors and teaches us to
read eac h poem from the full range of perspec-
tives offered by Ovid ' s oeuvre as a whole. It is
a giddy experience .
Reading these two very different book s one
comes away with an impression not so much
of the monot onou s per sistence of the fig ure of
the mirror in ancient, and modern , thought , as
of its creative versa tility. It remains to be see n
how the sig nifica nce of the mirror has
changed in a world where Hostius Quadra
wa tches himself on a video screen .
10
nn Ford was a celebrated beauty and
A profession al virtuoso on the English
guitar, viola da gam ba and musical
glasses. Ga insborough's port rait of her from
1760 conveys a certain sense of defiance:
Ford's crossed legs constitut e a "masculine
freedo m", according to contemp orary conduct
literature, and her twisted body and upturn ed
head recall Roubill ac' s fam ous statue of
Hand el at Vauxha ll Gardens. Altho ugh
musical ability was a measure of female gentil-
ity and accomplishment, eightee nth-century
wo men were not expec ted to perform in
public. Ford 's determination to enter what
had previously been a masculin e realm
thwarted several men, including the Ear l of
Jersey, who offered her £800 a year to relin-
qui sh her ambition and become his mistress.
She refu sed to be purch ased, earning £ 1,500
for her first concert at the Little Thea tre in the
Haymarket and publi shing a pamphl et that
ex posed the Earl's adultero us intent ions. The
bluestockin g Mary Delan ey, on see ing the
port rait at Ga insboro ugh' s room s in Bath ,
described Ford's as "a most extraor dinary
figure , hand some and bold" , addin g: "but I
should be very sorry to have anyone I loved
set forth in such a manner" .
Gai nsboro ugh cap tures visually the sense
in which any wo man of his time had to negoti-
ate patri arch al con venti on s in order to pur sue
her voca tion, and hi s painting form s an apt
cove r illu stration for Susan Staves 's power-
ful new study , A Literary History of Women 's
Writing in Britain , 1660- 178 9. There has
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LITERARY CRITICISM
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E LIZA BE T H E GE R
Su s an Stav e s
A LI T ER AR Y H tST O RY OF
WOM E N ' S WRI TI N G I N BR I TA IN ,
16 6 0 -1 7 8 9
536p p. Ca mbridge Univers ity Press. £85 (US $ 150).
978 0 52 1 85865 6
been a marked appetite for biographi es of
exce ptional eightee nth-ce ntury wome n in
recent yea rs; but the focu s has often
remained on aristoc ratic indi viduals rather
than on the large bod y of professionals
who helped to defin e British culture with
incredibl e energy and determin ation. Staves
argues that figur es such as Ann Ford are
repr esent ati ve of a host of "culture workers"
- wome n who put the educa tion they had
recei ved fro m asp iring fath ers (often teach-
ers, musicians, or clergymen ) to good use in
furth erin g their ow n independ ence and
enco urag ing that of others . Fanny Burn ey,
Mary Woll stonecraft and Jane Au sten are
mor e fam ous exa mples of the social type that
predo minated among wo men writers by the
end of the eightee nth cen tury.
In her later incarn ati on as Mr s Philip
Thicknesse, Ann Ford was the author of
CliveJames
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A U ~ T Il ..\ I.I A ~ B o o...: R E \ ' I EW
TLS JU NE 15 2 0 07
Mrs Philip Thicknesse (1760) by Thomas
Gainsborough
Sketches of the Lives and Writings of the Lit-
erary Ladies of France (three volumes , 1778,
1780-1 ). Here she com bined literary criti-
cism and biograph y with length y extrac ts
fro m the writings of Fre nch wome n, in order
to "excite" her English sisters to co mparable
level s of achieve me nt. Thicknesse wro te in a
spirit of livel y co mpetition: she argued, for
example, that while French wo men could be
forgiven for poor personal hygiene on
acco unt of their supe rior wit, they would
never match the Eng lish in term s of "natural
beauty" . Staves is necessaril y more measured
in expressi ng her arg ume nt. Ho wever , in cer -
tain respects her wo rk ca n be seen as foll o w-
ing in the traditi on of Thicknesse - it is simi-
larl y voluminous, con cerned with national
histor y and payin g great respect to indi vidu al
text s throu gh illumin ating discussion. Chap-
ters are arra nged chro nologically rather than
them atically, bio graphi cally, or ge nerica lly,
in order to privilege a sense of ho w texts
wo rked in their ow n historical cont ext. This
vo lume covers an impressive range of
wo men's writing, fro m plays, poem s and nov-
els to mem oir s, lett ers, dialogues, travel
acco unts, philosophi cal tracts, politi cal broad-
sides , reli gious reflect ions, satire , children's
literatur e, and histor y. Staves argues that
wo men writers we re much more engaged
with the publi c eve nts of their tim e than one
might suppose from the ev ide nce of the
dom estic novel, the ge nre that has tend ed to
dominate femini st literary history. It is one of
Susa n Staves 's mo st notable achievements
that she sugges ts that one might tell a histor y
of British literature in general term s throu gh
the speci fic exa mple of wo men's writing .
Her work will prov ide an indi spen sabl e point
of reference or navigation for both experi-
enced researchers and newcomer s to the
field s of femini st literary histor y and/or the
eightee nth century itself.
Her projec t is ambitious in its histori cal
range and scope , then . But perh aps the most
diffic ult task she has to face is her
negoti ation of the enormous historic al shift
that has taken pl ace in her ow n lifetim e -
the explosion of knowledge, within the
aca de my, abo ut writers who were previous ly
virtua lly unkn own or, when noti ced , conde-
sce nded to. When Staves star ted teachi ng
eightee nth-ce ntury wo men's wr iting in 1978,
there was no surrounding critical comm en-
tary or scholarly apparatus to guide her read-
ing of what she term s " naked texts" (often
only ava ilab le to stude nts in her own typed
transcription s). She describes, so mew hat
nostalgically, the sense in which she and her
studen ts embarked on a process of inter preta-
tion that was cha llenging, pioneerin g and
invigoratin g, and very different fro m rea ding
texts that had become cano nica l. Now there
is a wea lth of resour ces to sup port the teach-
ing and research of early modern wo me n's
writing, from the wave of influ ential antholo-
gies com piled by figures such as Roger Lons-
dale, Jerom e M cGann and Isob el Ar ms tro ng,
to sop histica ted elec tronic databases such as
the Bro wn Wom en Writers Proj ect and
Orl and o. More gene ra l reference tool s such
as the Oxfor d Dictionary of National Bio-
grap hy and Eighteen th Cen tury Co llec tions
On line (ECCO) allow easy acces s to the lives
and texts of previously inaccessibl e figur es.
Literary critics have similarly recon sidered
the ca no n, whether throu gh imagin ati ve and
incisive studies of genre (the wor ks of Stuart
Curran, A nne Janowitz and Paula Back schei-
der on poetry - or Ros Ball aster, Maril yn
Butler and Jane Spencer on the nove l - spring
to mind), or throu gh addr essin g the
guiding themes of the age throu gh atten tion
to gender (Ha rrie t Gues t's work on learnin g
and patr ioti sm; Emma Clery on luxur y and
effeminacy ; Ann e Mell or on "Mothers of
the Na tion"; or Susa n Wi sernan' s study of
conspiracy and virtue in the seve nteen th
cen tury , to name the most influ enti al of
rece nt interventi ons). Staves is curious ly
retice nt in jud gi ng the aca de mic field she
inhabit s, preferrin g to impl y her di sapp roval
throu gh notable abse nce or to approve
throu gh selec tive reference to her fello w
critics .
However, one senses that Staves's relu c-
tance to engage with other critics is not
throu gh any lack of gene ros ity but rather a
prag matic dec ision, made in order to protect
the unit y and cons istency of her ow n narra-
tive voice . In many ways, thi s is an old-
fashion ed histor y in which the author's taste
for ms the guiding principle of historical selec-
tion. Her work has a co nfidence, ra nge and
ambition that belon g to an ea rlier age of male
and mascul ini st literary histori ans (on the
first page she cites Bo namy Dobrees Eng lish
Literature in the Early Eighteenth Century
(195 9) and John Butt' s English Literature:
The mid -eighteenth cent ury, 1740-178 9
( 1979) as inspi rati ons; both volumes in the
Oxford Histor y of English Literatu re series
that are not read by many, if any, students
today). Staves states her aim "is not to con-
sider eve rything writte n by wo men, but
rather to emphas ize those literar y works that
were most original, most intelli gent , best writ-
ten , and most significa nt", and she asks: " Is
the abj uration [by many femini st critics ] of
eva luative criticism a produ ct of a lingeri ng
wo manly relucta nce to cl aim any authority,
no matter how useful , well-ea rned, or j usti-
fied ?". This qu estion is in danger of ove r-

simplify ing the complexiti es surro unding
the definition of literar y and aestheti c
value . As Andrew Ashfi eld and oth ers have
argued, the discu ssion of aesthetic value
itself was condu cted in ge nde red lan gu age
in the eightee nth century. Seve ral fem ale
poet s of the age strugg led to negoti ate the
lan gu age of the sublime , in which the aim
is to "ravish" and "transport" the read er.
Furthermore, by ending her story in 1789,
Staves is avo iding the ex traordinary outburst
of ex pe rime ntal poetr y and ficti on that
responded to the shock of the Fre nch
Revolution. Her scholar ly rules of thumb
some times app ear calcul ated to insul ate
and unify what might be told otherwise as a
stor y of disru ption and di ssoluti on - for
exa mple , she discu sses Am erican and Briti sh
literatur e together before 1776 (the Decl ara-
tio n of Ind epend enc e), a move that is bold ,
eve n liberatin g, but she then decid es to
ex cl ude A merica ns who wro te text s after
1776 . Kate Davies, by co ntras t, has rec ently
show n the vitality and political importanc e of
tran satlant ic dialo gue bet ween wo men
durin g and after the Ameri can Revoluti on
in her study of the literary relation ship
bet ween Ca tharine M acaul ay and Mercy Oti s
Warr en .
Whil e Staves claim s to focu s on the
texts rath er than the lives of her subjec ts,
she is at her mo st engag ing when she
acknow ledges the inextricable link bet ween
the two, as in her disc uss ion of Qu aker
writing in Cha pter One: "Much of the writing
of late seve ntee nth-ce ntury wo men was
prompted , not by aes thetic ambition, but by
[an] impulse to write what they beli eved to
be truth s, most urgentl y, to record the truth s
of their own ex pe riences and what they
beli eved to be truth s that men in positi on s
of author ity would not put in their records
of the tim e" . In Cha pter Five , "Women as
Memb er s of the Literary Family, 1737-
1756", Staves reject s the traditional account
of the "rise of the novel" for a mu ch mor e
nuanced pictu re of a literary worl d in which
m ern oi r, bi ogr aph y, essay, p seudo-me m oir
and letters form ed an interp enetratin g pro se
culture. In such a cultu re, the relati on ship
between life and art was always open to ques-
tion and ofte n a matter of politi cal import-
ance . She thin ks Charlo tte Len no x' s The
Fema le Quixote (1752) is the best " novel" of
the perio d, arg uing that its acco mplish me nts
arise not from the standa rd meas ures of novel-
istic success such as charact er developm ent ,
or the creation of a full y devel oped soc ial and
ec ono mic wor ld, but from its "sophisticated
medit ation on a central literary probl em of the
day: the co mpeti tion amo ng mo des of narr a-
tive repr esent ation and their cont ested claim s
to trut h value". Susan Staves rai ses several
important qu estion s about wo men's literary
author ity duri ng the eightee nth ce ntury, but
her book ' s mo st compellin g qu alit y lies in its
ability to co nvey the sense in which wo men
writers' lives and wor ks becom e reciprocally
entwi ned as historic al eve nts . She also makes
us und erstand the desire of those who felt
ex cluded from mainstream literary culture
neverth eless to belon g to it. This desire is
sometimes urgent , some times more hesitant ,
but always frau ght with ten sion between the
idea of an aes thetic that transcend s the eve ry-
day and the creation of an aes thetic that incor-
por ates the material conditions of an artist's
life, recordin g her ex perience.
LITERARY CRITICISM
Firm intentions
ccording to Robin Headlam Wells,
A
Twelfth Night is a decadent play.
Whil e it may have been appropriated
by recent critics who want to read it as a dark
co medy obsessed with the troubling probl em s
of sex ual identit y, Headlam Well s believes
that Shakespea re was actually more co ncerne d
to defeat the claim s of Puritans who sought to
close down the theatr es. By pro ducing such a
superbly co nstructed play, which ge nerations
of theatregoers have found intensely enjoya-
ble, Shakespeare prov ided a "provocative chal-
len ge to reformi st ideas about seaso nal merr y-
makin g, festive cross -dress ing and the
theatre" . Th e fact that the plot hinged on a
series of mistake n gende r ident ities, with men
and wo men never sure if their propo sed part-
ner was male or female, to say nothin g of the
clear repr esentation of a same-sex relationship
between Antonio and Sebastian, would have
"outraged go dly refo rmers".
However, "postmodern critics" , acco rding
to Pro fessor Headl am Well s, have tried to
co nstruc t a metro sexual Sh akespeare, freneti-
ca lly ge nder-bending his characters in orde r
to prove that there is actu all y no difference
between men and wome n. The Purit an
scourge of the theatre, William Prynn e, is
frequ entl y invoked to suppo rt thi s readin g,
his pamphlets makin g the case that cro ss-
dressing had to be poli ced as it threatened
to ero de sex ual difference and ex pose the
unstabl e natur e of ge nder di stin ction s. On the
co ntrary, Robin Headlam Well s arg ues , in
Shakespeare's Humanism, Pry nne knew that
men were men and wo men were wo men . He
was mor e con cern ed about the probl ems of
crossing bound aries.
This exa mple reveals the best and the wors t
of Shakespeare 's Humanism. Headlam Well s
is right to remind us that we are dealin g with
plays and that we should be wary of readin g
th em as treati ses on ce rta in issu e s: sex, lo ve,
death, or soc ial ju stice. And he has a point
when he says that writers did not literally fear
men turnin g into wo men when they dressed
for the stage . His postmodern enemies under-
stand that too. The problem here is that he has
failed to distinguish between sex (our innate
chara cteristics) and gender (the ways in which
the sexes are conventionally distingui shed ).
Such distincti on s are easy to understand but
hard to interpret in practi ce: where does
biology start and identit y begin ? Simply elid-
ing them will not really do. Headlam We lls
cites Judith Butler, the figure mo st closely
assoc iated with such think ing in the hum ani-
ties, but makes her sound as if she has no idea
of sex at all and is someo ne who "is an
ex tre me vers io n of what is so me times call ed
the Standard Social Science Model of hum an
natur e". !t is easy to defea t your enemies if
yo u do not engage with their ideas.
Headlam Well s wa nts to cast Shakespea re
as a spokes pers on for esse ntial hu man truth s
and eternal values , again st a creep ing rel ativ-
ism and an anti-fo unda tionalism that look s to
the histori cal mo me nt to ex plain the meani ng
of the text rather than its worth as a wor k of
art. Thi s ca n lead to some odd readin gs. Head-
lam Well s is so de term ined to el iminate co n-
tingenc y that he refu ses to read The Mer-
chant of Venice as a play abo ut race. Rather ,
TLS J UN E 15 2007
AN D RE W HAD F IE L D
R obin H e adl a m W ell s
SHAK ES P EA RE 'S H UM A NI S M
278pp. Cambridge University Press. £48 (US $85).
978052 1 824385
Shakespe are ada pts an ea rlier play abo ut a
"scheming Jew (Marlowe 's Jew of Malta )
and casts him in the role of asce tic, self-right-
eo us ave nger ". This means that we ca n avo id
any mora l relativ ism bec ause it is then clear
that Sh ylock is simp ly wrong . Suppressing
him is no t a good in itself, but the lesser of
two ev ils. The play can then be read as a
mora l fabl e of hu man natur e: " The Merchant
of Venice is abo ut und erstanding our se lves
as moral and politi cal bein gs, and the irresolv-
able paradoxes that result from the peculi ari-
ties of our hum anit y" . Cr itics have tried to
say that the play is about Jews bec ause it "por-
trays a wo rld of ethnic hatred and raci al intol-
erance" . But it isn't.
The desire to prove that Sha kespea re
stands above the continge nt is one stra nd
in the arg ument of Shakespeare's Humanism.
Th e co mplemenlary half of the case is the
fam iliar one that Shakespea re was a hu man-
ist. Hum anism developed in Re na issa nce
Europe throu gh the study of classical texts
and develop ed into an und er standing of what
it meant to be hum an. Human bein gs needed
to con struct a civil ized series of values wi thin
a co mmunity that stave d off the pot ent threat
of barb ari sm. In do ing so , they had to
develop form s of se lf-k now ledge and so
beco me pro perl y hum an. Indeed , "W hat
seems to be unique to Shakespeare is the
emerge nce for the first tim e in Eng lis h dram a
of psycholo gicall y plau sibl e characters who
give the illu sion of havin g interior lives" .
There are a number of probl em s with thi s
reading of Shakespeare, attr acti ve thou gh it
may be in certa in ways. Hum ani sm is not
as carefull y defined an d distin gui shed from
other form s of belief as it need s to be to make
a histori call y pl ausibl e case . Headlam Well s
loo ks back to the hu mani sts writing at the
co urt of Henr y VIII , Thomas Mor e and
Tho mas Starkey , who both outlined theori es
of society rather than human natur e, of the
need to ex ist in co mmunities and make co m-
promi ses in orde r to buil d up civi lized rela-
tion s. Both , of course , made use of Ciceros
writings o n culture and co mm unity, among
the most influ enti al in sixteen th-ce ntury
Europe . But More and Starkey - whose ideas
are cited at seve ra l key points in Shake -
speare 's H um anism - were wr iting six ty
yea rs befor e Shakespeare ' s fir st play
app ear ed on stage and, as Headlam Well s
admits, " It' s unl ikely that Shakespe are would
have read Starkeys Dialogue" . The relati on-
ship between Shakespea re and humanism
was und oubtedl y mor e probl em atic than is
cl aim ed here, and the atte mpts to di stingui sh
bet ween hu mani sm , radi cal Pro tes tantism
and primitivism may we ll invol ve makin g dis-
tincti on s that few think er s at the tim e would
have reco gni zed as obv ious.
Whil e Ren aissance thinker s are split up
into categori es that see m to bear rather
11
ex cess ive burd en s, cont emporary critics are
lump ed together as if they were all part of
one confu sed intell ectu al ferm ent. Jul ia
Kristeva and Roland Barthes are mad e to
sound the sa me, as are Stephen Gree nblatt
and Jon ath an Dolli mor e. Th e ghos t in the
machin e for Headlam Well s is Michel
Foucault, a committed anti-intentionalist
who believed that meanin g is not fixed but
infinitely malleabl e. Th e pity is that so man y
liber al and wea k-minded thin kers bou ght thi s
line of arg umen t.
Th e probl em here is not so much that the
arg ume nt is wro ng. Such claim s have so me
truth in them, eve n if it is har d to acce pt a
return to an understandi ng of Shakes pea re as
a ge nius who was capac iou s eno ugh to repre-
sent all of hum anit y as an intellectual adva nce,
or eve n a restatement of basic principl es. More
wearying is how famili ar and dated the case
made here is. There is virtually no work cited
written after 1985. Moreover , many ex am-
ples are reused , so that Ca therine Be lsey is
told off twic e for cl aimin g that Shakespeare
is "a Saussurean avant la lettre" (nei ther cita-
tion appea ring in the index); Marx is allowe d
to defin e hu man natur e twice; and Barthes
and Fouca ult receive a doubl e helpin g of
opp robrium for their views on authorshi p.
Description s of Fouca ult's other views are
legion , sugges ting that the book has not been
revised and edited carefully enough.
Th ese arguments will not surprise any one
who has foll owed Shakespeare criti ci sm over
the past two decades. Bri an Vickerss vas t
Appropriating Shakespeare: Contemporary
critical qua rrels mad e almost identi cal
claim s in 1993, di smi ssing all feminist criti-
ci sm, psychoanalysis, decon stru ct ion, New
Histor ici sm, and so on as a network of
misrea dings of the truth s that Shakespeare
bequ eathed us. The gro unds we re largel y the
same as those in Shakespeare 's Humanism
and there was a similar faith in the abso lute
sanctity of the arti st whose intenti on s sho uld
never be chall en ged ("A noveli st ' s co ntrol
over his [sic] materi al is total" , Vicke rs
arg ued). A. D. N utta ll has been adva ncing a
para llel case against decon stru cti oni st inter-
pret ation s of Shakes peare for eve n longe r,
and there are plent y of other high-p rofil e
Shakespeareans who have littl e time for
"theory" . Indeed , the domin an ce of
Foucault 's vers ion of the ea rly mode rn
period has been seriously qu estion ed by
man y who used to espo use its value, and a
numb er of theo retically incli ned criti cs have
felt the need to defend their models agains t
the attacks made by tho se who practi se the
sort of histori cal readin g of Shakespeare that
Robin Headlam Wells admires.
Shakespeare 's Humanism co ntains so me
valuable readi ngs of the plays. The com-
ments on the ways in which fact and interpre-
tat ion are repre sented in J ul ius Caesar, and
the ways in which Measure for Measure
ex plores conceptions of gove rn me nt, should
certainl y be placed alongs ide the co mm ent s
on Twelfth Night . Th ere is also much enj oya -
ble, dem otic argume nt that ma kes use of
cont emp orary cases, such as the sad tale of
David Rei mer, who rem ained a boy at heart
eve n thou gh he was mi stakenl y tran sform ed
into a girl. However, the book is not we ll con-
cei ved . Too mu ch tim e is was ted ch asing
windm ills and tryin g to make ro und pegs fit
in square holes. And it is not clear that sim ply
turning the clock back ge ts us very far.
12
n May 2006 , Peter Handk e was announced
I as the winner of the Heinrich Hein e Prize ,
one of Germa ny's lead ing cultura l awards.
Within a wee k, a major medi a storm was blow-
ing across the pages of the Germ an feuill etons.
Handk es cont roversial politi cal views sho uld
disqu alif y him from such a distinc tion , ran the
argume nt. In a series of non-fi ction al books
from the mid-1 990 s onwar ds, Handke had
becom e eve r more entrenc hed in his defence
of Serbi a, culminating in his denunciation in
2005 of the Intern ational Tr ibunal in the
Hague and his claim that Sloboda n Mi losev ic
- while he point edl y made no claim for his
innocence in the broader sense of the term -
was innocent in the ter ms of a tribun al with no
validity. The ill-advised speec h which Handk e
gave ove r Milo sevic' s grave provided a
wide ly reported illustration of this solidari ty .
The anno uncement of the Hein e Priz e thu s
reignit ed the age -old deb ate about the limits
of artistic ind ep endenc e. Should Handkes
sy mpathy for the Serbian ca use disqu alify
him from literary prizes? Should art defer to
polit ics? Aft er initia lly keepin g his co unse l,
Handk e even tually declin ed the prize for
which, on artistic me rit alone, he was sure ly
more than qualified. The co da to the story has
onl y recentl y eme rged : a gro up from the
Berlin theatre sce ne, clu stered aro und the
dir ector Claus Peymann , man aged to ga ther
the prize mon ey of 50,000 euros priva te ly,
and announced that Handke had been
awa rde d the "a lterna tive Hein e Pri ze" . Yet
Handk e, his fin gers burnt by the initi al co ntro -
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versy, could not accept the mon ey, and ove r
the Eas ter wee ke nd thi s year he travell ed to
Kosovo to do na te it to a Serbian village .
Wh atever one's opinion of Handk e and
indeed of Milo sevic, there is no doubt that the
or iginal Hein e Prize j ury hand led the situation
badl y, as Peter Jami n shows in his overview
Der Handke-Skandal. By the time that the
jury in Diisseldorf announce d its decision ,
Handk e' s views on Ser bia had already caused
his play Das Spiel vom Fragen to be cancelled
by the Co rned ie-Franca ise in Paris; it was thu s
clear enough that he wo uld be a co ntroversial
TLS J U N E 15 2 0 07
Peter Handke, Kragujeva, Serbia, 1999
prizewinn er, to say the least. Th e subseq uent
claim s and co unter-cla ims ex posed startling
hypocri sies in the Germa n literary sce ne: if
nothin g else, it becam e ev ide nt that not
enough members of the jury and com me nta-
tor s had both ered to read Handk e' s wor k.
Yet des pite the wides pread misgivings
abo ut his po litics, Handkes literary achieve -
ment s are beyond doub t. Over forty yea rs of
sustained publi cation have established him as
the most stubborn ly idiosyncratic of post-war
Germ an-langu age writers. His is among the
most recogni zabl e of co ntemporary styles :
time and aga in he evo kes the restless subjec tiv-
ity of an artist figure cro ssing a vividly
described, yet somehow strange ly elusive land-
scape. Walkin g, go ing, is the supreme ex isten-
tial metaph or for Handk e, an attempt to "slow
down" the fugiti ve forces of nature, to use one
of his favourit e verbs . Through the untirin g
precisio n of his powers of obse rvation the very
process of writing becom es a hom age to the
"god of slow ness " : indeed his pro se, always
visual and cinema tic, often reads as though in
slow motion , spoo led softly forwards until the
tellin g de tail eme rges . "Fo r a work of art",
Handk e writes in Nac hmittag eines Schrift-
stellers , "material is almost nothin g, struc ture
almos t every thing." For better or for worse ,
"plot" has always been secondary to Handk e' s
sy naes the tic engage men t with the world.
Both his new play Spure n de r Verirrten
(Traces of the lost ones) and his new novel
Kali , publi shed within a few month s of each
other, can be seen as furth er ex plorations of
this long-establi shed aesthetic. Th em atically
there are obv ious similarities between them:
both investigate the idea of bein g lost and, by
ex tension, the possibilit y of bein g foun d. The
play Spuren der Verirrten, which received its
wo rld prem iere in February in Berlin , redu ces
the them e to a bare minimum of rep etiti ve
action. Written as a series of ex tende d stage
direction s interspersed with dialogue, the play
present s a coupl e walking back ward s and for-
wards across the stage , occasio nally join ed by
a third figure or an indifferent crow d of pas-
sers -by. "Going" is once agai n the supreme
metaph or for Handk e: like Sisyp hus, the ch ar-
acters never seem to make any progress, they
merely start all over aga in. The series of unre-
lated paragraph s, invariabl y beginnin g with a
co njunction like "And once aga in", maint ain
this sense of rep etition .
Wh at seems to interest Han dk e is rathe r
the ex pediency and co ntig uity of hum an
interacti on. A n ethica l dimension eme rges
from the structure of interdep end en cy: the
inventi on of the "land of oth ers" is a neces-
sary illu sion , states o ne of the im port ant
"third" figur es. Into thi s tabl eau, Handk e
int rodu ces him self as the ultimate third
part y, who does "nothing but spec tate". He
refers to him self as the "witness" , and has his
cha rac ters ex plicitly repro ach hi s passivity:
"you don 't ge t in vol ved , yo u have no
idea wha t's go ing o n here, do yo u?" The
"Verirrten" , the "shadow peopl e" whose
traces are eve ryw he re, are see king "a
new , anothe r tim e" , a co nstant purs uit of
Handkes eve r since hi s Stunde der wahren
Empfi ndung in 1975. His new play atte mpts
to give vo ice to these nameless refugees of
histor y. "Our track s", one of them asks, " if
we join ed them up , wha t sor t of picture
wo uld eme rge?" Th e novel Kali , subtitled
"E ine Vor wint ergeschichte", follo ws these
track s furth er do wn the path . It describ es
an unn am ed " Singer's" return to her hom e
village after her fin al concert befo re the
winter. The oppress ive melod ram a of the
Schuber tian "Winterreise" is height en ed by
the en igma tic descri ption s of the singe r her-
self: with the impli ed analogy of the Hindu
go ddess Kali , the go ddess of both destru ction
and ren ewal , Handk e present s his prot agoni st
as a kind of Ro ma ntic seer, a mess ianic
figure whose presen ce un settl es all around
her. Metaph ori call y and literally she sets off
to the "land beyond her childhood" , the
salt min e Kali located po inted ly beyond a
stretch of water, beyond the Rive r Styx. Thi s
is the "toter Winkel" or "dead cent re" to
whic h she is drawn , with its benumbed ,
isolated inh abit ant s lost in an eer ie und er-
wo rld. Handk e co ntrives simultaneo usly to
evo ke a sense both of descriptive prec isio n
(thro ugh his eye for detail ) and of enigma tic
un certai nty (thro ugh his use of narrat ive
qu esti on s, throu gh wha t he does not say) .
The Fre udian term " uncanny" seems to
ho ver ove r much of Handk e' s prose: in the
dead centre of his sustained attention the
famili ar see ms both heightened and at the
same time estrange d. Yet the "toter Winkel"
can also be tran slated as "a blind spot" .
Handk e the stylist is also Handk e the political
writer, who po intedly locates this forlorn ,
abandoned land scape "in the middl e of unifi ed
Europe" . The min ers and inhabit ant s of the
co lony in which the singer arrives are repea t-
edly describ ed as "refugees" , rootless "immi-
grants" or eve n "survivors of the Third World
War" ; everywhere she goes , the singe r sees
" missing children" po sters. The "Spuren der
Verirrte n" are all around her. After her sym-
boli c descent into the mine itself (which at
times threatens to cave in under the we ight of
the accumulated path os), her return with a
prodi gal child repr esent s an aesthetic ally over-
determin ed but politi cally reso na nt ending. " I
thought it happ ened long ago" , procl aim s a
charac ter en passant of the book she is read-
ing, "but it is about toda y. It is the story of
Europe, of our Europe" . Should Handkes
novel be read as an indictm ent of co ntempo -
rary European politics, of its "blind spots" and
victor's ju stice? In the wake of Hand ke' s per-
sistent defence of Mil osevic and Serbia, it is
hard to avo id the suspicio n that the enigmatic
refu gees in both his new novel and play have a
resonanc e beyond their artistic co ntex t.

Mary Ellen' s first affair
ike Shakes pe are's Sonn ets, George
L Meredith ' s Modern Love both
invites and fru strates biographic al
spec ulation. Written after his first
wife 's dea th in Octob er 1861 and publi shed
in May 1862, Meredith ' s sequence of fift y
sixtee n-line " sonnets" is generally thought
to tell the story of the disint egration of his
marri age to M ary Ellen Nico lls, the eldes t
daughter of Thom as Love Peacock. But as
C. Day Lewis rema rked, in his introduction
to a 1948 reprint, " It is extre mely difficult to
get the story of this marriage in focu s with
the story of Modern Love" . Eve n after mak-
ing due allowance for an admixture of fiction
in the poem - the husband ' s affair and the
wife 's suicide - the circumsta nces it
describ es do not see m to fit with what little
we know of the Meredith s' lives at the time
of their separa tion in 1857. Mo st obviously,
the affairs in Modern Love occ ur while the
husband and wife are still living together and
each can see what the other is up to, whereas
M ary Ellen condu cted her affa ir with the
paint er Henr y Walli s while she was living
apart fro m her husband. I hope to show that
the situation des cribed in Modern Love in
fact has little or nothin g to do with Mary
Ellens rel ation ship with Walli s, which
Meredith had alrea dy taken as the starting
point for his novel The Ordea l of Richard
Fevere l, but rather that the poem depic ts the
emo tional consequences of an ear lier affair,
with Charles Blachford Mansfield
(1819- 55), a brilli ant chemist and eccentric
polymath who was, along with his friend s
Char les Kingsley, John Malcol m Ludlo w,
Frederick Deni son Mauric e, and Thom as
Hughes, one of the leadin g Christian Soc ia l-
ists of 1848- 54.
The story of Mary Ellen's involvement
with Mansfield and his friends in an attempt
to establish a school for fem ale domestic serv-
ants in 1853-4 has been entirely overlooked
by the Meredith s' biographers, though it has
long been known (thro ugh Mansfield ' s let-
ters to Ludl ow) to a few scho lars of Christian
Soc ialism. Alm ost half a century ago, Robert
Berna rd Martin speculated in his life of
Kingsley that the Mr s Meredith menti oned in
these letters was Mansfield ' s mistress, but his
conclu sion has since been questioned. Whil e
it is not clear what becam e of Mansfield ' s
letter s to Mary Ellen herself , a descr ipti ve
summary of them was mad e by her friend
A nne Ramsden Benn ett (who perhaps sum-
marized them in ord er to suppress passages
she deem ed too revealing, and then destro yed
the origina ls). Bennett' s summa ry of these
letter s fro m a man she calls "one of Mrs
Meredith' s mos t cher ished friend s" is a
valuable addition to her "Re collec tions of
Mr s G. Meredith" (TLS, October 8, 2004);
togeth er with other manu script sources,
including Mansfield ' s letters to Ludlo w,
Thom as Jefferson Hogg' s letters to Mary
Ellen, Mansfield ' s mother ' s diaries and mis-
cellaneous Mansfield famil y corres ponde nce ,
and two neglect ed poem s on Ma nsfield's
New light on the biographical background to Modern Love
N IC H O L AS A . JO UKOVSKY
death in Ge orge Meredith' s Red Qu arto
No teboo k in the Bein ecke Library at Yale, it
reveal s much about Mary Ellens character
and aspirations, about the Meredith s' trou-
bled marriage, and about the biographi cal
background to Modern Love.
Charles Mansfield was by all acco unts a
strikingly handsome man and a brilli ant con-
versa tiona list, with a polymathic mind and a
charismatic personalit y that dazzled men and
wome n alike. Educated at Win chester and
Ca mbridge , he studied medi cin e and law as
we ll as che mistry and mechani cs, but his
interests also includ ed ornithology, botany,
geo logy , homo eopathy, mesmeri sm , and
magic. One of the most promi sing young
An engraving based on a drawing of Charles B1achford MansfieId by Low es Dickinson
(1819-1908), published as the frontispiece to Mansfield 'sParaguay, Bra zil, and the Plate:
Letters Written in 1852-1853 (Cambridge, 1856) .
chemists of his generation, he is rememb ered
tod ay primarily for pioneerin g the fracti onal
distill ation of ben zene and other pure aro-
matic hydrocarbons from co al tar - a process
for which he obtained a patent in 1848. As a
Christian Soc ialist, he worked tirelessly to
impro ve the living conditi ons and educa-
tion al opportunities of the Lond on poor. He
taught at the Christian Sociali sts' night
schoo l in Littl e Orm ond Yard, Bloom sbur y,
and played a leadin g role in the founding of
the Working Men' s College. His book s, all
edited and publi shed by his friend s after his
early death , include a volume of travel let-
ter s, Paraguay, Brazil and the Plate (1856),
an elabora te chemi cal treatise entitled A
Theory of Salts (1865), and an unfini shed
study of aerial navigation (1877 ).
TLS J U N E 15 2 007
Fro m an early age, Mansfield was a rebe l
and an ecce ntric. The discipline and brut alit y
of publi c school life at Win chester left him
with a profound distru st of auth orit y as we ll
as a passionat e hatred of inju stice. As an
adult, he was a vege tarian, a teetotaller , and a
non- smok er, and his opposition to the killin g
of anima ls led him to wear cloth shoes of his
ow n devisin g. Like Kings ley, with whom he
developed an inti mate friend ship at Cam -
brid ge, Mansfield foun d it difficult to recon-
cile his sex uality with his religiou s beliefs.
Onl y a few of his closest friend s we re fully
awa re of his mani c-depressive tendencies,
and eve n they did not know all the details of
his sec ret life. In 1842 he made a hasty
marriage to a widow named Catherine
Shafto, who imm edi ately left him and eve ntu-
ally emigrated to Au strali a with one of her
lovers. Unable to divorce her, Mansfield
sought so lace in numerou s liaisons, about
which little is now known . In 1849 he fell
hop elessly in love with a Miss Ga rdiner, to
whom he left his entire fortun e even though
she married a Lt Burrowes. In 1851 , Kings-
ley and Ludl ow we re shoc ked to di scover
that he was keepin g an uneducated wor king-
class wo ma n as his mistress, and his jo urney
to South Am eri ca in 1852- 3 was precipitated
by their insistence that he break off the rela-
tion ship. In the course of the jo urney he
apparently made one or two more rom ant ic
conquests .
Alth ough he spent most of his wor king life
in Lond on, Charles Ma nsfield lived with his
widowe d mother, Winifred, at Weybridge,
13
where his broth er and a cou sin also resid ed,
and where his broth er-in-l aw, Willi am
Giffard, was Rect or of St James ' Church.
The Meredith s had lived at Weybridge from
the winter of 1849- 50 until the autumn of
1851 , when they moved into Peaco ck's
house across the river at Lower Halliford, but
there is no record of their acquainta nce with
the Ma nsfie lds until after Char les returned
fro m his ten- mont h journey to South Amer -
ica, in March 1853. Accordin g to Edwa rd
Ward , the diaries of Winifred Mansfield con-
tain brief referenc es to numerous meetin gs in
the period from Jun e 1853 to October 1854 :
" In all there are eightee n diary entries for
185 3-54 referrin g to the Meredith s, occa-
sions when the Meredith s dined or stayed at
the Mansfield s, or the M ansfield s ca lled on
the Merediths; but mostly M. E. calling on her
ow n . .. . The first such referenc e is for 19th
Jun e, 1853, when M. E. ca lled after church".
Less than a wee k earlier, on Jun e 13, M ary
Ellen had given birth to her son Arthur
Gryffy dh Meredith . However, the Meredith s'
marri age had been deterioratin g for the past
three years, and Mary Ellen' s behavio ur ove r
the cour se of the summer gave rise to sca nda l-
ous rumo urs that her elderly confid ant
Thomas Jeffer son Hogg felt compelled to
deny, as he told her in a letter of Au gust 24,
185 3: " I hear strange Stories of You, so that I
do not know, what to think , but I contrad ict
them steadily; that is always a safe & a kind
course" . Wh atever ind iscretion gave rise to
these report s may have been one of the
fact ors that prompted Peacock , in September
or Oct ober , to take a separa te cottage for the
Me rediths, on the other side of the gree n at
Lower Hallifo rd .
According to Ann e Ramsden Bennett ,
Ma nsfield's letter s to M ary Ellen began in
early October 1853 and dealt mainl y with her
desire to es tablish a trainin g schoo l for
female dom estic serva nts - a sche me that he
hop ed might be carried out in co nj unctio n
with one of the Christian Soc ialists' two Lon-
don needl ewomen' s co ope ratives : preferably
the failed No rth Lond on Nee dlewomen' s
Association in Red Lion Square, Holborn , or
possibl y the Eas t Lond on Nee dlewomen' s
Hom e and Work shop in Wellcl ose Squ are,
Whit ech apel. The first of Mansfield ' s letters
inform ed Mary Ellen that he had "written in a
general way to one of his friend s who is the
best at sche me makin g as well as mo st
ea rnes t abo ut all m an ner of te aching to as k
whether there is a looph ole for such a proj ect
as hers at Red Lion Square, form erly the
premi ses of the Needlewom ans association
but which had now become a private concern
in which hi s friend s Mr Mauric e and Mr
Hughes had some mor al interest of weight
. . . ". Man sfield was evidently referrin g
to an und ated letter that he had written to
J. M. Ludl ow from Weybrid ge, probably on
Octob er 2 or 3:
In case I should be unable to see you tomor-
row, in tow n, - I am acquainted with a female
person of grea t energy and information, who
14
con siders herself endowe d with a specia lly for
teachin g all branch es of dom estic accompli sh-
ments that are valuable to all females, and spe-
cially to such as find their vocation in hou se-
hold servitude. She is very interested in getting
up, if it can be done, a school for giving
instructi on in these branches, and of conduct-
ing it herself. Can you make any kind of sug-
gestion. You know we onc e thou ght of such a
thing in Red Lion Squ are.. . . Is there a remot e
chance of anything [to] be done there? - to
give a little life - My great stumper is, I don't
see how it is to be made to pay. - Have you
heard why Wellclose Square was well closed
the other day when I went there? Suppose I had
been a fat order!
Lud lows first respo nse was evidently to
suggest that the un identified "female per son"
might take over the management of the finan-
cially troubled need leworn en' s institution in
the East End . Thi s led Mansfield to clarify
the purpose of his enquiry in a letter on
October 7:
I am afraid you will be disappointed by my
replying that the "female person", of whom I
spoke is not the least likely to undertake
Wellclose Square. If you could convert the
Wellclo se Square institution into such a one as
I spoke of, such as she wants I don't know that
she would not undertake it. But I do not think
there would be any adva ntage for her purp ose
in that neighbou rhood. What she wants is quite
a different instituti on . She wa nts to mana ge a
place for trainin g dom estic fema le servants
.. . . You know we once had an idea of a school
of some kind being set going in Red Lion
Square. What I asked was whether there was
any possibilit y now of such a thing there
spec ially, - and generally whether you could
give any notion touching on such a design. I
was asked about it, and I said I co uld not give
the least notion myself, but I would ask the like-
liest person I knew ... . I can 't answe r your
question explicitly as to why she shouldn' t do
for Wellclose Square at once - but I should no
more think of propo sing that to her than to any
other person I might fall in with. If we had cho-
sen to look about us we might find a mana ger
for Wellclose Square any day - perhaps not an
angel but a fitter than "the Dennington".. .
In a long lett er to Mary Ellen from Oxford
on October 19, Man sfield gav e her detail s of
the need lewomen ' s institut ion s in Red Lion
Squ are and Wellclose Square, ob serv ing that
Mr s Han son , the manager of the former,
"wishes to connect the instruction of female
servants with needle wor king" . Aft er empha-
sizing that both institutions were op en to
rem odelling and in need of some new life, he
wrote admiringly :
If you have the heroi sm .. . to lend us your aid
you will I think find every disposition in our
coadjutors to endeavo ur to unite your plan s
with ours and every wish to give you all sup-
port. There is a great work to be done which as
you say money will never requite, but such
ladies as yourse lf are not to be met with often
and I do not think it can be done by such unedu-
cated hearts and head s as we meet with in
every sphere of life now adays. - My only
doubt is the possibility of making the plan pay.
You must however meet some of my friend s
and talk over it with them . - I have of cour se
not mention ed your nam e nor has any one the
slightest notion of whom I have spoken - I
have spoken of it to no one but Messrs Ludlow
& Hughes with the about-to-be made addition
of Mr Maurice. I cannot tell you how deeply I
COMMENTA R Y
honour your feelings on the matter - I wish the
same spirit was rife amongst our ladies. Of
co urse I shall let you kno w what can be done in
the way of bringin g you in cont act with my
friend s in town , having due regard not to hurry
you from your retirement now.
Man sfield then went on to thank her for an
invitati on that he cou ld not accept bec ause he
needed to work at Oxford and was "under a
kind of promise to pay the King sleys a visit
on my way hom e" . In his next letter to Lud-
low , writt en from Oxford on Oc tober 21,
Mansfield qu oted a not e he had ju st rec eived
from M ary Elle n:
As soon as I hear from you or Hughes that you
are ready to make or receive propo sals defi-
nitely to or from the fema le person I will write
to her and fix a meeting for her in London
whereve r I am to ld to .. . . She is game to a
very grea t extent, quite surprising. Can you
help in this. I copy the following from a note
just received from her. "I should like to know
the extent, aim, achieve ment and mode of sup-
port of the serva nts ' schools now existing in
London , if that inform ation can be eas ily
obtained." " I do not think it possible that any
ex isting schools can be so co mprehensive or
co ntain the elements of expansion necessary to
includ e in time all the servant class, as mine
would. Nor do I think it likely they would
teach any one branch of serva nt duty so well as
I could, still less that they would know all. And
in all probability the very important branch of
month ly and sick nurses is entirely omitted." -
This was elicited by my telling her of the
schoo ls in the Ormond region, which you men -
tioned. . . . The latter sentences of hers, extra-
querial , shew you that she has a scheme, and
thinks she can carry [it] out. I have no doubt of
her energy and efficiency, but I have my
doubts of her knowing the amount of difficulty
of getting up such a thing. Nor do I see that she
has any very clea r notion how it is to pay. -
She is quite game to take the manag ership of
the needlewom en' s institution or both , if it or
His Pantoum
Thi s is the West Country: if it rain s, it rains all day ,
the wind s as fierc e as anywhere
swe eping hair into my eyes at every cro ssing .
Wh en did my father get old?
Th e prairi e wind s were as fierce as anyw here
when he cycled thirty mile s a da y.
Wh en did he get old?
Thi s is his twelfth da y in inten sive care .
When he cycled thirt y miles a day ,
I we nt o n with my life, unfearing.
Thi s is his twe lfth da y in intensive care ,
my sixth yea r abroad,
going on with my life, unfearing.
Sweep ing hair into my eyes at eve ry crossing
in my sixth year abro ad,
the We st Country, where it rains and it rain s and it rains.
CARRIE ETT ER
T LS J UN E 15 2007
they can be expanded to her plan .
Later in the sa me lett er , M ansfield
responded to Lud low 's speculation regarding
the identity of his femal e friend: 'T he female
woman is cert ainl y not the per son who
occurred to you as unl ikely" . A week later,
on October 28, Man sfield wrote to Ludlow
from the A shmolean Mu seum in Oxford:
"M any thanks for your note and offer for the
femal e per son - As soon as [ can get anything
out of Hugh es about Red Lion Squ are , [ shall
wri te to her". A day or two later, still at
Oxford, Man sfield enclose d Lud low 's not e
in a lett er to Ma ry Ellen . A lthou gh Lud low
said he fear ed "the lad y is too ex pansive in
her views", M ansfield cont inu ed to hope that
something might be don e.
On November 2, after returning to
Weybridge , Man sfie ld sent Lud low a letter
he had received from Mar y Ellen, responding
to Ludlow' s comments on her plan s for the
school: "The encl ose d has been drawn out of
the 'female per son ' by your last communica-
tion . I don 't kno w wheth er it will sugges t to
you any remarks to be made to her before she
comes up to town . [f so yo u can tell me .r,
Presumably Mansfield removed Mar y
Ellen' s signature from her letter, prompting
Lud low to question his friend' s moti ves for
secrecy concern ing the wom an ' s nam e .
Man sfield defended himself in his next letter
from Weybridge on November 7:
You are rather hard upon me about the female
woman. So far from wishing you not to know
who she is, I particular ly wish you to kno w, not
because you would be much the wiser, but
because I hate mysteries. I think you ha ve
heard me menti on her name: but I don 't think
you know anything about her. The on ly reason
for my keeping her in the dark is that, when she
first spoke of the matter to me she said she did
not wish her nam e to be mention ed. She has
not yet released me from the inj unction of
silence. So I am still under promi se of secrecy:
besides I always wish to do to oth ers as I would
be done by. If I thought you would object to
her that would be an imperative reaso n with me
for telling you who she was, and I should have
asked her permission to do so at the out set. I
am very crafty, but I am not sharp enough to
think of trying to entrap you.
In a postscr ipt he asked : "Will you return
me the lett er I sent enclose d the oth er da y" .
On November 11, he again asked in a post-
script: "W here ' s the lett er ?" ; and on Nove m-
ber 14, he said: "Thanks for the lett er and 2
not es" . It was not until he was read y to set up
a meeting between them that Man sfield
fina lly reveal ed Ma ry El lens ident ity to
Lud low , in a lett er of Nove mber 22 from
Weybridg e:
The femal e person, alias Mrs Meredith , step-
mothe r of a vo lume of poem s you may have
met with, will be in town on Tuesday next.
Will you hold yourself in readiness to call on
her with me and Hughes at some hour after 10
A M on that day. If so please settle with
Hughes what hours will suit you two best, that
I may make arrange ments accordingly; I don 't
yet know where she will be, Meredith has to
take some lodgings and let me know where. I
will let you know in good time of the best
trysting place.
The meeting seems to have taken place as
planned on Tue sday , Nove mber 29, and to
have produced a tentative ag ree me nt with
M ar y Ellen. App arently it was und er stood
that the We llclo se Square home would be
clo sed , and that Mar y Elle n wou ld rep lace
Mr s Han son as ma nager of the Red Lion
Squ are institution, for Mansfield wrote to
Lud low from We ybr idge the next da y:
I don 't see how any Needlewomeri's Asso-
ciation is to go on unless we ha ve a good sale
shop in a good street. Now can ' t we persuad e
poor old Mrs Hanson to take the superintend-
ence of such. She would do that well. . . . I have
suggested to Mrs Meredith that she should go
and live in Red Lion Squar e for some little
time before Mrs H. turn s out so that she can see
her way before the whole weight of the con-
cern falls on her shoulders. She is about dra w-
ing a sketch of her plan & notion s. If Mrs M.
carri es it on, anoth er thing will be necessary, -
to get from among the workers, or elsewhere, a
trustworthy su b, who would look after the
women, whe n Mrs M . was out of the house.
She, I find , expects to have her eve nings to her-
self, and the Sundays, though I don't imagine
she means to stickle about anything. I find her
husband mean s to live down here still; and
Mrs M . hopes to be able to com e to see him on
Sundays.
Evide ntly Mar y Ellen saw the school in
London not onl y as an outl et for her energy
and idea lism but also as an opportunity to
have a life of her own, away from Georg e . It
is not clear who would take care of their
chi ldren , Art hur and Edi th , while Mary Ellen
was working during the wee k. Possib ly she
intended to lea ve them at Halliford in the
care of her unmarried fo ster- sister, Mar y Ann
Ro sew ell, and Peacock' s serva nts. George
would then hav e been mo re or less free to get
on with his writ ing at Vine Co tta ge .
Mary Elleu's proj ect di sappear s from
Man sfield' s lett ers to Lud low in Decemb er,
after having dominat ed their correspondenc e
for the pre viou s two months. How ever , Mr s
Benn ett' s summary of his letters to Mary
Elle n provides a clear enough ex planation for
the fai lure of the scheme. Early in Decemb er
Mansfie ld wro te to say that he would commu-

nicate to his friend s the contents of a letter
she had written him - presum ably containing
the "sketch of her pl an & noti ons" - and that
he believed he could tell them " she is ready
to take up her residence in Red Lion Square
as soon as may be requisite" . Th e grea ter par t
of his letter dealt with " infor mation about
book s on scientific cook ery" , which she had
sought in conn ection with her projec ted
revision of Willi am Kitchiner ' s The Cook's
Oracle for the publi shin g firm of John
Willi am Parker & Son . M ansfield ' s next
letter inform ed her that she wo uld not have
to provide any furnitu re for her residenc e in
Red Lion Square . Wh atever she needed
would be supplied by a committee that had
yet to be formed, but that wo uld "probably
co nsis t of Messrs Hughes M auri ce & Lud-
low, Lord Goderich and perh aps him self' .
Two days later , he wro te to tell her he had
see n Ludlo w, who had wisely sugges ted that
she sho uld nom inate any friend s of her ow n
whom she wo uld like to have as memb ers of
the co mmi ttee . In his next letter, Ma nsfie ld
told Mary Ellen that his sister, An na G iffard,
wa nted "to establish a sort of indu strial
school for girls" at Weybridge , and that he
thought it might be benefici al to all con-
cerned if the Red Lion Square instituti on
were to be "removed bodil y to Weybrid ge" .
He therefore urged her to go and talk ove r the
matter with his sister, "while Winny amuses
your little girl" . Thus the yea r came to an end
with no defi nite arrangements having been
made for M ary Ellens school. Just before the
end of December , Ma nsfie ld wrote to say that
the Wellclose Square instituti on ' s fin ances
were in a mess - "nearly £40 to pay and no
money forthcoming". However, he supposed
that the co mmittee wo uld be able to get
together in the new year and see what could
be done.
When Mansfield' s friends did mee t in
January 1854, it transpired that M auri ce, who
paid the rent for the house in Red Lion
Square, wa nted it for the projec ted Wo rkin g
Men ' s College . The group offered to place
the Wellclose Square prem ises at Mary
El lens di sposal if they would serve her pur-
poses, as well as to make unspeci fied effo rts
to raise fun ds for her schoo l. "I was qui te
taken by surp rise", Man sfield told M ary
El len, "by M r Ma urice requ iring the hou se in
Red Lion Square and I think you have been
hardl y used in bein g led to count your
chickens before they we re hatched ." A slight
ray of hope appeare d in February , when
Mansfield told Mary El len that he had seen
Mauri ce, who said "that if her view s could be
carried out he should prefer her having the
Red Lion Square house and that the Co llege
should go else where , on which Mr Man s-
field told him Mrs Me redith was anxious to
go in and was di sappointed at the loss of the
prospect". But sinc e it no w appeare d that no
money would be forth coming from Mans-
field ' s friends, "it was agree d that for wa nt of
funds her projec t must lapse" - unless, of
co urse , Mary Elle n had any mea ns of raising
the necessary money herself. " If you can",
Mansfield co ncl uded , "look about among
your friend s; we have exhaus ted ours."
Despit e the failure of his effor ts on her
behalf, Man sfield rem ained supportive of
Mary Elleu's aspirations, writing in M ay, for
exa mple, to tell her of a possibl e new source
of fund s: so meo ne had offered Sir Rich ard
M ayne, the Metrop olitan Police co mmis-
COMMENTARY
sioner, £2,000 to be used for the benefit of
the needlewomen of London . Mansfield
sugges ted that M ary El len ca ll on Mayne and
try to obtain fund s for her school. No thing
see ms to have come of this sugge stion, since
there was no furth er correspo ndence on the
subje ct.
n a letter of Au gust 13, invitin g Ludlow
I to visit him at Weybri dge, Mansfield
appare ntly anticipated some reservation
on his friend ' s par t about one or both of
the Meredith s: "Come by all mean s tom or-
row , if possibl e. - I feel bou nd to tell you that
you will meet M r & Mrs Meredith, din ing &
sleeping here . ..". An d in the last of his let-
ters to Mary Elle n, fro m Wey bridge on
Nove mber 15, Mansfield begged her to send
him news of her health , explaining that his
trip s to Londo n two or three days a week
might make it difficult for him to get over to
Halliford to see her.
On Februa ry 17, 1855, Mansfield and a
young assistant suffere d terr ible burn s when
a naphtha still caught fire and exp loded
duri ng an experimen t in his laboratory by the
Regent ' s Ca nal in St John ' s Wood. Nine days
later , with his face and hands swathed in
banda ges, he died in the Middl esex Hospit al.
A letter fro m his sister An na G iffard to an
unkn own corres ponde nt, cont ainin g a
detailed acco unt of Mansfield' s last days ,
reveals that Ge orge Meredith was one of the
friend s who cam e to sit by his bed side. After
Mans fie ld's funeral at Weybrid ge, George
draft ed two poem s on his friend ' s death in his
Red Quarto Noteboo k. Th e first, headed with
the initi als "C B M" , expresses the sense of
loss shared by Mansfie ld's large circle of
friends, who, in the wor ds of Kingsley,
"looked on him with a love such as might be
inspired by so me bein g from a higher wor ld" .
CBM
They've covered his face, & he's lost to us
Shine star in heaven !
New things & old will blossom & be
But that dear face we shall not see !
Pure was his look - he 's lost to us:
Shine star in heaven !
His suffering heart he clad in smiles:
The noblest youth of our English Isles.
He strove for the poor & the Suffering
Shine star in heaven !
Wedded was he to Courage & Truth.
The Poor & the Suffering yearn' d to the Youth.
Sad was his end: mysterious:
Shine star in heaven !
Forth he strode in the morning aglow :
Ere midday our friend was low.
Our dear friend - he's lost to us:
Shine star in heaven !
Those that loved him like him grew:
Be tter even than they knew !
In life & in death we honoured him;
Shine star in heaven !
Forty you ng men stood round his bier,
In ev ery eye there was a tear!
The second poem , which appea rs three
pages later in the notebook, begin s with a sim-
ilar reference to the dead ma n's hidden face,
but after a brief tribut e to his noble life the
TLS J UNE 15 2007
focus unexpect edly shifts to a solitary
wo man who is wild with grief for the loss of
her lover :
Dirge
He has hid his face, and he's gone!
The grave is green dwelling:
Hid his face from all his race !
It's aye the water's we lling.
A noble life lived he:
The grave is green dwelling:
A noble life in a whirl of strife:
It's aye the water's we lling.
There's one walks by like a ghost
The grave is green dwelling:
A woman walks by with a shrouded eye
It's aye the water's we lling.
There's one on whose breast was calm.
The grave is green dwelling:
Wild is that breast, and he 's at rest:
It' s aye the water's welling.
Th e fir st line of the fin al stanza origina lly
read , more exp licitly, "There ' s one on whose
breast he slep t", while the thir d origina lly
began "Lone is that breast". Mansfield had,
of co urse , slept with a fai r number of wo me n,
but in view of his involvement with George
Meredi th ' s wife it see ms more than possibl e
that the "one" in Georges " Dirge" referre d
to her. It wo uld appear, then, that Mary Elle n
did have an affair with Charles Mansfield
and that George not only knew about it but
also co ndone d it. The liaison probabl y began
in the sum mer of 1853, when T . J. Hogg
heard scan dalous rumour s abo ut Mary Ellen,
and it may have ended some month s prior to
Mansfield' s fatal acc ide nt, for Ludlo w later
spoke of his friend ' s " strange, sad life" as
involving "almost incredibl e mora l complica-
tions, out of wh ich he had only ju st sha ken
himself when death .. . overt ook him ". Eve n
if the affair had been broken off, Ma nsfie ld 's
agon izi ng death must have been a deva stat-
ing blow to Mary Ellen, who eleven years
ea rlie r had w itnessed her fir st hu sband' s acc i-
dent al dro wnin g in the Sha nnon. George too
appears to have been deepl y affec ted, and his
und erstandin g of his wife 's grief may have
drawn the coupl e closer, at least for a time.
If we return to Modern Love with an
aw areness of Ma ry Ellens relations with
Mansfield, it is easy to see that the scenes
describ ed in the poe m could have all taken
place while the Meredi ths were living at
Lower Halliford . The "library-bower" in Son-
net 16 ca n surely be identifi ed as the library
wing of Peacock' s house, which we kno w he
had turned ove r to the Merediths. Mary Ellen
expe rimen ted with rec ipes for her co okboo k
in her fath er ' s kitchen, and it wo uld have
been difficul t for the Merediths to host a din-
ner party such as the o ne describe d in Sonne t
17 in any of the other places that they lived.
The sce ne of the "country merry-making on
the gree n" that is "open to the river-reac h" in
Sonnet 18 naturally ca lls to mind the village
green at Lower Halliford. The "country
house" whe re "rooms are full " and the couple
have to share an "attic-crib" in Sonnet 23 is
likely to have been Charles 's hom e, Mr s
Mansfield ' s house in Weybridge, which was
often packed with visitor s and where the
Meredi ths are known to have sometimes
staye d . The swa llows gatheri ng above the
"o sier isl e" an d the sw an sai ling "w ith her
15
young beneath her wings " in Sonnet 47
wo uld ha ve been famili ar sights on the
Thames . All of these detail s clearl y suggest
that the poem relates incident s that occ urred
in the neighborhood of Sheppert on and
Wey bridge, mostly in the summe r and
autumn of 1853, while the Meredith s were
still living in Peacock' s hou se.
Tha t George too had some sort of affai r at
this time is by no means improbable , and it
wo uld certainly help to explain his accep t-
ance of Mary El lens affair with Mansfield
- if such it was . Th e Meredith s were
acquainted with George Henry Lewes, and
George may ha ve tried for a time to embrace
the Shelleyan ideals that ena bled Lewes to
con done, and perhaps even enco urage , his
wife ' s relation ship with his friend Tho rnton
Hun t. The best ev idence we have for an affair
on George ' s part re main s the narrative of
Modern Love, in whic h the husband con-
sciously sets out to find conso lation for his
wife 's infid elit y. Meredith' s biograph ers
have tend ed to regard the wife's affa ir in the
poem as based on fact, and the husband' s as
fiction . But the husband ' s exper ience has the
ring of truth, and it is worth noting that
Me redith himself, in a letter of Fe brua ry 5,
1892, to his friend George Steven son, see ms
to treat the husband' s mistress in Modern
Lo ve as an ac tual married w o ma n: "A s to the
Lady in ' Modern Love ' , her husband neve r
acc ura tely knew; therefore we ought not to
inq uire; but flesh totters on the declin e when
irrit ated by anything" . (In the poem , the
husband co nsistently ca lls his wife "Madam"
and his mistress "Lady '") If the Lady was
anyone in the know n circle of the Meredith s'
acquaintance, she is likely to have been Kate
Hom e, the young wife of the writer Rich ard
Henr y (later Hengist) Hom e, who had left her
in Eng land when he wen t to see k his fortun e
in the go ld fields of Australia in 1851.
Having stayed with the Meredith s at Lower
Halliford for more than a month in October-
November 1852, Kate was famili ar with their
quarrels, and sympathized entirely with
George. Her own mar ital situatio n ma y
have prov ided the inspiration for Me redith' s
notebook poem on "Sq uireless Kate" , whose
knight is "over the sea" , but who has
defended herself ga llan tly aga inst a foe
"knocking at the gate". (Kate was extreme ly
beautiful and had many admirers , including
Cha rles Dic ken s, but she had black hair,
unlik e the "golden-crowned" Lady in
Modern Love.)
While we know very little about Mary
Ellen's first affai r, and nothi ng at all about
any affair of Georges, it it clear from
Charles Ma nsfie ld's correspond ence that in
1853-4 the Merediths we re strugg ling to re-
define the term s of their marriage and plan-
ning to live largely separate lives in the eve nt
that Mary Ellen 's school becam e a rea lity.
Modern Love' s mixture of brut al honesty and
tragic irony sugges ts the painful process by
which they not only ca me to rea lize their love
was dead but also tried to deal with their feel-
ings of guilt and jealousy as they bec ame
involved, emo tionally and sex ua lly, with
other partners . The failur e of Ma ry Ellens
educa tional scheme and the shoc k of
Ma nsfie ld 's death may have dela yed the
Me rediths ' separation, but Georges sonnet
sequence dram ati zes a ma rriage that was
doom ed long before Ma ry Elle n took up with
Henr y Wa llis in 1856- 7.
16
athered in an ove rloo ked corn er of
G Book Ex po , the ga rga ntua n publi sh-
ers ' co nven tio n in New Yo rk, are the
founders of a handful of sma ll "non-co nglo rn-
era tized" presses. Th ere is mu ch talk of the
po vert y vow s an d mule-like wor k ethic
required to brin g "embargoed" and " shut
out " literature to the fami shed read ers who
have been shunted as ide by the giant play-it-
safe firm s. The perenni al favou rite of the
indi e publi shin g sce ne is Johnny Te mp le, a
hand som e, serious " post-punk" ro cker who
founded Ak ashi c Books after his ban d Girls
Against Boys was "o utrageo usly ove rpa id"
to sign with Ge ffe n Record s. Te mp le 's slo-
ga n is "reverse gen trifica tio n of the literary
wor ld" , and his taste run s from crime stor ies
to the latest offe rings by A miri Barak a and
To m Hayd en . Akas hic's biggest hit to date is
a no vel call ed Hairstyles of the Damned,
abo ut the peril s of grow ing up with punk ish
predil ecti on s on Chicag o's South Sid e.
Valerie Meri ans of Melvill e Hou se, a liter-
ary press wi th a se nsible list of first novel s
and rep rint ed classics, liken s Rand om Hou se
to the Queen Mary. " It takes them for eve r to
switch co urse . We ' re like a skiff: to ch an ge
dir ection all we need to do is turn our sai l."
Richard Nas h of Soft Skull Press point s o ut
that the Queen Mary fares bett er than a sail-
boat in a storm. "On the twent y-second of
eac h month we run out of mo ney and have to
wa it ten days for a cheque from our distribu-
tor, prayin g that it will be eno ug h to see us
throu gh ." Th e sta nda rd adva nce fro m the
indi es is $ 1,000, and Nas h proudl y
announces that he has never shelled o ut a
penn y mor e. " Nowhere else in American capi-
tali sm do people earn career cred its for the
amo unt of mon ey they are willing to gam ble
IN NEXT WEEK 'S
Richard Clogg
What Britain did
to Greece
David Goldblatt
Baseball world
Theodore Rabb
On the Piero trail
Robert Douglas-
Fairhurst
Housman's letters
COMMENTARY
MI CH A EL G REEN BE R G
on indi vidu al intell ectu al pro perty. It' s
toxic."
I strike up a co nve rsa tio n wi th Eric
Ob en auf, the publis he r of Two Doll ar Rad io,
which has been putting o ut book s since 200 5.
Eric is twenty-fi ve, a tall , thin Mid westerner
with an eagerness , as hi s mission stateme nt
decl ares, to carve hi s na me "on the we t co n-
crete of the wor ld" . Bound with a strip of
Indi an fabri c, his cata log ue has a handmade,
co llec tible feel. "To re-affirm the literar y, cul-
tur al and artistic ambitions of the publ ishin g
indu stry", says the fir st page. "We' re abo ut
belief, not confi de nce" , adds Eric . "Confi-
den ce is for peopl e with neat hair. "
We go to the res taura nt in Brooklyn whe re
Eric tend ed bar while starting Two Doll ar
Radi o in his apar tme nt. " I' m willing to shove
my ignoran ce in peopl e ' s faces" , he says ,
quoting a favourite line fro m Ray Bradbu ry' s
novel Fahren heit 451. " I didn 't know wha t a
bar co de was whe n I started" , he says, refer-
ring to the invent ory control number that
mu st appea r o n every co nsumer product in
order for it to make it into stores. The nam e
of his press ca me to him whe n a man sat
down at the bar and sa id, " Do n' t mind me. I
make mor e noi se than a two doll ar radio" .
His list of authors is impressive ; I recog nize a
co uple of nam es, writers who becam e fed up
with their form er publi shers or who we re
discard ed by them for presenting the usual
" insur mountable ma rke ting cha llenge" . Hi s
lead titl e, which will appear in 200 8, is a
TLS October 5, 1962
Michael Hamburger on
Giinter Grass
Mich ael Hamburger, poe t, trans lator and
critic , has died at the age ofeigh ty-three. For
many years , he was an invaluabl e contribu-
tor to the TL S; his review of Ralph Man-
heim 's translation ofGiinter Grass's The Tin
Drum appeared on Octobe r 5, 1962. To read
the article in f ull, go to www. the-tls.co .uk
he pro gress of Herr Giinter Grass ,
T author of The Tin Drum , has been as
startling and unp redi ct ab le as that of
his hero-n arr ator , O skar; both are enfants
terr ibles. In the middle 1950 s Herr Grass
was kn o wn in ava nt- garde c ircles as a sc ulp -
tor and dr aught sman, as the author of ex per i-
ment al plays and satirica l dialogues, and as
one of the more ori gi nal yo unge r poet s.
Eve n whe n his first book of poems, Die
Yorriige der w indh uhner, was publi shed in
1956 wi th his ow n illu strati on s, few can
have guesse d that within thr ee yea rs thi s lyr-
ical poet wo uld be ge nera lly accla imed as
the most rem arkabl e Germa n noveli st of his
age -gro up. (O nly Herr Uwe John so n, who
is seve n yea rs yo unge r, has recei ved a co m-
parable intern ation al we lco me.) No t co ntent
with these transform ation s, Herr Grass has
TLS J U N E 15 20 07
no vel by Rudy Wurlitzer ca lled The Drop
Edge of Yonder. Rud y is a fri end of mine as it
happen s; I rem em ber him telli ng me that he
was wor king o n thi s boo k. Eric present s me
with a ga lley co py which I read at hom e in a
single mesme rized sitting . It is a Wes tern as
Ce line might have wr itte n one, the cha racters
stripped down to the zero degree of their ex ist-
ence . The prot ago nist is a mo untai n man who
wa nders wes t after the coll apse of the fur
trade in the 1850 s. In the ope ning sce ne a
Shos ho ne "half breed" ca lled No t Here No t
The re conde mns him to "drift like a blind
man bet ween the wor lds ", in a pur gator y of
fronti er emptiness and mayhe m.
Aft er readin g the no vel, I pay a vis it to
Rudy in Hud son , abo ut lOO mil es upri ver
from Manhattan. Alth ou gh we arran ged the
visit in adva nce, Rud y gree ts me with an air
of mild surprise , as if lookin g at him self in an
am used and cur ious way throu gh my eye s.
We met twent y yea rs ago, whe n we worked
togeth er on a script about a lovesick bur glar.
Rudy was alrea dy we ll known for his road
movies and hi s minimali st no vel s of the late
1960 s. I remind him of a di sagreem ent we
had ove r our respecti ve writing credit. " I took
a shine to yo u", he told me then . " Now I'm
go ing to nail yo ur hand s to the barn ." We
both lau gh. Th e disag ree me nt died away
bec ause the movie never got made. " Par for
the co urse o n the ce llulo id trail" , he says .
Rudy tau ght me the keys to scree nwriting:
the subp lot that every scene sho uld have, the
tiny echoes , the beats that add up, the abr upt
stops and repressed possib iliti es.
both co nso lida ted his achieve me nts as a
poet and illu strato r by the publi cati on of a
second co llectio n, Gleisdre ieck , and is
becoming wi de ly known as a stage and
radio drama tist. A shorter work of ficti on ,
Kat; und Maus, foll owed up his long no vel
last yea r.
Yet Herr Grass is ne ither a dabb ler nor an
eclectic . All his di ver se acco mplishme nts
are so closely interr elated that they see m
not o nly organic, but stra nge ly effortless .
An atte ntive rea der of the noveli st wi ll have
no difficulty at all in reco gni zin g the poet
or the drau ght sman, if onl y because cert ain
com pulsive images are commo n to all three,
and these images are the inimitable sig na-
tur e of a sing le imagin ati on and sensibility .
It is the see ming effor tless ness of Herr
Grass 's art that mak es it diffi cult to
describ e or to " place " . In all his medi a Herr
Grass 's vision is at once inn ocent and
sophisticated, reali stic and fant asti c, sympa -
theti c and satirica l. As a d rau ght sm an his
prim ary co nce rn is with sha pes; but thou gh
nearl y abstrac t in his first book of poem s,
these sha pes, increa sin gly, have been asso -
ciated with particul ar ph en om ena and pro -
cesses - hen s and brooding, for instance,
nun s and sailing , cook s and stirring - and it
is these phen om en a and processes that also
per vad e his poem s and pro se.
As a poet and noveli st, his prim ary con-
In the early 1970 s, he wrote a Western for
the dir ector Sam Peckinpah entitled Pat
Garre tt and Billy the Kid. On e of the charac-
ters is ca lled Ali as. "It' s why peopl e we nt
Wes t", says Rud y, "to ge t free of their na mes.
As soo n as they knew where they were head-
ing, the fro ntier wa s fini shed. " Wh en asked
who he is, A lias answers, "T ha t's a good
qu esti on". Rudy suggested that Bob Dylan
play the ro le. On bein g introduced to him,
Peckinpah sa id, " I prefer Roger Mill er" .
Dylan was entra nced by Peckinpa h. "We
both were." He was from Fres no, an ex -
marin e. He carried a revol ver and seemed to
be perp etu ally at wa r. Hi s fath er had been a
judge kno wn for his harsh sentences. "He
was the kind of A me rica n character that I was
dr awn to in those days. All he did was insult
Dylan, who foll owed him aro und like a
puppy ."
Now Rudy says that he' s fini shed with mov-
ies. " Drop Edge of Yonder tore it for me. It rid
me of my obsess ion with Ca lifo rnia. I had
started out writing ficti on , and after fift y-odd
scree nplays it was as if I had to show myself
how to do it aga in, so I co uld turn all that
wor k into something solid." We sit in the
back yard , whe re an eleg ant o ne-armed wor k-
man in a black leather vest tend s to the
ga rde n. "Sometimes I see him out here in the
middl e of the night," says Rud y. "lying on the
grass, smo king a joint. It' s his refuge ." Two
Dollar Radi o, he feels, is the perf ect publishe r
for his novel. "E ric's still learnin g how to put
his soc ks on, but he und erstand s the book in a
way that few editors wo uld. Do yo u know that
his fath er ran a diner unt il a grease fire burn ed
it to the gro und?" I marvel at Eric's ideali sm.
Rud y nod s. " It usually leads to trouble, but for
a yo ung publisher it's a valuable asse t."
cern is with wor ds, with the resources and
po tentialities of lan gu age ; ye t here again he
avo ids the ex tremes that ap prox ima te to
abstractio n. Thoug h he resort s to punning
and wor d-ass oc iation in cert ain passages of
the novel - and his Nove lle, too, is domi-
nated by certain vis ua l and dyn amic leit-
motifs - his pun s have a definite fun cti on in
the co ntex t of the narrati ve; they are not
autono mous word-patterns or automa tic writ-
ing. At the sa me tim e it is imp ossibl e to say
eve n of the nove l what came fir st, the mean-
ing or the words, the dominant images or
the plot. Indeed , Herr Grass 's obsess ion
with the co nundru m of hatching and bein g
hatched may we ll be connec ted with that
artistic co nundru m. Wh at is ce rta in is that
in the no vel delib erati on has been redu ced
to a rare minimum, so that the work see ms
mor e like some we ird sport of natu re than
of art. An y num ber of alleg ories can be
ex tracted from The Tin Drum ; but Herr
G rass g ives us no re ason to ass u me th at any
alleg ory was intend ed.
But for its shee r am ora l gusto and aban -
don , The Tin Drum wo uld no t be altoge the r
strange to modern Eng lis h readers . ... Mr
Manh eim ' s tran slati on deserves ve ry spec ia l
praise because of the ex treme diffi culti es
presen ted by thi s text. He has shown gre at
ingenuity in finding Eng lish co unter pa rts
for some of Herr Grass 's typi cal ju xta-
positions of the famili ar and the surrealist,
of folklore and pri vate fant asy ; and the
co lloq uial dialog ue, too , is rende red
co nv incing ly.

This inordinate play
JOH N STOK E S
Mich a el Dob son , e d i t o r
P E RFO RM I N G SHAKES PEA RE' S
T RAGED IES T O DA Y
The actor's perspective
144p p. Ca mbridge University Press. £40.
978052 I 855099
D a v id Bev i ng to n
TH IS W IDE AND UN IVERSA L
TH EATER
Shakespeare in perform ance then and now
242pp. Univers ity of Chicago Press. £ 15 (US $25) .
978022604478 I
S h a kespeare
KI N G L E AR
The Co urtya rd Th eatre, Stratford-upo n-Avo n
t sometimes feels that we are all,
I whether acade mic or actor, journ ali st, or
jo urnal keeper, increasingly surrounded
by our ow n debri s. Biographi es and auto-
biographi es, perform ers' notes and dir ector s'
mem os, production histori es and critica l vol-
umes confi rm our intention s and recor d our
ex pec tations. A paper resi d ue left over when
the high tide of perform anc e has co me and
go ne, our book s then lie beach ed on she lves,
dr y, see ming ly lifeless, eve n if, no w and then ,
we catch within them a glint of authenticity, a
piece of writing that becau se it tries, however
desperately, to keep the mom ent of perform-
ance intact is wo rth preser ving in itself.
Michael Dob son ' s Perf orming Shake -
speare's Tragedies Today: The actor 's per-
spective ex tends the long-establi shed Players
of Shake peare series with ten essays in which
actors reprise their roles, amo ng them Sa muel
West on his Haml et, Simon Russell Beale on
his Mac beth, Ant ony Sher on his lago,
Imogen Stubbs on her Ge rtrude . David Bev-
ington ' s histori cal overvi ew, This Wide and
Universal Theater: Shakespeare in perform -
ance then and now, tries to show how certa in
situations requi ring ges tures and actions that
are said to be implicit within the Sh akespear-
ean text have, over the centuri es, been embo d-
ied in different ways. Despite the vary ing
aims of the two book s there is a tellin g similar-
ity in their titles: the word "performance"
itself, obv iously, and the insistence on "today"
or "now" . This may tempt the book buyer but
is slightly dupli citou s. By the time a book
comes out, "today" is already "yesterday" ,
and whe re, in any case, are "today 's " perform-
ances takin g place? Both Dob son and Bevin g-
ton co nfine them selves predomin antl y to
English and American produ ction s, ignorin g
the multiculturalism that has generated some
of the most powerful of recent Shakespea re
experiments. Th ere are eve n larger question s,
too . Some wo uld say that stage and page are
fund amentally irrecon cilable. When a perform-
ance is ove r, how can anyone possibly recap-
ture in words the anticipa tion, some times
Does theatre really need to leave us speechless?
Ian McKeIlen in King Lear
prolonged, the satisfactions and the disappoint-
ment s that accomp anied its realization ?
Ho w, for instanc e, should we wish to com-
memorate Trevor Nunn ' s new King Lear for
the RSC, whose press night (or press after-
noon as it turn ed out ) fin ally arrived after an
unp recedented period of postponem ent and
an ex traor dinary amount of publicity, con-
tri ved or oth er wise? Is there a perform ati ve
kern el that can or sho uld be separated from
the man y supplementary performances - all
tho se inter views, spec ial featur es,the count-
less item s of goss ip - which have kept the
newspap er s going during the wa iting wee ks?
And, if so, is that central eve nt prim aril y to
be registered as a mil eston e in the care er of
Nunn, the dir ector , of Ian McKell en, the star,
or of some oth er lesser-known but especially
memorable actor? Critics and rev iewe rs,
whole audiences , will decid e for them sel ves,
leavin g record s which may we ll not coin cide
wi th those of the practit ion ers. Th e section on
King Lear in Bevin gton ' s book conce ntrates
on the hi storic al placing of Edga r, which has
at tim es been politica lly crucia l but is not an
obv ious focu s of attention for most cont empo-
rar y spec tators , eve n when the role is as we ll
performed as it is by Ben Meyjes at Stratford .
For Nunn , the director, clearl y the practic al
task mu st have been a felt need to fill the vast
Courtyard theatr e with life . Its exceptionally
large thru st is an undeniable instance of what
Bevington sees as a wides pre ad and pro-
longed return to a "pre sentational" sta ge after
the "representational" styles of the nineteenth
century. But a talent for orch estrati on is one of
N unn 's greatest strengths, and this production
is, in its early scenes , characteristically and
perh aps predictably operatic in its scale, its
choic e of set (majes tic balconies to the rear ,
clearl y destined to crumble) and of cos tumes
(big beard s and courtl y uniforms for the men,
ball gow ns for the women). Swellin g organ
sounds accompany an openin g proc ession as
we find our selves perh aps in the Balkans,
certainl y sometime before 1914; there will
even be qua si-Cossack dancin g and religiou s
TLS J U N E 15 2 0 07
gestures which, though pagan, have a touch of
the eccles iastical, of the Eastern rite. A little
later, Lear' s knight s really are riotous; there is
more music, shouting and a good deal of laugh-
ter. Thou gh the choic e of epithet mu st seem
unlik ely, initially this is an entertaining Lear.
Writ ing in Dob son' s collection, Da vid
Warn er, who has played Lear at C hiches ter,
asse rts that "do ing Shakes peare my basic pri-
orit y has always been to make it clear to the
audience what is going on. If you do that
prop erl y in King Lear, they cr y. And it ' s only
right that they should". At Stratford, by con-
tra st, it see ms that there will never be a wet
eye in the hou se. Yet N unn's Lear does
always tell us very preci sel y exa ctly what is
going on. The Str atford actor s, follo wing a
mod ern version of what used to be known as
the "Cambridge" tradition, respect the verse,
invari abl y breath e in the "right" place, es tab-
lish a rhythm, make thin gs clear wheneve r
they ca n. Th ey can eve n afford little jokes at
the expen se of Shakespea re 's obscurity .
Kent' s "cackling home to Ca melot" is met
with a baffl ed "W hat, art thou mad ?" .
In his astute introduction, Dob son reminds
us that actors invar iabl y reproduce in their
writing some aspect of the role in question .
Sa muel West ' s essay seizes the chanc e to talk
about agno stici sm and famil y relation ship s;
Ru ssell Beale is most at hom e in soliloquizing
mode. One might guess (partly from the
public stateme nts he made durin g the
rehearsal period ) that, subjec tively, for Ian
McK ellen the probl em of Lear is esse ntially to
do with the passing years. Now in his mid-
sixties, McKell en has always been skilled at
representin g different ages. Wh en he first
made his name as a classical actor with Rich-
ard Il and Edwa rd Il in 1968 and 1969 , he was
obli ged to make him self look rath er older than
he actually was. In a sing le yea r, 1976, he
played at Stratford three men - Rorneo, Leon-
tes and Macb eth - who are usually thought of
as occup ying contr asting point s in the male
cycle. His first Coriolanus was in 196 3, his
seco nd in 1984 . Sinc e then, he has played an
17
older woman in pantomim e and a very old
wizard in epic film. But McKellen ' s Lear is no
Gandalf. Here is a man whose body is not yet
full y synchro nized with the social demands
and con ventions ex pected of the age d - still
physicall y vigorous, needin g spectacles only
for reading, capab le of aiming a mean kidn ey
punch at anyone who gets in his way.
Thea trically speaking, old to young is not
like male to fem ale or black to white, tho se
edgy binari es on which theatric al transforma-
tion s thri ve . Age is simply a movin g mark er
on the single continuum to which we all
relat e, death bein g the onl y true uni versal that
we possess. Michael Dob son says that actors
sometimes have to persuade us what it might
be like to die without, of course, knowin g it
them selves. In any production of King Lear,
death must be continually present though not
always visible (eve n if Nunn, eve r the elucida-
tor, does choo se to show us the hangin g of the
Fool). On the cliff at Dover, Glouce ster think s
he' s going to die but he doesn 't ; Corde lia,
notoriously, may or may not expir e.
McKell en has Lear at the end insisting "Lo ok
there ! Look there!" while he him self, far gone,
is already lookin g elsew here. The turnin g
point , if indeed there is an isolated mom ent ,
has com e much ear lier with "Reason not the
need" , which McKellen plays with fru strated
and waning physicality. When Edgar wr ithes
on his back, his legs raised and apart, "a poor ,
bare, fork ed animal", Lear will peer down at
him from above . Nor will he show any embar-
rass ment about exposing his ow n genitalia.
There is a powerful chan geableness about
seve ral performance s. Franc es Barber' s
Regan glides eas ily and sex ily across the
stage , stopping for mom ent s of vituperation;
Cordelia (Romola Ga rai), initially ga uche, is
finall y commandin g (if sometimes inaudibl e);
Edmund (Philip Winchester) is at first mor e
casual than the malevolent force he will
becom e; Glouces ter (William Ga unt) may be
blind but for much of the time he stays upri ght
nonetheless. Eve n the Fool, performed by
Sylvester McCo y as a spoo ns-play ing old pro
who may have pick ed up a few gags from Ken
Dodd, scrapes away his reddi sh wig to reveal
the grey hair beneath . Th e production , for all
its openin g grandiosity and its general explicit-
ness, refu ses to ignore moral incon sisten cies.
As with any serious attempt at this inordinate
play, human presenc e mu st be show n to be
ind et erminate. A nd ther e lie s the lesson for
those who wo uld write abo ut theatre, of what-
ever kind . Certain puri sts say that the pres-
sures of publicity and our hun ger for material
ev ide nce, for souve nirs, destro y the thin g they
wo uld preser ve - theatre book s, review s even ,
can only be mementi mori . Th e endpoint of
this argument is that theatre should leave us
speechless . But mu st this be so? The atre, eve n
as ambitious a production of King Lear as this
one, is no mor e and no less ava ilable for cap-
ture in words than any other profoundly tem-
poral ex perience. Th at is the mo st con vincin g
ju stific ation for all the writing about it.
18 ARTS

messiah. The alarm bell starts ringin g early

The passion of it
TOBY LlCHTlG as much respon sibility for the current mess as
the apartheid gove rnme nt that preceded it. By
the 1980s, the Governm ent had started encour-
Oladipo Agboluaj e
ag ing some black South Africans to move
TH E C H R IS T O F C O L D H A R B OU R from the town ship s back into the city slums to
LANE stimulate the economy; but in the mid-1 990 s,
Soh o Th eatre the ANC embarked on a spate of ev ictions.
Pithou ses talk was apparently organi zed
ccor ding to research carri ed out by "in conjunction" with A gbolu aj es new play;
on: "rapture is mi staken for madne ss", he com-
plain s. Attempting to rally his fello w Brixtoni-
Subtle
ans with mounting apocal yptic gusto, Om o
becom es increasingly isolated from his fellow
Word spreader, Don a (Na dine Marshall ), who
favour s the ge ntler "Good News" approach.
boasting
Th e community is deri sive of Omo; but when KEITH MILLER
he befri end s a loca l stripper, Maria Maudlin,
and starts performing miracl es (with the aid of S E L F- P O RT R A ITS F R O M THE
two handk erchi efs and an enthusiastic danc e U FF I Z I
routine), peopl e are forc ed to reassess him . Dul wi ch Picture Ga llery
Combining a we lter of bad jokes, carica-

A the UN, half of the wor ld's popul a-

tion will be living in slums by 20 30.
Last year, Mike Davi s addresse d thi s prob-
lem in his book Planet of Slums . Slum dwell-
ers, Davi s claimed, alread y "constitute a stag -
gering 78.2 per cent of urb anit es in the lea st
develop ed countries" . Th ere are no w 200 ,000
separate shanty town s worldw ide, and they
are mu shrooming. As Davis says , China
alone "added more cit y-d well ers in the 1980 s
than did all of Euro pe (including Ru ssia) in
the entire 19th century".
Davis also cont end s that slum dw ellers are
incr easingly depoliticiz ed and reliant on the
opi ate of religion for sustenance. This view is
challen ged by the South African writer and
acade mic Richard Pithouse, who recentl y
gav e a stimulating talk at the Soho Theatre to
accompa ny a new play, The Christ of Cold-
harbour Lane, by the Sohos writer-in-
residence Ol adipo Agbolu aje. Pithouse is
invol ved with the Abahlahi Mo vement in Dur-
ban , South Africa, which has recentl y mobi-
lized shack dwellers to take part in demonstra-
tion s, and, mo st notabl y, to refu se to be used
as a "vote bank " and thu s boycott elections,
much to the cha grin of the local politicians
who rely on their vast numbers (there are
800,000 slum dwellers in Durban alone).
Pitho use gav e a fascinatin g histor y of South
African slums and argued that the AN C bears
-----------------~
but, unlik e the slums of Durban, it is best not
to take The Christ of Coldharbour Lane too
seriously. Quite what it had to do with
Pithouse ' s subje ct rem ains op aqu e. Brixton ,
where Co ldhar bour Lane is found, is not a
slum, nor have its politi cs supplanted reli gion ,
at least according to Agbolu aje . Th e area out-
side Brixton Tub e station is ind eed rife with
eager preach ers, and it is these that Agbolu aje
focu ses on. Omo (Jimm y Akin gbol a), a
delud ed sociopath freshly out of prison for
identit y fraud , suspects that he might be the
Jimmy Akingbola as Omo
, - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -framed him self with a back ground of the
tures and ove racting, The Christ of Coldhar-
bou r Lane succeeds neither as a com edy nor at he Uffizi coll ection of self-portraits,
unpackin g the issues of race , cla ss, nation alit y
and religion that lie at its centr e. Bathetic wit T
which usuall y lan gui shes in a semi-
secret pa ssage running from the Uffizi
over the Pont e Vecchio to the Pitti Palace in
is larded on , the gags are often stagey ("Never
Flore nce, was built up from the mid seve n-
trust a man who's still on pay as you go" ), not
to mention schoo lboyish (M aria Maudlin is teenth century, by purchases, bequ ests and
nicknamed " Union Jack", "because she make s commi ssion s. Bein g invited to contribute
was, and to some ex tent remains, a pre sti g-
us ej aculate in unison"). If nothin g else, the
play might be rememb ered for the follo win giou s thin g for artists, a memb er ship card to an
immortal line to enter in the annals of the exclusive club. Som e, like the tireless self-
drama of the Passion : "M aria Maudlin, know promoter Joh ann Zoffa ny in the eightee nth
century, managed to ga tecrash the vernissage
yo urse lf. You are not a cunt ". Libb y Wat son ' s
by handing their likenesses ov er for free.
set captures Brixton central in all its graffitoed
confu sion , though Paulett e Rand all' s small A small, rather choice selec tio n from thi s
uniqu e face-hoard is currently on displ ay in
cast performs rath er too we ll at rend erin g the
the appropriatel y tunn el-like ex hibitio n space
bedlam. Th ey did , in fairness, get Brixton' s
ubiquitous kazoo pla yer ju st right. at Dul wich Picture Ga llery . The limit s of the
After Omo con vinc es the peopl e, they subje ct give the show a plea sing rhythmic
quality, and highlight both narro w variations
com e running with their requ ests: hard cas h,
and unexp ect ed similarities . Joshu a Reynolds
a hip rep lacement , a hou se in the right catch-
ment zon e . With the Olympic Gam es on the offers a discr eet upgr ade on Rernb randt' s
horizon, Lambeth council tax is rising and "Aristotle cont empl ating a bust of Hom er"
ge ntrifica tion is go ing into overdri ve. with a lick of Venetian colour and a bundl e of
Richard Pithou se referr ed to similar prob- Michelangelo drawing s, clutched in his fist
lem s currently hittin g Durban, with South like a de gree certificate. The poli shed stee l
Africa lookin g forw ard to the 2010 World back ground to Michelangelo Pistol ett os
1971 serigraph see ms glaringly mod ern;
C up . The differenc e in ton e bet ween the talk
and the play emphas izes how far South ga llery-goers' refl ect ion s j ostle round him
like a rap star's posse . But the picture' s lumi-
Africa mu st com e before it can treat its crises
with a similar level of fri volity. nou s effect takes us unexp ect edl y back to
Sa ssoferrato , in the seve ntee nth century, who

Caricature crowns
n the ea rly da ys of the Verdi revival in
until 1976). The revi sed version was slower mo st vivid sky blue .
to catch on . Glynd ebourn e' s 1938 productio n
was the Briti sh premi ere.
M o st of the fe atured artis ts seem mor e con-
cern ed with expr essin g some sor t of essential
Richard Jones, the dir ector of this new humanity than brag gin g about how learn ed or
A NDREW PORT ER Glyndebourne version, and Ultz, its designer, success ful they were in life (though few ,

I Germany, when his opera s were mor e

oft en performed than Wa gn er' s, Macbeth
was prominent. In 1931-2 there were fort y-
Giu s epp e V erdi
MA CBETH
ha ve dr essed the men in unpl eated comi c admitte dly, are as insistent on their fleshl y
kilt s. Lad y Macbeth wea rs a form-fitting fragility as Rembrandt is in his late se lf-
littl e blu e dress, and beig e pyjam as for the portrait as a qui verin g geriatric). Ther e is a
seve n production s. One of the mo st admired sleepw alking sce ne (w hich she spe nds carr y- good deal of lightheartedn ess. A Bolo gn ese
was Berlin' s, conducted by Fritz Bu sch , Glyndebo urne Fe sti val Ope ra
ing a pair of glo ves, over and ov er aga in, hack called Ventura Pa sserotti snugg les hi s
dir ect ed by Carl Ebert, and design ed by to the was hing machin e). The witches - dog ; Giuseppe Maria Cres pi messes around
Cas par Neher. The sa me team recr eated it at journali st asked him what he thou ght of gr anni es in whit e, matrons in blu e, teen with hi s famil y. Zoffan y surrounds him self
Glynd ebourne in 1938 , and in New York four Wagner, he paid tactful tribute to the "great fiends in red - live in thre e trailer cara van s. with vanit as emblems , but he' s chuckling
years later. Glyndebourne revived thi s Mac- geniu s who had the courage to rid him self of Crow ns are giant caric atur es. The murder like Heraclitus over them .
beth after the wa r. The new seaso n op ened traditi on al form s" ; and added, " I too onc e weapon , despit e what M acb eth sings, is not Oth er s boa st mor e subtly about their stock
with a very different production : a cartoon- atte mpted the fu sion of mu sic and drama . . . a dag ger but an axe . (T he Macb eth s keep in trad e, as well they might : their touch, their
strip tra vesty of the traged y which raised in Macb eth". a stas h of axes down by the footli ght s.) style, their palett e. But the self-portrait is a
man y laugh s. It is, admittedl y, an uneven op era . In 1864 , Banquos gho st is repr esent ed by a cardboard conceptual rather than simply a technical
Verdi , need one say , took Macbeth with a Paris production in prospect , Verdi wine cart on , which Macbeth fin all y tears challen ge: a test of the artist's ability to see ,
serio usly. Sending his draft sce nario to decided to recompose some of it in a more to piec es. And so on. At the close, Macbeth' s to imagine and to render realit y - to lie, in a
Francesco Maria Piave for ve rsification, he mod ern manner. Lad y Ma cbeth' s " La luc e fin al aria, "Mal per me" , is (as oft en) restored se nse . Th e Jesuit Andrea Pozzo points
called Shakespeare ' s tragedy "una dell e piu lan gue" , a ballet , a new ex iles ' choru s, and a from the 1847 vers ion, to be follo wed by proudly up at a cavernous dome which never
grande cre azioni um ane". He took ex cep- Meyerb eerian multi-choru s final e we re the perfunctory choral cr y " Now Maleolm reall y ex isted: the trompe l 'oeil ceiling he did
tion al pain s with eve ry det ail , ve rba l and among hi s revision s, the mu sic filled with is our kin g", which Verdi decid ed to replace. in the Roman church of S Ign azio. Mirrors
mu sic al, of the composition, and then of the fascin atin g up-t o-date sonor ities. He deliber- Sylvie Vala yre, onc e so promi sing a nobl e and pictures within pictures generat e puzzl e-
mu sic al and sce nic exe cution, urgin g Fe lice ately reta ined some flibb erti gibb et witches ' cl assic al heroin e, see ms to have become an ment rath er than ju st elucida ting the proc ess
Varesi and Marianna Barbieri-Nini , the mu sic to contrast with their (recomposed) all-purpose intern ational. Andrzej Dobb er' s at hand. Ca rlo Dolei clutches a dr awin g of hi s
or iginal Macbeth and Lad y Macbeth, to serve utterance s in sinister, oracular vein. The origi- Ma cbeth lack ed ex press ive ra nge, but his profil e - how did he do that ? Fernando
the play before they thou ght of serving the nal Macbeth had been very wide ly played : ton e was firm and true . Vladimir Juro wski Cav allieri is looking in a mirror, but his ga ze
composer. In 1847 he called Macbeth, his with the gre at Paulin e Viardot as the heroine , conducted the unworthy scenic per ver sion of is dir ect ed out ward s at the view er rath er than
tenth opera , his best to date . In 1875 , when he it was heard in Dublin, Manch ester and Liv er- the op era with ver ve, mu sical con viction and back toward s him self. Th e picture he is work-
was in Vienn a conducting the Requiem and a pool in 1859 -60 (but fai led to reach London some subtlety. ing on, whatever it is, isn't a se lf-portrait.

TLS J U N E t5 2007

Among the Frozen Chosen
ichael Cha bon has always been a
M darin g writer, and The Yiddish
Policemen 's Union can be called a
work of un mit igated chutzpah. It is a rare
instan ce of Yiddish noir , in which a man
ru mour ed to be the Me ssia h is the victim,
Hasidi m are the ga ngs ters ("the black ha ts") ,
and a rabb i is the heavy, both figu ratively and
literally. (" Rabbi Heskel Shpil man is a
deform ed mountain , a giant ruined desse rt, a
cartoon hou se with the windows shut and the
sink left runn ing." ) All of thi s is so wildly
imp rob abl e, to say nothing of infl amm atory,
that the mu rder plot might as we ll be takin g
place in an "alternate wo rld" . And it does.
Lik e the child who murders his parents an d
then pleads clemen cy on the gro unds that he
is an orph an, Cha bon does nothi ng by halves:
the book is not onl y Yiddi sh noir but Yiddish
science ficti on , set in an elabo rate imaginary
wor ld and co mbining hard-b oiled myster y
with co unter fac tua l history.
In thi s oth er place, the Jews have foun d
sanc tuary not in Israel but in A laska, which
has been offere d to them as a temp or ary
refuge by Roosevelt in 194 0. These
"F roze n Chosen", who spea k Yiddish as their
preferr ed ton gue, try to mak e the best of it,
but amid the snow and spruce they pine for
the promi sed land of Israel. Their traditi on al
lon gin g is ma tched by traditi on al disposses -
sion, as the " interim district" where they
reside is scheduled to reve rt to the United
States Governme nt.
Cha bo n has lon g been interested in the
dr awing of boundaries, a top ic he has
addressed in both his fictio n and non-fi cti on.
By tacklin g the Jewish diasp ora he is able to
exp lore some of his favou rite them es: the real
and se lf-created ghettos that impri son us; the
liberating and regressive poten tials of "escap-
ism" . The Yiddish Policemen 's Union is an
enjoyable co nfec tion, written with wit and
pan ache. But Cha bon hopes to illuminate as
we ll as entertain. He asks an impo rtant ques-
tion : whe re might red em ption co me from in
tod ay' s wor ld, give n the co mpe ting and not
always com patible answers retailed by
science and religi on, and the pitiless flu x of
modernit y expe rience d by Jew and Ge ntile
alik e? The reade r may ask a simp ler
qu estion : ca n Chabo n pull all this off? After
all, as one character here is remind ed by
anoth er, "Man makes plans, and Go d laugh s" .
Rueful laught er is at the heart of thi s novel,
as it surely must be for any work involvin g
Yiddi sh. Chabo n has co nstruc ted an imagi-
nary wo rld from a language which yields
"seventeen types of irony", employed here to
conjure the Jewi sh terr itory of Sitka, Alas ka,
into ex istence. The detective genre is already
steeped in a kind of ex istentia list irony,
classically exe mplified in lacon ic fashion by
Dashiell Hamm ett and more lushly by
Raymond Cha ndler. (Cha bon nod s to both .)
Yiddi sh, however, lend s itself to a type of
agg ressive bant er, chee rful pessimi sm and
woe ful self-de preca tion that surpasses the
19
Michael Chabon' s Yiddish naif
MI CH A EL SA LE R thi s time to Isaac Bashevis Sin ger. Cha bon,
Mi cha el C ha bo n
however, is more interested in the qu estion of
mo dern redemption. Th e Jews for him are not
the Cho sen People ; they are the Exe mplary
TH E YIDD ISH P OLI CE M E N ' S Peopl e, whose condition of ex ile and qu est
UN IO N for a sec ure hom e em bo dy the modern predi c-
4 14pp. Fourth Estate. £ 17.99. ame nt. His novel sugge sts that reli gion and
9780 007 150397 science are two com peting narr atives that
promi se ce rtainty in the face of life ' s myster-
snappy patter of conve ntional noir. The ies, yet neithe r can fully addres s the co mplex -
charac ters here respond to "How are yo u?" ities "of the who le unbl essed and hom eless
with " How should I be?", and actually say, planet". The stro nges t critic ism here is
"Only please, eat a little, it makes my levell ed agai nst religiou s orthodoxy with its
heart ache to look at you, my God, you' re so inhumane infl exibil ity. But the novel does not
thin". Chabon's ear for cade nce and his eye rul e o ut the poss ibility of supernatural salva -
for detail are lovingl y acute. He lays down tion, any more than it rul es out the po ssibilit y
rhy thmic passages about low-l ife: "Out- of biological determi nism. Poor Mendel
side a co rner store, by a study hall, To rah Shpil man, potential Messiah and clo seted
bach elor s loiter, Scr ipture grifte rs, unm atch- gay , may be the victim of both, "hiding him-
ab le luftm ensch es and garde n-variety hood- self from the inc omp atibl e desti nies chosen
lum s". Detectives are "s ha mrnes" rathe r than for him by his ge nes and by his Go d" .
sha muses , patrolmen are "la tkes" rath er than Ultima tely, Cha bo n sugges ts, damn ation
flatfoots, ga ngs ters carry "mandolin cases" and red em ption alike deri ve from the stor ies
rather than violin cases; shopp ing options in we tell: the o nly asce rta ina ble truth s are the
Sitka includ e "a Koshe r M art, a Walg ree ns, pro vision al ones we crea te fo r ourselves.
and a Big Mach er outl et store ". Eve n the Land sman ' s sense of ex ile has less to do with
metaphors are of anothe r wor ld: "N ight is an " Kanioka Mask", pencil on airmail pap er ; his religion, and more to do with his loss of
ora nge smear . .. a comp ound of fog and the one of twent y-four works by Steve faith in him self; he talk s himself into
light of sodium-vapor stree t lamps. It has the Goddard to be shown at the Fine Art solitude. The reli giou s fun dament ali sts in the
translucen ce of onions cooked in chi ck en fat" . Society, London from June 20 to July 12 novel similarly mislead themselves. They
The plot stays close to the rul es of the hard- believe, as one Chr istian fan atic claims,
boiled ge nre . We are introduc ed to Detecti ve bet ween the Verb overs and the United States that "the story . .. is tellin g us. Ju st like it has
Meyer Land sm an at his lowest ebb . He has Gove rn men t to recl aim Israel for the Jews. If done fro m the beginning" . Lik e Land sman ,
recentl y di vorced his wife of fift een yea rs, it doesn 't always make sense , that too is in they refuse to take responsibility for crea ting
lost his sister in an apparent accide nt (no the noir tradit ion . the ficti on s they live by. Detecti ve Bina
acc ide nt, we soo n learn ), has littl e faith in Cha bo n is an expa nsive writer, and while Ge lbfish knows bett er. She "does not solve
him self or anyone e lse, and is slow ly drin k- he plays ex uberantly here with ge nre conve n- cases so muc h as tell the stor ies of them" , and
ing him self to death in a seedy floph ou se. tion s th ey ca n als o confine hi m . He has been underst ands ho w narrati ve s shape rea lity .
Anothe r ten ant is di scovered mur dered ; at forced to curb his usual leisur ely ex position She atte mpts to ass uage Landsman ' s guilt
first it see ms he is a co mmo n drug addict, in ord er to play by these rul es. While his disci- over thei r deci sion to abort their onl y child by
thou gh one who used the strings of his tefillin pline is rem arkable - littl e is super fluous in notin g the co ntinge nt elements in any diffi-
to dilate his ve ins, but soon clu es suggest that thi s page-turner - the res traints have their cult decision :
thi s is no ordinary crime. Land sm an, togeth er costs. So me fanciful similes j ostle too We did what seemed right at the time, Meyer.
wi th hi s partn er Be rko She me ts, a Na tive cl osely : "His teeth are like the pipes of an We had a few fac ts. We knew our limitations.
A laska n T ling it who has been raised as a organ made of bones. His laugh sounds like a And we called that a choice. But we didn' t
Jew, set out to unravel the mystery. They are handful of rusty forks and nail heads cla tter- have any choice. All we had was, I don't know,
j oin ed by Lan dsm an ' s form er wi fe, Bina ing on the gro und" . Charac ter delin eation s three lousy fact s and a bound ary map of our
Ge lbfish, herself a detecti ve and the enabler tend to pok e through the ga ps of the plot ow n limitations. The things we knew we
of his ow n mo st pessimi stic self-assessme nts. rather than eme rge natur ally, as they do in couldn' t handle.
At one point she violates her princ iples to his capaciou s masterpi ece, The Amazin g Yet stor ies ca n also red eem life. In co ntras t
ga in infor mation and immediate ly regrets it: Ad ventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000), to Mendel Shpilm an ' s sad fate, living an intol-
" I can' t believe I did that", she says, avaiIing which also exa mined the frau ght relatio nships era ble ex istence set for him by others , a rela-
herse lf of a tissue from her endless stash. "That between fath ers and sons, and the dilemmas tive was able to affirm his ow n sex ua lity after
is the kind of thing y ou would do." posed by sex uality and love . W hile that novel a brief enco unter with Jul es Verne: " It
" People I kno w keep havin g that prob lem" , offe red th e fr eed om to examine suc h issu es at had begun with a hidden book ca lled The
Landsman says. "Suddenly acting like me." length , the new one handl es them retro- Mysterious Island, di sco vered in a drawer,
Ev ide nce leads them to the Verbove rs , a sec t spective ly and briefly . Me nde l Shpilma ns and culminated with a report of [his] havin g
of co nse rva tive Jews who m Cha bo n port rays unh app y conflict between his religious been spotte d . . . beardl ess and wea ring a
harshl y, not onl y as ga ngs ters but as intoler- upb ringing and his hom osexualit y is affect- straw boater more scan dalous than any
an t bigot s. The mur der vic tim is revealed to ing, but since he is dead from the first page Fre nch novel". An "escapist" tale restored
be Mend el Shpilman, the so n of the Chief the options are limit ed . Similarly, the re- him to life. The Jewi sh people in ex ile also
Rabbi of the sec t. Man y beli eved that Mend el kindlin g of the relationship between Land s- have their fort ifyin g stor ies , for ms of sanc tu-
had ev ince d supernatura l power s and that he man and Bin a see ms more a consequence of ary as we ll as escape, "their wo rld on the tip
might be the proph esied Messiah , but he was plot co nve ntion than emo tional fire. of the tongu e" . Cha bo n has been ca lled a
disow ned by his fath er for bein g gay. Fro m Considering all that Chabo n is atte mpting "Jew ish writer" , but he can' t be bound by any
here, the plot thickens and distend s to encom- to do, it is a miracle that the novel is so effec - category, nor wo uld he wa nt to be . Ca ll him
pass param ilit ary gro ups , a ge ne tica lly eng i- tive: it entertains and mo ves, eve n astounds . rather a men sch : this hum ane no vel is abo ut
neered red cow and an elabora te co nspiracy Mi racles are a part of the novel' s plot, a nod the sec ular relig ion of fiction.
TL S J UN E I S 2007
20
Reader as witness
alentino Achak Den g watches as two
V of his compan ion s are eaten by a
lion. It is night. The lion eme rges
from the bush, kill s a boy and drags him
awa y. No one does any thing. No one tries to
do anything - ex ce pt not hear the boy being
ea ten - and the lion comes out of the bush
aga in and eats ano ther boy. Aft er that , they
sleep in a circle . All throu gh the night , the
boys on the out side of the circle migra te
inwards, displ acin g others .
Act s of wi tness have complex effec ts on
the reader, one of which is a sense of guilty
helpl essness. In his life, Valen tino has experi-
enced a good deal of helpl essness on behalf
of oth er people, and thi s somehow multi plies
the numb er of acts of witness takin g place.
By a subtle turn about he manages to sta nd in
for, represen t in so me way, his ow n inter-
locutors: we are , What Is the What remi nds
us, tell er or listener, all in the same boat.
No ne of thi s doubl ing, which thru sts us back
into the oral tradition and makes us qu estion
what a story - a state men t of witness
- actua lly is, wo uld be possible witho ut the
sophisticated inter vention of Dave Eggers,
who in thi s decepti ve book appea rs to surre n-
der his voice to the vo ice of a real person .
Eight or nin e yea rs old, displaced by the
seco nd Suda nese civil wa r, his parents killed
and his village burn ed by the mur ahaleen
militias, Valentino Acha k Deng find s him self
amon g the " Lost Boys" , endless lines of
starving Dink a children , mo stly ma le, some
--------------------'~,--------------------
On the edge of feeling
ny disapp oint ment with A lice
A
McD erm otts new novel arises not in
co m pa r iso n to her p revious fi ve
books, but in its failu re to sustain the engage-
me nt offered by its best pa ssages. Aft er This
is a "home epic" , at once sweeping an d
episodic, of one Roman Ca tho lic Amer ica n
famil y, Mar y and John Keane and thei r four
children. Fro m the app arently qu iet aftermath
of the Seco nd World War to Vie tnam and
the urb ani zati on of Lon g Island, the six
chara cters test their hum an luck , their desires
and their fears, am id famili ar tension s of
dom estic ex pectation and socia l change .
The narrative is am bitious and orig inal.
M any of the ch apters co uld be read as di s-
crete stories ; together they make a case for
cap turing life' s essence from what in a mor e
commo nplace writer's hand s wo uld be at the
perip hery. As thou gh to emphas ize her skill,
McD erm ott lea ves out the ex pected ma rkers
in the history. We catch sight of a powerfu l
ro ma ntic bond in the thin edges of des ire,
such as a wo ma n's awa reness of a brass belt
buckl e "worn to a wa rm go ld"; M ary and
John' s first danc e together is ca ug ht in the
pauses durin g a banal con versati on ; John' s
love for his children, bearin g "down on his
heart with the we ight of three heavy stones ",
is part of a par ent al dr ama hei ght ened during
the ordin ary negotiations of a fam ily outing;
and the devastatin g loss of son and brother is
blasted by und erstatement: "Daddy' s co ming
FICTION
M. JOH N H ARRISO N
D av e Eggers
WHAT I S TH E W HAT
475pp. Hamish Ham ilton . £ 18.99.
978 024 1 142578
US: McSween ey' s. $26.
978 1 9324 1 664 0
naked, all hu ngry, who wa lked through the
deserts and for ests to safe ty in Ethiop ia,
preyed o n by anima ls, di sea se and soldie rs.
He watches his fri end s die. He surv ives ,
thou gh he sees and experiences things we
wo uld rather for get , and all it leads to is ten
years in the wre nching con diti on s of the
Kakuma refu gee cam p.
Later, in A merica at last, grow n up, work -
ing for a qu alifi cation, trying to und erstand
and com e to ter ms with the food and art of his
adopted nation , he is pistol-w hipped du rin g a
robbery . " In my life" , he remark s, "I have
been struck in many ways , but never with
the bar rel of a gun." His assa ilant, a black
Atl antan ca lled Pow de r, mistakes him for a
Nige rian, then, after a certa in loss of temp er
and some wild kickin g, redu ces him almos t
care fully to uncon sciou sness. "W hen there is
pleasur e, there is often abando n, and
mistakes are made" , obse rves Valentin o;
better to be ro bbed delib erately than killed by
acc iden t.
It is hard to say whether What Is the What,
TE R R I A P TE R
Al ic e McD ermott
AFT ER T H IS
208pp. Bloom sbury. Pap erbac k, £ 10.99.
978 0 74759020 0
US : Farrar, Stra us and Giro ux. $24 .
978 0374 168094
to ge t yo u", M ary inform s her daught er who
is at scho ol whe n the bad news arrives, and
no o ne is in any doubt as to the message.
McDer mott skilfully captures the haph az-
ard thread s that hold a fun cti on al (but by no
means ideali zed) famil y tightl y togeth er, and
she gro unds their per sonal stories in their
mutable and sharply ob ser ved surro undings .
She is an ex pert at slicing o ut slende r
episodes, fi nding the essentia l ele men ts of
personality, relation shi p or emotion within a
narr ow cross section of ex perie nce . Mar y
bends her head a ce rta in way, and her hus-
band picks up the message " I told yo u so" ;
Mar y hears the "crimp of fear" in her son's
vo ice and, ga ug ing the imp act of her own
anxiety, think s " it' s all my fault " ; gender
nor ms are underpinned or und er mined by a
wor d of dismissal or a glance of approva l;
and a teenage girl's arc h criticism is full y
draw n, as she savo urs a literary phr ase that
ex poses the flaws of the peopl e aroun d her.
McD erm ott is able to ma ke these famil iar
TLS J U N E 15 2 0 07
the result of years of coll aborati on between
Eggers and Den g whose story thi s is, sho uld
be describ ed as ficti on or non-fi cti on . Co n-
tent has ove rw helme d form so co mpletely
that the book is released to becom e neither,
ex isting first as a "human do cumen t" and
then, para dox ica lly, as a pure act of writing
- subtle, funn y, fluid , elega nt, poi gn antly
clear and honest. The mo st dem andi ng part
of the task must have been to stand away
from the subjec t matter and allow it to
breath e. Egge rs has been so successful at thi s
that What Is the What act s, if nothing else, as
a triumphant rebuttal of M artin Am is's
meth od for House of Meetings, a book
in which the author 's need to add literary
value tend ed to obsc ure the very fact s he was
writing abo ut.
The art has go ne into throwin g Valentin os
vo ice . As a result , you rece ive it unqu estion-
ingly as the voice of an autobiographer. The
onl y obv ious ly noveli stic choice has been to
use Valenti nos ex perience of bein g robb ed
in Atlanta as a framin g device for the crue l-
ties of his life in Sudan. Th e ironi es that spin
off add to the reader ' s sense of guilt at not
bein g able to be there for the Lost Boy; but
they are also the perfect co mplimen t to
Valentinos qui et , sly, Dink a sense of
hum our. Not long afte r they have settled in
the US, Valentino and his friend Ac hor
Achor decid e to watch The Exorcist. " We
have an interest in the co ncep t of ev il, I admit
it" , he says . The film terrifi es them , and
Ach or cann ot eve n stay in the same roo m
with it. It wo uld be a mi stake to think that
Da ve Egge rs has give n up iron y. Wh at he has
don e is to send it deep into the text where it
ca n do its wo rk.
thin gs surpr ising, partl y by remi ndin g us how
revealing sma ll ges tures and exc ha nges ca n
be, and partl y by show ing how eve ryday and
eterna l matte rs are mi xed , so that bru shin g
the sand out of a chil d' s eyes is at onc e a
pra ctica l matt er and a spiritual one, an offer-
ing of one's deepest ca re to a wo rld beyond
one' s control.
Whil e McDermott ' s na rrative approac h is
elega ntly obliq ue, the no vel' s openin g
sentence shows her skill in capturing her
charac ters' raw and exciting phys ica l ex peri-
ences : "Leaving the church, she felt the wind
rise, felt the pinprick of pebbl e and grit
aga inst her stoc king and her chee ks - the
slivere d shar ds of mad sun light in her eyes".
Man y chapters open in the middl e of such viv-
idly em bo died experiences - of we ather , or
sce nt or touch. The charac ters live in a wo rld
that is sharply sentie nt, full of movem ent ,
ch angeable and unpredi ctable.This imagin a-
tive complexity gives way in the later stages
of the no vel to so me rather cliched vignettes :
there is M icha eI, the younger son, the guilty
survivor, see king di straction in the psyche-
deli c parti es of the 1960 s; his sister Anni e is
mesmeri zed by a car ica ture of Briti sh
aca de mia, and the yo unges t child, Clare,
enac ts the role of the good Ca tholic girl,
acce pting a sho tgun wedding and cu stod y of
an invalid aunt figu re . Yet eve n these deri va-
tive outcomes ca nno t diminish the imp act of
the ge neral exce llence that makes After This
a novel to reli sh . Alic e Mc Dermo tt has laid
bare the ner ve centre of a famil y, and located
an end uring gra ce in the co nstraints and con-
fusion of day-to-d ay life.
Runners and
gangers
P A UL OW E N
P et er B eh r en s
T HE L A W O F DRE A M S
394p p. Ca no ngate. £ 14.99.
978 184 195935 1
n the winter of 1846 , Ferg us, an Irish teen-
I ager , is attem pting - like many thou sand s
of others - to escape the potato famin e
that has des troyed his famil y and their way of
life. Fergus is a bloody-minded an d ten aciou s
yo ungs ter forced to cop e qui ckl y with trag-
edy , but he also enj oys his share of luck ; he is
ofte n in the right place to sweep up a wa llet
or a wo man when one of his companion s
meets a blood y end, as they ofte n do. Flee ing
the bogs and mountains where he grew up, he
em barks on a series of j ourn eys, eac h mor e
amb itious than the last: to Dublin, to Brit ain
and finall y to Mont real.
Peter Behr en s' s no vel The Law of Dreams,
which won Ca nada's Governor Ge neral's
Literary A ward in 2006, is loosely divid ed
into three parts, eac h struc tured aro un d
Fergu s' s relation ship with a different girl. It
opens with him pinin g for Pho ebe, the "neat
and clean" dau ght er of the farm er who own s
his parents' land . Later he teams up with an
another runa way, an androgy nous girl ca lled
Luk e and her band of piratical , half- star ved
" Bog Bo ys" . Aft er short stops in
Dublin and Liverp ool, he pit ches up in North
Wa les, wor king on the half-built railway line
that is tearin g its way throu gh the hill s fro m
Ches ter to Hol yh ead. Here he fall s in with the
cold , determined Moll y, and togeth er - as
" stone partn ers" - they plan their escape to
the new wo rld, in thi s case Qu ebec.
Thro ug h Luk e and Moll y, Behr en s
ex plores Ferg us 's sex ual awakening . In
Liverpo ol , he is taken in by a brothel and
unwillin gly trained to be a male pro stitute , a
"pearl boy". Th e book is full of such vivid
j argon - we meet ribbo nmen, whiteboys, run-
ners and gange rs - and histor ical det ail , from
the "hunger fur" which grows on the faces of
the starv ing Irish to the lon g white sheds set
up for fever cases on G rosse -Ile, the qu aran-
tine island off Ca nada . Behr en ss dial ogu e is
co nvi ncing. Hi s wea knesses are a tend en cy
toward s melodram a and the bad habit of en d-
ing chap ters with gno mic pron ou ncem ent s:
"A secret makes yo u stro ng" , or "M en and
wo me n nee d each oth er, do n' t they".
The title is similarly va pid; the " law of
dr e am s" , Behr en s ex p la ins ea rly o n, is " to
keep movin g" , and he devotes ove r a quarter
of the no vel to Ferg us and Moll y' s fort y-da y
trip across the Atlantic, a crossing mar ked
by di sease, hun ger and violence , with passen-
ge rs nailed into their roo ms and weev ils
crawl ing from bi scuit s. Wh en he comes to
fini sh the book , Beh rens sends Fergu s off on
yet another trip , this tim e to Bosto n. Co mpari-
sons with the dead father we met in the early
chapter s and the final image of Ferg us grow-
ing from bo y to ma n not with standing, thi s
is a so mew hat unsati sfyin g ending to an
otherw ise absor bing histor ical no vel.

IOYd Joness new novel, which has just
L won the Commonwealth Writers '
Prize , is the first of his works to be
published in Britai n, though he is one of New
Zea land 's most successsful wri ters. Mister
Pip is the story of a poor fishing village in
Pap ua New Guinea, where the on ly white
man is Mr Wa tts, a recl use in a crump led
linen suit who lives in the for mer miss ion
hou se and is occas iona lly seen in public,
drawi ng his wife Grace behind him on a
trolley. The novel' s narrator, thirt een- year-
old Ma tilda, marks the mome nt when Wa tts ,
who is kno wn as Pop Eye to the children , is
transform ed fro m being a local ecce ntric into
a kind of sav iour.
The story is set during the tim e of the upri s-
ings of the 1990s, when Bou gain ville was
blockaded by Papua New Guinea, an eve nt
which affec ted even the most rem ote commu-
nities. The local cop per mine closes, and the
men have to go abroad to look for wor k.
Ma tilda lives wi th her Bible-rea ding moth er,
Dolores, and strugg les with a bewild erin g
ado lesce nce in which all fam iliar points of
reference seem to be threatened. Help co mes
-----------------------~,-----------------------
Turk the
butcher
JU D IT H F LAN DE RS
D eb or ah M o g g a ch
I N THE D A R K
240pp. Chatto and Windus. £ 12.99.
978070 1 181093
n the Dark, Debor ah Moggach' s seve n-
I
teenth novel, is set in a shabby lod ging
house by Lond on Bridge Station in the
final year of the First World War. Eithne
Clay , the landl ady, has been strugg ling on
since the death of her ineffectu al husband
two yea rs earlier, help ed only by her six tee n-
yea r-old son, Ralph , and by Winnie, the
maid-of-all-work . The hou se is fill ed with a
co llec tion of oddba lls and gro tesques ,
was hed up and left beached by the wa r and
the changing tim es: Al wyne Flyte, the
Communist lodger , blind ed in a gas attac k;
the slig htly dem ent ed Mr s O 'Malley ; Mr
Spoo ner, paralyse d by unknown traum as,
who only emerges from his roo m to be
shepherded to the pub by his preternatura lly
elder ly ten- year-old daughter. They all are
incapacit ated in var ious ways, and Eithne
strugg les to keep them afloa t, while Winni e,
plain , fright ened, overwor ked and underp aid,
wa tches her friends le ave the rig o urs o f
dom estic service for the greater freedom s of
the munition s fact ories.
Into this struggle enters a fo rce that destabi-
lizes the entire hou se - sex . Nev ille Turk , the
local but cher, black-m arket scrounge r and
war -pro fitee r, has his eye on Eithne, while
Alwyne Fl ytes black spectacles are turning
towards Winn ie. When the two wo men in his
life cease nurturing him as their prim e source
of emotional co mfort, yo ung Ra lph has to
find his way throu gh an uncomfortable ado-
lescence, bereft of a fath er, with only the
wounded and the elderly to act as repl ace-
FICTION
Gargery's boy
MI CH EL E N E W AN D O R
Ll o yd J on e s
M ISTE R PIP
220pp. John Murray. £ 12.99.
978 0 7 195 6456 7
from a surpr ising qu arter when M r Watts
offers to gather all the children in the
aba ndoned schoo l and teach them all he
kno ws. In co nve ntio nal ter ms thi s turn s out to
be very little, and he has to turn to their
mothers for help, invitin g them into the
schoo l to give the children the benefit of their
know ledge : how to kill an octopus by biti ng
it above the eyes ; the wis do m of cra bs; goo d
mann er s; the Bible and re ligious faith. Mr
Watts has his own gift: he introdu ces the
childre n to a M r Dicken s and then to a Mr
Pip. Readin g Great Expec tations aloud,
ment s - or, if not them , tho se who are devi-
ous enough to have ga ined exe mption from
consc ription, like the butcher who is eye ing
his mother like a pri me fillet of beef.
Sex ua lity is a subjec t that is often describ ed
in fiction but rarely explored. Deborah
Moggach does it full ju stice here. The mutu al
sexual delirium expe rienced by Eithne and
the butcher is wonderfully well rend ered:
Turk's ove rt lust matched by Eithnes newl y
discovered passion, whic h is concen trated, to
her surp rise, in thi s crude and unappealin g
man. The way good sex leads those swe pt up
in it to disregard other, once important, now
see mingly trivial, matters - such as charac ter,
shared interests, values, or eve n regard
for eac h other - is well describ ed: Eithne can
no longer see her son for a haze of sex ual
desire. This is mirrored in Winnies rel ation-
ship with the blind lod ger, whic h echoes , in a
minor key, the ce ntral relationship of the
novel.
Sometimes this mirrorin g see ms too neat.
There are moment s when the sca ffolding on
which Moggach has built her narrati ve is too
lightl y cove red, and the bare struct ure shows
throu gh. Al wyne ' s referenc es to his child-
hood are too abrupt, too similar and
(ultima tely) too unint erestin g to be used , as
Moggach wo uld like, to point a contras t to
the lives of Ra lph and Eithne. 1 co uld also
have done with fewer references to the
butcher ' s meatli ke bod y: the point is made
early on and repetition only dull s it. Winni es
story is fini shed in too much of a hurr y, give n
the delicate sympathy with which it has been
de linea ted ea rlier. The re are also a fe w mino r
plot impro babilities: when Winni e leaves the
famil y, Eithne is reveal ed not to kno w her
surna me, implausibl e at any tim e, but sure ly
impossible in a tim e of food ratio ning; Ralph
is turn ed away from a recru itin g office for
being too yo ung, but in 1918 many sixteen -
yea r-olds would have been we lco med.
But these minor points nag only bec ause
Deborah Mo ggach has crea ted such a beli ev-
able wor ld. Under her percepti ve probin g the
ordinary is show n in all its extraor dinary
variety, the mund ane in its full splendo ur and
magnificence.
TLS JUNE 15 2 0 07
chapter by chapter, he opens up a wo rld of
imagin ati ve poss ibility, full of new people,
places and eve nts . M atild a switches her
loyalt y from the Bible to the novel whose
inhabit ant s are more rea l to her than the
tenets of Dolores' s faith . The farawa y wo rld
of Pip ' s Lon don gives Matild a a way of
understandin g her ow n life , identifying
with Pip, resentin g Es tella, puzz ling ove r
Magwitch .
Ho wever, the power of the imagin ation,
and its roo ts in an unfamili ar wor ld, turn out
to be as da nge rous as they are co mpellin g.
Matilda may not und erstand why the rebel
soldiers are fightin g, but she ca nnot ignore
their raids on the village . Suspicious of
Watt s as a white ma n, the so ldiers learn of a
Mr Pip; beli eving him to be rea l, they
dem and hi s presence. When he does not
appe ar, they destroy the village rs' posses-
sions before burn ing their houses.
Rosa and Nietzsche
K ATH ARI N E HIBB ER T
J oa nna K a v enna
I N GL O RI O U S
272pp. Faber. Paperback, £ 10.99.
978057 123260
oanna Kavenn a' s first novel, Inglorious,
J
document s the di sint egration of the
j ou rnalist Rosa Lane' s outwa rdly satis-
factory life. Rosa, aged thirt y-fi ve, exists
comfor tably until the death of her moth er
from ca ncer. A few wee ks later , grieving and
unabl e to work, she resigns on a whim from
the job she spe nt yea rs striving for, wa lking
out with no plans but to see friends, bake
bread and get fit. This leads to the break-up
of her lon g-term rel ationship with her polit-
icallobb yi st boyfri end , and she moves out of
their rent ed flat to stay with friends.
Onc e Rosa loses the suppor ts that kept her
from thinking too much , her mind free-
wheels . Rath er than co ncentrating on her
own emotional pain , she becomes preoc cu-
pied with topics rangin g from moral philo-
sop hy, to the me aning of rand om graffiti, to
ways of earni ng money and cadging places to
stay . Her ex-boy friend and her form er best
friend anno unce that they are getting married ,
and Rosa finds that her qualific ations are ir-
relevant as she se nds off hopeless ap plica -
tion s to be a ga rde ne r, barma id, or lib rarian.
She feels, she tells a friend, like a novice
skie r, "flying down the slope , witho ut a sense
of direction" . She exp lains to her GP that she
is lookin g for "this fact - or facts, thi s thin g -
or thin gs - that wo uld explain eve rything".
He prescrib es anti-depressants, which she
does not take, half- con vinced that her incipi-
ent nervous breakdo wn , so obvio us to the
reader, is a quest for meanin g in the world .
Meanwhil e, she gets into debt , alienates
her friend s and grows thin and unkempt. All
the tasks on the lists she cont inu ally writes
bec ome equa lly hard to achieve - from "buy
21
Thro ugh M atilda' s direct matte r-of-fac t
voice we learn that her people can rebuild
their houses in a wee k and live on fruit and
fish. Eve n when the copy of Dicken s' s nove l
has been destroyed they ca n tell the story
from memor y. Like their eve ryday world,
however , the children 's imaginative retreat is
fragile. Co ming back to see k Mr Pip once
more, the rebels finall y lose patience. The
child's voice tells of grueso me punishm ent s:
Watts has transgressed , not ju st bec ause he is
white but also because he has access to the
invisibl e resour ces of the im agination.
M atild a surv ives to grow up, to study in
Qu eensland , visit Lond on and eve ntually
write the story of her childhoo d. Durin g the
course of her journeys, she di scovers that
Watts, while rea ding Dicken s' s novel, was
also makin g up stor ies as he wen t along: he
was a true story teller and his im agin ation was
his do wnf all. Matilda is in the traditi on of
Holden Ca ulfield and Huck Finn, co nj uring
up an adult wo rld before she ca n full y und er-
sta nd it; and Mister Pip is a poignant and
impr essive work which ca n take its place
alongsi de the classic novels of adolescenc e.
some tuna and spag hetti" to "ge t a jo b" , to
"read Plato, Aristotle, Co nfucius, Bacon,
Locke, Rousseau, Wollstonec raft, Kant,
Hegel, Schope nhauer , Kierkegaard,
Nietzsc he and the rest" . Rosa' s we ll-ed ucated
but inward-turning mind skims ove r the
literary and philosophic al canon as she asks
herself what she is living for. She considers
writing to a form er English teacher to tell her
how little co nso lation Hamlet offered after
the death of her mother, but rarely engages
with the works and ideas she mentio ns, from
Plato to Philip Larkin, in much depth. The
nove l's appro priately inconclu sive ending
points to the dangers of over-thinking for
getting on with living in the wo rld, itse lf a
philos ophica l con clusion of sorts.
Kavenn a, who left a job as a j ourn alist and
editor to write The Ice Museum (2005), an
acco unt of her sea rch for the mythi cal land of
Thule, has sa id that Inglorious is not autobio-
graphical. But it is a di sturbingly plausible
travelogue throu gh Rosa' s ex perience s, as
she falls apa rt. The reader und er stands
Rosa' s state bett er than she can ; she is only
dimly awa re of how annoying she becom es
as she occ upies a friend ' s flat, borrowin g her
shoes, stea ling food from the frid ge, and
show ing no sign of moving out. Some
characters, however, are less than convinc-
ing. The dow n-shifting friend s Rosa visits
in the Lake Distri ct live a life too blissfull y
bucolic to ring true. Their we lly-cl ad, rudd y-
chee ked existence see ms to be a city-
dweller ' s fantasy, with no hint that any other
interpret ation is possibl e.
Kavenn a docum ent s Rosa 's thou ght s and
obse rva tions in pain staking detail, which
becomes ted ious when she spe nds long per i-
ods of tim e wa ndering throu gh Wes t Lon don,
unable to move on, ment all y or physicall y.
The minut e descripti ons of stree ts and
passers-by resembl e a travel guide to some-
where yo u have already been . Despite these
flaws, however, Inglorious is an engag ing
acco unt of one wo man's j ou rney into chaos .
 22
SCIENCE
from HARVARD
THEACCIDENTAL
MIND
After all this
How Brain EvolutionHas Given
Us Love, Memory, Dreams, andGod ............. .. n The Never-Ending Days ofBeing Dead,
David J. Linden
"Lindentellshis story well, in an engaging
style, with plentyof erudition and a refreshing
I Marcu s Chow n exa mines the pro spect s
for hum anit y once the Sun's slow death
forces us to leave the Ear th and spread amo ng
honestyabout how much remainsunknown. the stars. According to Frank Tipler , a US
The Accidental Mind stands out for being physici st, the only ch anc e for o ur descend-
highlyreadable and clearly educational." ants wo uld be to "dow nload" their mind s on
- Georg Striedter, Nature
to co mputers insulated aga inst the rigour s of
Belknap Press I 2007 I Hbk I £16.951978-0-674-02478-6
space. Thi s seems to be the easy bit of the pro-
cess: the "ha rd part" is for these robo-peopl e
PUNCTUATED to despat ch themsel ves in prob es to coloni ze
EQUILIBRIUM the rest of the uni ver se. Eve n if these travel at
90 per cent of the speed of light, the journey
Stephen Jay Gould
"[I]n a brilliant move, will take a hardl y negligibl e 20 billi on yea rs.
Belknap Press hasposthumously ~~~~~~.',~' It would be, as Chow n notes with some under-
stateme nt, a " long-term proj ect" based on
extracted a singlechapter-
"complex and detailed ca lcu lations" .
number nine - from The Structure of
The Never -Ending Days of Being Dead is
Evolutionary Theory[...] It worksbeautifully.
one of a bur geonin g and di ver se ge nre of
This sharp, detailedextractfrom [Gould's]
futu ristic and spec ulative book s that could
lastgreatwork offers an essential summary."
perh aps be dubb ed co llective ly "existen-
- P.Z. Myers, New Scientist tial ani a" . Eac h on their ow n can be thou ght-
Belknap Press 12007 1Pbk I £12.95 1978-0-6 74-02444-1
pro voki ng, fun and - more or less - sane,
THE SAND WASPS but in large doses, these dabblings at the
boun daries of popul ar science ca n take on an
anx ious, apocalypti c feel : sma ll signs of a
se lf-obsessed wea lthy minority preoccupied
with immortalit y while most of hum anit y
lives in sq ualor on a ph ysically ailing planet.
The cult ish impress io n these book s can
crea te is enha nced by the space they ofte n
give to the views of maverick scientific out-
liers. Not all ph ysici sts agree with Tipl er;
PREDATOR UPON acc ording to Chow n, the majority don't.
Whil e the cro wd ca n be wro ng , it is ofte n not.
AFLOWER Chow n handl es thi s dilemma hon our abl y.
Life History andFitness A form er radio astrono mer and now "cosmol-
in a Crab Spider ogy con sult ant" to New Scien tist magazin e,
Douglass H. Morse he is a lively guide who is also serio us abo ut
Recounts the influential sc ience . His thirt y-fou r-p age glossary -
discoveries of Morse and looks at about o ne-eighth of the len gth of the main
how they can be applied to animals book - co vers topi cs rangin g from the abso-
with other, more complex life histories . lute ze ro of temp erature to the phenomen on
20071 Hbk 1£32.951978-0-674-02480-9 of elec tro n trembling known evo cative ly in
Germa n as Zitterbeweg ung , Hi s starting
100 BUTTERFLIES point is that our era is the first in which
AND MOTHS we have a reali stic chance of explaining the
Portraits from theTropical ori gin s, workings and future of the cos mos .
Forests of Costa Rica He ran ges from pra ctical ma tte rs, such as
Jeffrey C. Miller, Daniel H. Ianzen und erstanding why load ed fridges are hard to
& Winifred Hallwachs bud ge, to the rathe r mor e rem ote task of learn-
A beautifully illustrated volume of 100 ing what is beyond the edg e of the uni ver se.
moths and butterflies, which are "The point is that previou s ge nera tions would
accompanied by species accounts and ha ve killed for the kind of knowled ge we
images of the corresponding caterpillar. no w possess about the wor ld", he writes. " It
Belknap Press 12007 1Hbk 1£25.951978-0-674-02334-5 trul y is a pri vilege to be alive tod ay." He
introduces us to Om ega, a sing le number
SECRET WEAPONS that could theor eticall y allow us to kno w the
Defenses ofInsects, Spiders, answers to mor e math em atical question s than
Scorpions, and Other Many- can ever be po sed; there is ju st one small
Legged Creatures drawb ack : it is un computabl e. Or , as one sci-
Thomas Eisner, Maria Eisner enti st prefers to put it, " it can be known of ,
& Melody Siegler but not kno wn throu gh hum an reason " .
"Secret Weapons isfestooned with Chow n anchors these and other mind-
surprisinginformation about the chemical bending arg ume nts with anecdo tes and practi-
ecology and defense mechanisms of a ca l obse rvations to which the reader can
variety of terrestrial arthropods[...]as cling, He tell s us, for exa mple, ho w I per
Thomas Eisnerand his colleagues have cent of the static on a television set tun ed
shown in this rewarding book, truth is often between stations is cau sed by micro wave radi-
much stranger than fiction." atio n that last interact ed with matt er at the
- J. 1. Cloudsley-Thompson, TLS tim e of the Big Ban g 13.7 billion yea rs ago ,
Belknap Press 12007 1Pbk 1£12.95 1978-0-674-02403-8 We learn ho w, poi gn antl y, the Germa n physi-
cist Karl Sch war zschild had an important
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
www.hup.harvard.edu
UK: +44(0) 20 7306 0603 • US: 800 4051619
SCIENCE
MI CHA EL P E EL
Marcu s C how n
TH E NEVE R- EN D I NG D A YS OF
BEI N G D E A D
Di spatches from the front line of scie nce
256pp. Faber. £ 15.99 (US $30.65 ).
978 0 57 1 22055 7
Br y an Appl e y ard
HO W TO LI V E FOR EV ER OR D IE
TR Y ING
On the ne w immort ality
320pp. Simon and Schuster. Paperback, £ 12.99.
978 0 7432 6868 4
M ar y R o a ch
S I X FE E T O VE R
Curious adventures in the afterlife
228p p. Canongate. £ 14.99.
978 184 1958453
insight into black-hole theor y while servi ng
in the trenches of the First World War. By the
afterwo rd, Chow n has taken us on an ex hila-
ratin g and wide -ra nging journey, albeit not
on e quit e as compreh ensive as the 18-billion-
light- year uni ver sal sojo urn anticipated for
Tipl er ' s deep- space prob es. Chow n ends,
inevit abl y, with anothe r list of question s.
Th e titl e of Bryan Appl eyard ' s How To
Live Forever or Die Trying echoes a
Gro ucho M arx quote cited in Chow n's book .
Appl eyard ' s is a lugubri ou s, intr iguin g, but
uneven mix of memoir, reportage and philos-
oph y, which begin s with Fee ble's obse rva-
tion in Henry IV Part Two that we humans
"o we God a death " . It is a view contested by
imm ort ali sts of va rious stripes, one of who m
describ es the mor e than 100,000 peopl e who
die each day of the di sea ses of old age as "the
Silent Tsuna mi". Appl eyard says thi s is a
"trage dy" that mu st be prevent ed ; like many
othe rs inter view ed by him , he doesn 't see m
to give much thou ght to whe the r there might
be a more compellin g and imm ediate moral
ca se for tackling the man y prevent abl e di s-
eases that still cut peopl e' s lives sho rt across
the wor ld.
He see ms particul arl y fascin ated and
ch arm ed by Aubrey de Grey, a Briti sh compu-
ter scientist who is a self-educa ted biology
PhD and zealot for life extension. De Grey 's
critics include twent y-eight leading sc ientists
who co- authored a lacerating article , in 200 5,
that said his pro gramme fell into the "realms
of fant asy" and depend ed on the cooperation
of gullible journali sts. Appl ey ard reports all
thi s fairl y enough, but, intenti onall y or not,
it is his accounts of de Grey's brilliance,
likeability and forc eful rhetoric that stick in
the mind mor e strong ly than any of the rebut-
tals, Appleyard , a featu re writer for the
Sunday Times, writes with a curi ou s mix of
factual preci sion and sw ee ping gene raliza-
tion , oft en deploring the way of the wo rld.
His repo rting is peppered with mom ent s of
Poot eri sh absurdity, most notabl y when he
offers a fem ale stallhold er in a Ca mbridge
mark et a cough sweet, pretending it' s an
imm ort alit y pill. He remarks, rath er unkindly,
that the wo ma n is "dressed in far too young a
TLS J UN E 15 2 0 07
style"; it is not the only time in the book whe n
a personal description is unn ecessaril y harsh .
By contrast, the author shows no sig n that he
lacks self-estee m him self: he says he feels an
affinity, "humbly", with the author Henr y
Jam ess brother, Willi am , who is describ ed a
para graph later as "one of the gre ates t and
mo st und er-rat ed figures of the mod ern age".
The occ asional self-agg randizement and ge n-
eral air of grumpiness are a sha me, for Appl e-
yard takes readers to interestin g places and
conducts some striking inter views, At a US
cryonic s comp an y run by a Sev enth Day
Ad venti st, whe re human heads are fro zen for
$80,000 and bodi es for $ 150,000, the cu stom-
ers include a young woma n from Spa in and a
lawyer shot de ad by one of his cli ent s on the
steps of a law libr ary. At the time of Appl e-
ya rd's visit, only sixty-seven people were in
situ, with fewer than 1,000 more sig ned up to
join: an indic ator that , for all the pro selytizing
by Aubrey de Gre y and others, the idea of
immortalit y hasn 't quit e ca ught the popul ar
imagination yet.
Mar y Roach ' s Six Feet Over: Curious
adventures in the afterlife foll ows the success -
ful Stiff' The curio us lives of human cadavers
(reviewed in the TLS, July 11, 2003) . The
less than reverential ton e of her latest book
is es tablished in a ded icati on that rea ds : "For
my parent s, whe rever they are or aren 't" .
Roa ch ' s scatte rg un in vestigation s take the
reader from rein carnation research in India
to US ex perime nts on whethe r the we ights
of bodi es change on death bec ause of the
dep arture of the soul. Thi s is the fr am ework
for a book rich in j okes, and epic in the digres-
sions it mak es in sea rch of the se. Co pious
fo otnote s, which some times run o ver more
than o ne page , deal with subjects rang ing
from the Fren ch tran slati on of pu s to the
ch an gin g natur e of the bu siness done by
Kimb erl y-Clark, the health and hygien e
company.
Roach' s ability to amu se and engage help s
her to mak e the mo st of materi al that might
otherw ise app ear thin and unfocused. Sh e
turns potenti al autho rial probl em s into a
virtue : ex cl uded from an ex pe rime nt
designed to test wha t happen s when a ho spi-
tal patient has a near-d eath ex perience, she
goes to watch a similar operation so mew here
else , In the inevitabl e footnote, she describ es
ho w the patient wro te to her after ward s apolo-
gizi ng for " not havin g been more sociable" .
Roach is acute on the psychol ogy of
mediums, their cli ent s, and other beli evers in
other-wo rldly forc es. Occasionall y, her ob ser-
vatio ns and hum our can so und brut al , even
offe nsive , such as whe n she link s Hindu
beli efs in reinc arn ation with the ph ysical dan-
gers to wor ldly life in Indi a. "If you'll be
back for another go, why ge t too wor ked up
about the leavin g?"
But Roach ' s o mnivorous viva c ity make s
her a mor e enterta ining ex istential compan-
ion than the dour and pessimi stic Appl eyard ,
who sees humanity fated to be "forgo tte n
and unmourned". Or one could cont emplate
de ath with Chown's sense of wo nder and
wry unc ertainty, epitomized in a medit ation
he attributes to Einste in: commenting on
the passing of so meone he knew, Einstein
reflected on ho w departure from "this strange
wor ld" should be look ed at in a cosmic
sense; after all , for physici sts, the distinction
bet ween past, present and futur e is "only a
stubborn ly persistent illu sion " .

n The Postmodern Condition ( 1989), Jean-
I Francois Lyotard wrote: "T he old prin-
ciple that the acquisition of knowledge is
indissociabl e from the training of mind s . .. is
becomin g obsolete and will becom e ever more
so" . His prediction that knowl edge acquisition
and mind trainin g would part company
appe ars to be confirmed at Harvard, the
world's leadin g university, where, according
to its current President , Derek Bok , many of
its seniors graduate without being able to write
well or reason clearly. William T. Vollmann ' s
Uncentering the Earth would fit perfectly into
a curricu lum for underachieving und ergrad u-
ates. It con veys no worth while reliab le infor -
mation, assumes reader s with no cap acity for
rea sonin g, and insinuates that a train ed mind is
a wasted one. The series in wh ich Vollmann ' s
book appears see ms direct ed to such a reader-
ship. It rests on the postmodern premi ss that
book s about science are all the better if written
by non -scienti sts.
Nicola us Cope rnicus, Vollmann ' s un-
cent erer, removed the Earth from the navel of
the universe, where the Greek s had put it, to
the third orbit around the Sun, where it has
remain ed. Copernicus's task as an astronomer
was not to play with the gross geometry of the
universe, however, but to calculate, on the
basis of accumu lated observations and with
the help of anci ent mathematical too ls, where
the Sun, Moon and planets should appear in
the sky at any given time. Since the planets
move in ellipses, the centres of which do not
quite coincide with the Sun, and since, as seen
~ 1 Routledge
~~ Taylor & Frands Group
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SC IENCE
Around the sun
J. L . H EILBRON
William T . Vollmann
UN C EN T E R [NG THE EA R T H
Co pernicus and "On the Re vo lution s of the
Heavenl y Spheres"
302 pp. W eid enfeld and Nicolson. £ 18.99.
97 8 0 297 84568 3
US : N or to n. $ [5. 95. 978 0 393 329 [8 6
from the Sun (or the Earth) they do not move
thro ugh their orbits at constant speeds, the
mathema tical techniques needed to "save the
phenom ena" (pred ict positions) are elaborate.
Cop ernicu s was the first person to take on
the immense task of rew orkin g Ptolemy' s
great comp end ium of ancient astronomy,
Almagest (cl 50 AD) , for observers of a revol v-
ing, spinning Earth . In Eng lish tran slation , the
Alm agest occupies over 450 densely printed
pages, contains 200 geometrical diagram s,
tens of thou sands of tabu lated numb ers,
and countl ess calcu lations. Its reworking,
Cop ernicus' s On the Revolution of the
Heavenly Spheres (154 3), is as diffic ult as
the Almagest; it is not for everyone. As
Copern icus remarked in dedicating De Rev (as
historians of astronomy affect ionately call
it) to Pope Paul Ill, who was something of
an astronomer, "mathematics is written for
Technology, Pedagogy and
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Distance Education
Editor: Som Naidu
Volume 28, 2007, 3 issues per year
The journal's goals are to engender research and
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Edttor: Anne Gaskett
Volume 22, 2007, 3 issues per year
Open Learning is widely subscribed to and read
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T LS J U N E 15 2007
mathem aticians". Heed less of this warning
and unable to distingui sh the solar orbit from
the ecliptic, Vollmann offers what he call s his
"sad little tract" as a reliable epitome of one of
the great achievement s of the Europ ean mind .
De Rev ha s an unsigned prefac e written by
the man who saw the book throu gh the pre ss,
the Prote stant mini ster Andrea s Osiander ,
who has not profited from his selfless ness .
"An ignorant and presumptuou s ass",
railed Giordano Bruno, in a tract directed
again st Oxford scholars (Cena de le cenere,
1584). For Bruno (and , later, for Galileo and
Kepler), Osiander had rejected the kernel of
Copernicani sm by claiming it as mathem atics
devoid of physical significance. Ancient astro-
nomer s had developed this distinction when
they found they could not save the phenom ena
while adhering strictly to sound physics as laid
down by philosoph ers. Physics (philo sophy)
and astronomy (math em atics) went their sepa-
rate ways, one toward s truth , the other toward s
accounting.
Cope rnicus prob abl y accept ed the tradi-
tional view about the mathematica l devices,
but not about the "uncentering" of the Earth ,
which he held to refl ect the true con struction
of the wor ld. After him , man y peopl e tried
to ass imilate astronomy with phy sics.
Vollmann perc eives the importance of th is
problem and identifi es Newt on ' s theory of
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Innovations in Education and Teaching
International
EdItors: Phlllp Barker & Glna Wlsker
Volume 44, 2007, 4 issues per year
IETI is essential reading for all practitioners and
decision makers who want to stay informed about
the developments in education and teaching.
www.informaworld.com/ieti
Computer Assisted Language Learning
Editor: Jozef Colpaert,
Volume 20, 2007, 5 issues per year
Computer AssIsted Language LearnIng (CALL)
is an intercontinental and interdisciplinary journal
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www.informaworld.com/call
23
gravity as its defin itive solution; but some of
Newton' s kno wledgeable contemporarie s
observed that , since he did not assign a cau se
to gra vity , his theory was ju st mathematics.
In some mood s, Newton accept ed the crit i-
cism. His famou s utterance, "I feign no
hypoth eses", signified that he did not pretend
to ass ign a cau se for grav ity. The depth of the
prob lem - wh at counts as an explanation -
cannot be plumb ed with a dipstick.
Cop ernicus ' s realistic interpretation of his
fundamental reform - the exchange of the
Earth and the Sun both physically and compu-
tationally - can be und er stood and followed
without knowing anythin g about the tech-
nica l detail s that conc ern ed him . It is to
Vollm ann ' s credit that he wished to look into
these detai ls; he should have had no troub le
master ing what he need ed . In my exp erienc e,
an average prep ostmodern und ergraduate can
master the old astronomy in six week s. Had
Vollmann made the effort to study a clear,
gentl e introduction like James Evans's Hist-
ory and Practice of Ancient Astronomy
( 1988), he could have done so too.
Why doe s his failure matter? Vollmann is
an accomplished writer with a large and
devoted following; Uncentering the Earth will
be read . Harv ard gradu ates and other s unable
to reason will come away mistaken ly thinking
that they have learned something worthwhile.
Thos e who realize that they have gained
nothin g may lose more. They may conclude
that science, even elementary astronomy, is
too deep a mystery for ordinary minds.
Interactive Learning
Environments
Editors:
RoyRada
Bernard Scott
Volume Number: 15
Frequency: 3 issues per year
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Computer Science Education
Editors: Sally Fincher & Laurie Murphy
Volume 17, 2007, 4 issues per year
Theaimof Computer Science Education isto publish
paperswith a specific focus on teaching and learning
within the computing discipline.
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Research in Science &.
Technological Education
Editor: Chris Botton
Volume 25, 2007, 3 issues per year
Research in Science & Technological Education
publishes originalresearch fromthroughout the world
dealing with science education and/or technolog ical
education .
www.informaworld.com/riste
24
hat featur es of indi vidu al brain
W cell s enable us to see and think and
feel and worry? This is a trick ques-
tion . Scie ntists now und er stand that the char-
acter of ex perience is not fixed by properties
of indi vidu al cell s. You can no more ex plain
mind in term s of the cell , then you can
explain dance in term s of the mu scle. The
neuron is simply the wrong unit of analysis.
If the charac ter of our ment al lives depend s
on what is going on in the brain - and it does
- then we need to turn our atte ntio n away
from indi vidu al neurons. It is now acce pted
that if we are to have any cha nce of und er-
standing the brain-b asis of consciousness, we
need to widen our gaze to encompass large-
sca le popul ati ons of neuron s and their
dynami c activity over tim e.
But why stop there? It isn' t as thou gh brain
fun ction is lim pid when we loo k to the
dy namics of large- scale asse mblies of cells.
It is quit e certain that the behav iour of brain
sys tems unfold s in the larger contex t of the
animal's active interaction w ith its environ-
ment. Perhaps the prop er scale at which to
make sense of neur al fun cti on is that of the
livin g, enviro nmentally situated anima l
itself ? If thi s seems like a far-fetch ed pro-
posal, it may be because tradition teaches that
the skull is the cruc ial boundary markin g off
what is inside fro m what is merely out side;
and crucia lly , we are insid e: mind depend s
onl y on what happ ens within us. The rest is
out er irritatio n.
Bru ce E. Wexlers exce llent Brain and
NATURAL SCIENCE
Product of the senses
A L VAN OE
B ruc e E. W e xl e r
BR AI N A N D CU LTU RE
Neurobio logy , ideo logy, and social change
320pp. MIT. $34; distributed in the UK by Wiley.
£2 1.95.
978 0 262 23248 0
Culture gives us ample reason to take the
poss ibility of an anti-individualism and anti-
intern alism about mind seriously. No t that
Wexler is a philos opher: he is a Professor of
Psychi atry at Ya le Medical Schoo l. His book
surveys current research on brain and mind ,
drawin g on cog nitive neuro science , develop-
ment al psychol ogy, and also anthropology
and psycho analysis. He arg ues that brain
functi on depends on the anima l's inter acti on
with the environ ment. As he explains, in the
infantil e brain, sensory stimulation produ ces
the very connectedness and fun cti on that in
turn make norm al consciousness possibl e.
The neonate mamm al is both plastic and " T h e Scryer" (1999) by Emily Young;
open; in a very real sense the environme nt from Time in the Stone: A ligh t tou ch and a
itself produc es in us the co nditio ns needed to long view by Emily Young (128pp. Tacit
ex perience that environme nt. Co nsider this: Hill Editions. £35 ; slipca se edition, £45 ;
why do mamm als suckle at the breast? To get a r tist 's edition, £1,175. 978 0 9554766 0 0)
food , to be sure, but also, as Wexler re minds
us, to get touch - that is, to get the stimula-
tion that is itself necessary sustenance for the
developin g brain . We depend on the environ-
ment - and in thi s case, import antl y, the
social environment - to become what we
are. Having thu s been nurtur ed by an active
environment, animals achieve a nature that is
thorou ghl y environ ment-depe ndent. Ta ke
away our wor lds and yo u dama ge what we
are . We are built to the spec ifica tion of incom-
ing stimulation, and so, as adults, we thri ve
onl y in the contex t of such stimulatio n.
Se nsory depriv ation is, for this reason,
torture. And it is thi s lifelong dependence on
the environme ntal structures and soc ia l prac-
tices that shaped us when we we re young that
in part explains why dram atic cha nges to
adult environme nts can be so devastatin g.
When an adult is forc ed to mo ve to a
radica lly foreign place , the sca ffolding is
rem oved on which day-to- day life necessar-
ily depend s. Eve n the most witty raco nteur
will be mute in a stra nge land. An d the loss of
a spouse ca n be harder to accommodate than
the loss of a leg. A spouse, a leg, a language -
in a very definite sense these are not outside
of us but part of us.
Bru ce Wexler' s upshot is stark: the condi-
tions of modern life - rapid change on a glo-
bal sca le, driven by techn ology and the new
ec onomic imp erati ves of globa lism - run
counter to the basic medical need s, and limits
in flexibilit y, of hum an adults. We love our
language because it is ours and because we
live in it, ju st as we love the foods of our child-
hood, which become our co mfort foods. We
are habitu ated ; radica l environmental change
forces us to change ourse lves. Rehabilitation
is costly and not always possible.
Wexler' s di scu ssion of cultural conflict
and the disappearanc es of langua ges and cul-
tures is compell ing. In the past 200 ye ars, the
rate of language death has incr eased steadily.
TLS J U N E 15 2 0 07
This is ex plained, in part , by the fact that di s-
parate cultures, onc e separa ted by vas t
spaces, now co me into regular contact as a
result of travel, television , the intern et, etc.
Wex ler's focu s is on the significan ce of the
dea th of a language for its adult surviv ors .
Eve n whe n they make a huge effor t to adapt
to changing circumsta nces ,
their neurobiolo gical development is o ut of syn-
chrony with the opportu nities for skill and role
deve lopme nt in the ne w c ulture. There is no
match in their new environments for the
knowledge and skills they deve loped in
their original environments. The new schools
that offer the ir childre n some hope for the
future rob the parents of their most prized
possessions and make clear the end of the
wor ld they knew.
Wex ler teaches us that habit , practi ce and
custo m ma ke us what we are; his rem ark able
message is that th is is a basic fact about our
biol ogy. He thu s challenges the boundary
between biology and culture , findin g the
source and significa nce of mod ern ills in
what are , in effec t, humble facts about our
medic al predica ment. Blurring the line
between culture and biology is fas hionable
in the new sc iences of mind . Evo lutionary
psycholo gy tells us that social practi ces
gove rn ing sex ua l mores, for exa mple, are
subjec t to se lection pressures that are at least
analogo us to those gove rning the selec tio n of
biol ogical traits. Geneticists trumpet the di s-
cove ry that there are biological determinants
of what might have see med merely per son al
or idiosyncratic (like the love of bun gee jump-
ing or spicy food ). And neuro scienti sts claim
to di scover the basis in the brain of such per-
sonal and socia lly significa nt phenom ena as
pleasure and preference. These ex planatory
enthusias ms are very popul ar in the publi c
imaginati on, and they confor m to a common
templ ate: they dazz le us by debunking us;
they disenchant us to ourse lve s by show ing
that we are somew hat less than we take our-
selves to be. And the rem arkabl e thin g is, we
like to be unm asked and made simple in thi s
way; we crave it.
Wexlers mann er of cha llenging the bound-
ary bet ween biology and culture run s
strongly counter to these mor e sensa tionalist
currents. We are more co mplica ted than we
thou ght we we re, not less. It is not possibl e to
und er stand who yo u are ju st in term s of what
is go ing on inside you, in your brain , say; for
yo ur nervous sys tem ca n' t be understood
apart fro m yo ur relati on to yo ur environment
(incl uding yo ur cultura l environment, which
is both ca use and effect of yo ur ment al life).
And for ju st these sa me reasons, we ca n' t
hope to und erstand culture by reducing it to
neurobiology. Wexler doesn 't emphas ize
these issues in quit e the way I do ; he is sober
and ca utious. Brain and Culture 's value con-
sis ts in its dem on stration that to re sist the
unm asker s and the simplifie rs is not to resist
science; it is to set science to a higher
sta ndard. We are indi vidu als of the animal
sort and so we are constituted in part by our
rel ation to and dynami c entangle ment with
the niches we occ upy . From the standpo int
that Bruc e Wex ler help s make ava ilab le, it
wo uld appear that the oversimplifier s have
simply taken a kind of intern alism and indi-
vidualism for granted. Mind is no t insid e our
head . We are not disco nnected from the
wo rld aro und us. This is what natural science
now teaches.

or the writers of the O ld Testament,
F ants held a part icu larly important place
as an exemplar for human behaviour :
"Go to the ant, thou sluggard; cons ider her
ways , and be wise", reads Proverbs 6: 6.
Rep eat edly, comparisons have bee n made
between huma n society and the scurryi ng
act ivity of insect soc ieties. For the pioneer
Dutch entomo log ist Jan Swa mme rdam
(1637 -80), view ing ants through his mystica l
Christian glasses, life in the ant nest was posi -
tively idyll ic: " love and unani mity, more
powerful than punis hme nt or dea th itself , pre-
side there and all live togeth er in the same
manner as the primit ive Christians anc iently
did, who we re co nnected by fratern al love,
and had all th ings in common" . Modern
myrm ecologists wo uld see thin gs very differ -
ently, but their views are pro bab ly equally
tinged by their surro unding culture. Co n-
temporary scientists arg ue that behind the
superficial coo peration and order of the ant
nest lurk powerful conflicting interests
between the queen and the wor kers, an age ist
division of labour , and com plex beh aviour s
that emerge out of very simp le rules. No love,
no unanim ity, but selfish gene s and conflic t.
How we go t from there to here, from
Christian ity to con flict, via the twent ieth ce n-
tury, is the subjec t of Charlotte Sle igh's fasci-
natin g acco unt of the changing shape of our
vision of ants. Part history of science , part
histor y of culture , Six Legs Better uses the
histor y of myrmeco logy as a focu s for a
sweeping survey of the interacti on between
science and culture throu gh some of the deci-
sive decades in the development of both
ex pressions of hu man activity. Sleigh centres
her story on the life and work of three key
figur es in twent ieth- century myrmeco logy -
the Swiss entomo logist Aug uste Fore l,
Willi am Morton Wheeler (who did much to
estab lish the study of ants as a respectable
strand of biology) and hi s modern successor,
the Harvard biologist Edwa rd O. Wilson, the
author of the book that marks the end of
Sle igh's acco unt, Sociobiology (1975).
Sleigh's funda me ntal arg um ent is that
eac h of these scientists represent ed a new
approac h to the study of ants, reflectin g the
predomin ant cultura l and aca dem ic attitudes
of their time. Thus Fore!'s ants are seen
throu gh a psyc holog ica l prism, Wheeler ' s
approac h is arg ued to be influ enced by sociol-
ogy, while Wil son ' s thorou ghl y modern ants
are the product of the cyberne tic age . Whil e
Sle igh ma kes her case clearly - Fore!' s
vision of ant behaviour emphas ized plasticit y
over rigid instin ct ; Whee ler emphasize d the
impor ta nce of soc ial behaviou r in crea ting
insect sociality; while Wilson focu sed on the
role of com munica tion - this di vision seem s
artificial. Sle igh's description of Wheeler' s
rich conception of insect behaviour as a deter-
min ant for both soc ietal function and phylog-
eny was new to me, and seems to und ermin e
her atte mpt to label his approach with a
single term. Neve rthe less, her sparkling
descript ion of Wheeler' s wor k, full y embed-
ded in its sc ientific and cultura l co ntex t,
should be requ ired reading for all myrmec olo-
gists and for those wan ting to understand
science as bein g more than something made
by "great men" .
Sleigh is at her weakes t when she focuses
on more recent develop ments. Although
Wil son did indeed raise the issue of com muni-
cation within an insect society (the fact that
NATURAL SCIENCE 25
effect in terms of "fuel conservation" , it
Eat my wings wo uld have been helpful to learn more abo ut
the context in which he did his work - was he
part of an amateur entomological society, for
exa mple? - and how his discoveries were
M A T TH EW CO BB viewed by professional rivals.
There are also ric h pickin gs here for futur e
C ha rlo tte S le ig h stud ies, in a series of apparen tly powerful but
unexploit ed insights . For exa mp le, Sleigh
S IX L E G S B E T T E R briefl y refers to the cha nges in Amer ica n
A c ultural history of myrmec ol ogy views of natur e which took place in the early
320pp. Ba ltimor e , MD: Joh ns Hop kins Uni vers ity decades of the last ce ntury , whereby "Nature
Press. $55; distributed in the UK by Wiley . £36 .50.
cease d to co nsist of ap ples and caterpillars
978 080 1884450
and ca me instead to be sig nified by sequoias
and wo lves". A det ailed investigation of the
contras ting fates of the fam iliar wild - apples
the first article written by the found er of cyber- and caterpi llars - and the grandiose -
netics, Norbert Wiener, was on ant behaviour sequoias and wolves - in the co ntex t of new
is one of many telling titbits unearthed waves of immigration and the ro manticiza-
by Sleigh), the key point about Wilson's tion and loss of the Amer ican West could
Sociob iology is not that he focused on comm u- Gigantiops destru ctor , th e South Am erican prov ide new insights into the developm ent of
nication within animal societies, but that he jumping ant US cultural attitudes to natur e and, in turn ,
sought to app ly the insights that had been tho se of the rest of the wor ld.
forged by Bill Hamilt on, who in the intrigued by the menti on of a French indu strial Six Legs Better is a provocative , complex
mid-1 960s developed the genetical theory of eng ineer, Charles Janet. This amateur entomol- acco unt of a multiface ted per iod of cultural
social behaviour. The decisive discoveries ogist made a series of brilliant insights into the history. There is material here that will lead
relating to the pherom onal communication sys- beha viour of social insects, includin g how ant to a grea t dea l of reflec tion by historian s and
tems functioni ng inside the nests of social larvae are fed (wor kers regurgitate food for scientists alike. The sec tio ns dealing with
insects have taken place in the past fifteen them, but also receive half-d igested foo d "instinc t" alone are a marvellous so urce of
years, and have not involved Wilson. They back) and, above all, his 1906 discovery of stimulating ideas. Anyo ne interested in the
have revealed that chemical comm unication is how the queen ant rears her first brood after developm ent of US culture in the interwar
the primary sensory mode by which conflict is the nupti al flight (she feeds them on the fat yea rs will be exc ited by Charlotte Sleigh ' s
exp ressed , detected and resolved. The emp ha- derived from her now useless wing muscles). acco unt of William M orton Wheeler ' s wor k
sis is not on communication per se, but rather Altho ugh Sleigh argues that Janet ' s engineer- and its wide r social and cultura l contex t. It is
on conflict produ cing cooperation. ing trainin g helped him to understand this last certai n to awa ken the slugga rds amo ng us.
Sleigh's treatm ent of Wilson' s 1975 book
is disappointingly sca nt. Perhaps thi s is
because Sociobio logy finds its true contex t
not in the century of myrmecology surveyed The Panda's
by Sleigh, but in the overa ll atte mpts by biolo-
gists to und erstand the evo lution of sociality
Black Box
Open ing up the Intelligent
Science & Math
in the light of Darwini sm. As such, it
Design Controversy
deserves to be co mpared with a contempora -
neous atte mpt to popul ariz e rece nt findin gs -
edited by The Mind of the
Richard Dawki ns' s less ambitious, but Nathaniel C. Comfort Mathematician
foreword by Micha.1 Filzgerald and
immensely more successful The Selfish Gene
(1976). Dawkin s' s book has go ne on to
Daniel]. Kevles
essays by Nathaniel C
~~~D~~~~~ loan James
becom e a clas sic, while Wilso n's wo rk has Internationally
Comfort,Michael
not enjoye d the sa me popul ar or aca dem ic famous mathemati-
Ruse, Scott F.
success . The reason s for thi s, and the limit s of Gilbert, Edward cian loan James
Wilson's insight into the evo lution of anima l ]. Larson, [ane and accomplished
behaviour, have been discu ssed in Alan Maienschein, psychiatrist
Grafen and Ma rk Ridley ' s Richard Daw kins: Robert Maxwell
MichaelFirzgerald
How a scientis t chan ged the way we think Young
explore the behav-
(reviewed in the TLS, Jun e 16, 200 6). ior and personality
This lively col- traits that tend to
Sleigh's rich story is interwoven with lection will appeal
acco unts of peop le who see m forgotten by fit the profileof a
to anyone seeking a
mathematician.
many of today' s researchers, such as Em ile deeper understanding £2 0 .00 hardcover
Roub aud , who wrote a paper on the solitary of w hat's really at stake in
wasps that were buzzing round his hut in the the debate over evolution.
Co ngo , or the linguistician Charles Kay £13 .50 hardcover
Equations from God
Ogden, who not only translated Fore!' s boo k PureMathematics and
The World Map, Victorian Faith
The Socia l World of Ants , but , in Sleigh's Leprosy in
acc ount, became a pivotal figure in the grow - 1300-1492 Daniel J. Cohen
ing intere st in how and wha t ants co mm uni-
Premodern Medicine The Persistence of Tradition Capture s the origin s of the re-
A Malady of the W hole Body and Transformation
cate. As well as these relatively minor figures, birth of abstractmathematics
Luke Demaitre Evelyn Ed.on
there is also a smattering of the great and in the intellectual quest to rise
the good - Henri Bergson, Bronislaw Explores medicaland social Examines how the discoveries abo ve common existence and
Mali nowski, Aldous Huxley, Alfred Kinsey perspecti ves on leprosy at a of mi ssiona ries and merchants touch the mind of the deity.
and Herbert Hoover all pop up unexpectedly time when judicious diagnosis affected the content and JohnsHopkinsStudiesin the History
in an appro priately anty context, reinforcing could spatc healthy people configuration of world maps. ofMathematics:Ronald Ca/inger,
from social ostracization and SeriesEditor
Sleigh's thesis abo ut the importance of ants as Published in cooperation with the
help the afflicted get a license £3 3. 50 hardcover
Centerfir AmericanPlaces
an image for concep tions of hum an society,
tobeg. £ 33.50 hardcover
and linking her micro historical passages to the £ 30.00 hardcover
broader pictur e of twentieth- centu ry culture.
Despite the wea lth of lives and stories in Six
Legs Better, there are point s where the reader
is left wa nting more. I was particularly
TLS JU NE 15 2 0 07
26 SOCIAL STUDIES

Socks in it
anet E. Hall ey' s book is victim to a dis-

J
A. W . B . SIMP SO N
ease whic h is now ra mpa nt in aca demia,
es pec ia lly in the United States : the Jan et E. Hall e y
sea rch for a catchy title which gives as little
indication of the actu al subjec t matte r of the S PLIT DEC IS IONS
entitled work as poss ible - other exa mples , How and w hy to take a break from feminism
from essays cited by her, includ e "Second 402pp. Princcton University Press. £18.95
Skins: The bod y narra tives of transexuality" , (US $29.95).
" Is the Rec tum a Grave?" and "Gender and 978 069 1 12737 8
Boy le's Law of Gases". Split Decisions: Li s a H. S ch wart zm an
How and why to take a break from f eminism
is not abou t femini sm in any broad sense . CHA L LEN GI NG LI BERALI SM
Instead, the book is abo ut theories of sex ual- Femin ism as political critique
2 10pp. Penn sylvani a State University Pres s. $45:
ity evo lved in aca de mia, ma inly, but not
distributed in the UK by Eurospan, £33.95.
exclusive ly, in the USA. The split decisions
978027 102853 8
of the title appear to refer to the discu ssion of
two American legal ca ses . One, Onca le v
Sundow ner Offshore Services, involved an affec ts a curiously chatty obscurity. Thus
ultim ately success ful claim by a male worke r early on in the boo k we are provided with "A
on an offshore oil rig to be able to sue und er Sex Lexicon" to help us foll ow the arg ume nt. "Female Portrait (Second Gener ation, B)" (2003) by Carroll Dunham ; from Couples
employ men t discrimination law for sexual By way of exa mple, one suppo sed ly defined Discourse, edite d by MicaeIa Amateau Amato and Joyce Henri Robinson (Pennsylvania
harassment by other male wor kers , who had, term here is "SexZ" : State Universit y Press. 978 0 911209 65 5)
inter alia, threatened to rape him and had also I mean e very thing that turns us o n. T he ero tic.
done something nasty in the shower - there The paradigm image here is "fucking" but it Liberalism: Feminism as political critique the views of Wendy Bro wn and Ju dith
bein g, one ass umes , no wo odsheds ava ilable. could be (for you) the vibration of your car or has an informati ve title, and is writte n in a Butl er, who have adopted deepl y pess imistic
The litigation involved was notabl e becau se your unconscious wish to sleep with your clear and accessible style. What it is about is views, one bein g that any atte mpt to produ ce
Cathari ne A. MacKinn on, probably at the mother and kill your father. lucidl y explained in her introduction. Histori- a ge nera l ana lysis of the pheno meno n on
tim e of writing the mos t influential Ame rica n Or , I suppose, relying on the wor k of KraffI- cally, femini st cl aim s have been put for ward which femin ism focu ses - the oppression of
femi nist theoretici an, submitted a brief in thi s Ebing, eating guards man's socks . 1 did not in term s of traditional liberal values of equal- wo men - is impossibl e; here aga in the basic
case charac terizing what had been don e to find thi s helpful or eve n intell igibl e. But inso- ity, autonomy and individu al right s (which probl em is suppose d to be that of producin g
M r Oneale as an exa mple of male-fem ale far as I ca n foll ow it, the prop osal is that we may variously be charac terized as natur al, ge nera lizations, when socia l rea lity is so
domin ati on. He had not ju st been harassed, need to adopt a critica l approac h to the femi- human, or, if embodied in some legal code , diverse. The other is that any atte mpt to rem-
but femini zed to boot; thus does theor y condi- nist theories produced over the past twent y legal or con stituti onal). Sometim es, however, edy the oppress ion of wo men throu gh legal
tion perc epti ons of rea lity. years or so , and not allow our understandin g pur suit of these liber al values appea rs to be reg ula tion is futil e, since law, with its pur-
The case involved " split dec isions" in that of sex uality to be do minated by any par ti- harmful to women, as, for exa mple, when ported universalism , is itself em bedded in the
there was judicial disagreement, and also cul ar theory, parti cul arly a theor y which liberal insistenc e on respect for privacy has social matrix of socie ty. This gloomy view
becau se Halley offers four different ways of purp orts to be femini st. been used to hind er legal interventi on in of the limit ati ons of legal regul ation ca n, of
lookin g at the case fro m the viewpoint of Existing theories can be good in part s. If cases of vio lence in the home. There are cou rse, be applied to more or less every thing,
four different types of theories of sex uality, thi s is right, the argumen t is for eclec ticism. man y obvious exa mples of the sa me phenom- from tin- openers to dem ocracy, in a spirit of
which she calls power femini sm, cultura l fem- A nd underlyin g the arg umen t may be the eno n, and they are by no mean s only relevant un ive rsa l pessi mi sm.
inism , gay -iden tity polit ics and queer theor y. beli ef that insofar as theori es of sex uality to the position of wome n. Challenging Liberalism as a whole con sti-
The sec ond case is the Texan decision in present ways of conce iving of realit y, rival Sc hwar tzma n fir st sets out to pro vide an tut es a defence of liberalism , but of a liberal-
Twyman v Twy ma n. A wife filed for divorce theories may be equally valid - the message ex pla na tio n o f w hy lib eral va lues ca n op er at e ism w hich atten ds to the act ua l di stribution of
and also made a claim for dam ages for the of Kurosawa's Rashomon. If thi s is corr ect , in contradictory ways . Her explanation, power in soc iety; the case is clea rly present ed
intenti on al infli cti on of emo tional distress. then the main value of thi s book mu st lie in which is developed throu gh a critica l and carefully argued . It engages what are
The husband had prevailed on his wife to the critica l ana lysis of the writers discu ssed : appra isal of the wor k of John Rawl s and esse ntially phil osophi cal issues, and is there-
engage in sado masoc histic pract ices; after for exa mple Ca tharine MacKinnon, Duncan Ronald Dworkin, is that liberalism tend s fore far removed from the practical world of
apparently some initi al cooperation, albeit Kenn edy on "sexy dressing" , and Robin towards abstraction , or, one might say , broad affai rs and politi cal deci sion . It is, perhaps
perh aps relu ctant , the wife did not wa nt to West. generalization, and thi s flatt ens the co mplex inevitably, very Am erican in its focu s. At the
co ntinue with thi s, but was pressured into Quit e how one ca n validate a criticism of natur e of social rea lity, and is also domin ated tim e of writing, appalling thi ngs are happen-
doin g so. The prac tices indeed we nt well a theor y of sex ua lity is not at all obvious. by noti ons of indi vidu alism and freedom of ing to ten s of thousand s of wo men around the
beyond a little play-actin g, and apparen tly Such theori es are not , in any straightforward choice which play down the fact that indi vidu- world, for whom war and its acco mpanying
ca used tangible physical injury requiring way , empirically based ; they are not scien- als are me mbers of hum an co mmunities horr ors, as we ll as torture, hun ger, illness ,
rem edi al med ical treatm ent , as well as emo - tific in the Popp erian sense . They provide wi thin which free choice is, as if by way di splacem ent and ex ile raise probl em s of an
tional distress . It was not a happy marri age. ways of describi ng social arrange men ts, or of co ntradictio n, subject to co mpulsio n. intensely practi cal character which see m
With considerable di sagreement the Tex an hum an experiences , which are also prescrip- Schwar tzma n then goes on, in the second part utterly rem ote from the abstract concerns of
judicial system eve ntua lly decided that the tive, in that they point the way to appro priate of the book, to argue in favour of a femi nist philo sophi cal theory. But that, 1 suppose, is
intenti onal inflic tion of emo tional distress action. Thus, when Robin West writes that ideol ogy that does not reject liberal va lues , the nature of phil osophi cal theor y, and few
was actionable between spouses; thi s was "The wo ma n who surv ives a violent, aggra- but reint erprets them , by atte nding to the wo uld do ubt that some vers ion of liberal
new , and so th e o utco me was that suc h a vated rape suffers a shatte ring of selfhoo d so soc ial rea lity in w hic h liber al values ca n be ideology has underlai n many of the adva nces
claim could, as a matter of law, be enter- profound and traum atic as to echo throu ghoul pur sued, one in which, for exa mple, some that have, neverth eless, been made in the posi-
tained. Again "split decisions" appea rs to a lifetim e" , thi s claim , which may we ll in indi vidu als belon g to oppressed groups and tion of wo men in many socie ties . But the bad
refer both to thi s j udicia l disagreem ent and some sense be true, is not based on rigoro us do not enj oy an equality of power and hence thi ngs that con tinue to happ en to wo me n (and
to the different ways in which the story ca n empirica l investigati on. No soc ial-sc ientific an ident ical freedom of choice with those for that matter to men and, of course, to child-
be viewe d. investigation und erli es it. If it appea rs to be who enjoy more power. Lib eral va lues need ren) do not see m to be blam able on miscon-
What "taking a break from feminism" true then thi s depend s on intuiti ve views of to be reint erpreted or redefin ed from a femi- cei ved feminist theor y, and I am sceptical as
(mea ning feminist theor y) means is more the natur e of truth. The philosop hica l natur e nist view point, rather than bein g di scarded. to the possi bility that some fine tuning of
probl em atic al. It so unds initiall y as peculi ar of feminist theor y is not , however , rea lly In thi s part of the book , attent ion is focused such theor y is likely to make much differ-
a prog ra mme as "taking a break from pol it- addresse d by Janet Halley, thou gh at point s on the writings of M arth a Nussbaum and ence . If there is to be an ideological ex plana-
ical science" . I have no con fidence that 1 in her boo k it is tou ched upon , and she Ono ra O'Neill, both of whom have, in differ- tion it need s to be so ught in the ideolo gies
have under stood what the program me actu- clearly has ideas on the subjec t which one ent ways, defend ed a liberal feminism , whil e that underpin the eco nomic sys te m, and the
ally is, and one is not help ed by the style in may hope she deve lops furth er. acknow ledg ing the probl em s. In the third orga niza tion, or perh aps one should say the
which Split Decisions is writte n, which Liza H. Schwartzm an ' s book Challenging part of the book , Lisa Schwart zman discusses di sorganiz ation , of the internati on al sys tem.

TLS J UN E 15 20 07

ho would have thought it? Poker
W has become a mass-audience spec-
tator sport. Names like Chri s
"Jesus" Ferguson, Phi l " Unabornber" Laak
and Dave "The Devilfi sh" Ulliott ma y not be
familiar to all reade rs of the TLS, but o n any
night yo u ca n see these top po ke r profession-
als on the ne ther reac hes of the satellite cha n-
nel s, as they blu ff and bull y their way to pots
wor th hun dred s of thou sand s of do llar s. Like
their co unter part s in tenni s and go lf, they to ur
the worl d, playing in lucrative tourn am ents,
wh ich are av idly follo wed on television by
mill ion s of ama teur enthusiasts who se ow n
poker exp erience is mostly limited to small-
stakes games played with faceless strangers
on internet poker sites .
The professiona ls really do seem to be terri-
bly good. Accord ing to the British ga ming
laws, poker is a ga me of luck , but thi s is
beli ed by the reg ularity wi th which the same
players keep com ing o ut on top . The attrac -
tion of televised pok er, whic h reveals all the
hid den cards , is that it shows ho w the trick
is do ne. The top players have an uncann y
ability to ga uge the rel ative strengths of the
hand s, and in particul ar to "sense wea knes s"
- opponents who are no t sure what is go ing
on - and ruthl essly exp loit thei r uncert aint y.
In 1988 the Briti sh jo urna list Antho ny
Hold en spent a year trying his luck on the pro -
fessional poker circuit. His record of his expe-
rien ces, publi shed as Big Deal , became a
modern class ic of poker literatur e. Te levision
and the intern et had yet to transform the poker
Heavyweight thinking,
featherweight prices.
Subscribe today and save over 40% on the usual
retail price. You will also receive a welcome gift
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IlS
"":,,,...,.,,-'"
~ very sad after
Dear Engin •.. I wa:i on Remember what
our last conversa ~ater wheel;
you to~d me ab;u~rtf:nd, think back.
and th~nk ba~o'be moving slowly,
We may seem t . S ~ we ' r e moving ...
but the po~n ~,
'n ' s letters to Istanbul
James B aldWl
James Campbell
- 1-800 370 9040 or visit
SOCIAL STUDIES
Dear cards
D AVID P API N E A U
A n t hony H old en
B IGGER D E AL
A year on the new po ker circuit
352pp. Little, Brown. £ 17.99.
978 0 3 16 73077 8
wor ld, but there was still plent y of action for
those who knew where to find it. Hold en intro-
duced his readers to the old Las Vegas, tradi-
tio nal centre of the po ker wor ld, where the
fabled "Arnarillo Slim" Preston held co urt,
and yo u co uld still sit down with Joh nn y
Moss, who in 1949 had playe d head-t o-head
with Nick "The Gre ek" Danda los for five
month s and walked away with $2 milli on.
Bigger Deal tell s the story of Hold en ' s
return to the profession al poker ci rcuit fift een
yea rs on. The re are now many more charac-
ters, and ma ny more op por tunities for them
to ply their trade . Hu ge amounts of mo ney
wa sh aro und, not ju st in the pla y itself, but
also from television rights, spon sor ship ,
publis hing and websi tes. Hold en co nvey s the
exc iteme nt of the po ker boom , but also finds
much to regret. In 1988 the Wor ld Series of
Pok er, the acknow ledge d cli max of the pok er
yea r, attrac ted 167 entrants. Last yea r 8,873
co mpe titors chase d a fir st prize of $ 12 mil-
IDelivery direct to your
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TLS JU N E 15 2 0 07
27
wa ter on the shark-infested poker circ uit. To
be frank , it is clear from the start that "Lon-
don To ny' is not go ing to make it big. The re
is a paradox at the heart of po ker. The game
is only interesting if it is played for eno ug h
mon ey to matter. If the stakes are too low,
there is no incenti ve not to play eve ry hand to
the end, and poker qu ickl y degener ates into a
ga me of pu re cha nce, and a very bori ng ga me
at that. Yet at the same tim e yo u can o nly be
ser iously go od at pok er if yo u are deepl y
indifferent to the money. You can' t let yo ur
judgem ent be clo ude d by the thou ght that a
mistake will cos t yo ur summer holid ay, or
yo ur ca r, or yo ur hou se. Tha t's why the best
playe rs have so mething of the psychop ath
abo ut them . They lack the prud en ce that
makes poker cowards of the rest of us.
As Hold en him self allow s, he ' s j ust no t
Professional poker player Phil Laak, mad enough to make the big tim e . He talks
August 4, 2005 the talk , with freque nt reference s to the Moll
(the no veli st C indy Blake) and the Cro ny
lio n. Hold en' s boo k finishes with thi s blo ated (poe t and lon g-time po ke r co mpa nio n A l
beanfeast, and it makes prett y harrowin g read- A lva rez). But hi s engag ing ly co nfess io nal
ing. Spo nsorship logos and chesty fem ale tele- narra tive gives the ga me away. He rem em-
vision prese nters are eve ryw he re . Chea p plas - bers hi s children 's birthdays. He wor ries
tic ca rds have rep laced the norm al cas ino abo ut bad rev iew s of his book s. Fro m time to
pack s. Players scream an d shout, ho pin g to time he even per for ms his day job as the
ca tch the atte ntio n of the ca meras . Some of Observer' s mu sic critic . He' s clea rly not
the wa ll po rtra its in the old-timers ' Poker go ing to bet his hou se on any thing. He takes
Hall of Fa me are missing. Hold en is no t sure pride in his sma ll profit s in lim ited-li ability
he will return. ga mes , but he steers clear of any real risks .
The narrati ve of the new book , like Big Antho ny Hold en will never make a big
Deal before it, is ca rried by Hold en' s killing. But he rema ins und efeated as the
attempts to keep his financial head abov e cha mpio n ch ronicler of those who do.
,,,
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28
Darkness at home
amicek is one of music ' s mos t remark-
J able late develop ers. He was nearly fort y
when he started the wor k by which he
first became we ll kno wn , Jenufa , almos t fift y
by the time that wor k was brou ght to perform-
ance (in 1904 ), and into his sixties befor e it
had been present ed anywhere beyond his
hom e town of Brno. O nly then did he move
into a higher gear as a compose r. Past the age
of sixty-five, he wrote four full-l ength operas
(Katya Kabanova, The Cunning Little Vixen,
The Makropoulos Case and From the House
of the Dead), a co mpact sympho ny and an
orche str al mass, the extraordinary drama-in-
song Diary of One Who Disappeared, two
string quartet s, two mini atur e pian o conce r-
tos, a wind sex tet and a series of rhymes set
for chorus and instrum ent s. Alban Berg pro-
duc ed an output of sim ilar size over a peri od
of almos t thirt y yea rs; Janacek , an older man
at the beginni ng of his flo werin g, took ju st
nin e.
Thi s creative acce leration found an echo in
the strengthening appr eciation of Janacek out-
side his native Moravia . Britain had a head
start, ow ing largely to the wor k of the music
critic Rosa New march, who brou ght the com-
poser to Lond on. Even in Britain , thou gh,
Jan acek' s operas were late in arriving (the
signal eve nt was the Briti sh premi ere of Katya
Kabanova, in 1951, under the baton of
Charles Mackerras, who had studied in
Prague and acquired a lifelon g devotion to the
compose r) and were not fully part of the reper-
tory until the 1980s, when the two most idio-
syncra tic pieces, Fate and The Excursio ns of
Mr Brou cek, were done in the United King-
dom for the first time, and when Welsh
National Opera (ag ain moti vated by Macker-
ras) and Glyndebo urne turn ed to Janac ek .
Katya Kabanova did not reach the Met in
New York until 1991 (once more with M ack-
er ras in cha rge) .
Anoth er story of stea dily mounting fulfil-
ment co mes to a clim ax with the appea rance
of John Ty rrell's bio graph y, Jan dcek: Years
of a life, for Tyrrell has been at wor k on
Janace k for fort y yea rs and has prepared the
gro und with a sequence of pub licati ons,
including ed itions of the compose r's lett ers
to Kamil a Stoss lova, the inam orata and mu se
of his late ye ars, and the mem oir s of his long-
suffering wife, Zde nka . Tyr rell's indu stry
and meticul ousness are exempl ary. Thi s bio-
grap hy, of which the seco nd and final volume
is soo n to appe ar, sta nds not only on his
exha ustive research into Janacek ' s life and
mu sic but also on his ev ident famili arit y with
the who le swirl of Czech music in Jana cek' s
tim e, and with the different cultu ral atmos -
pheres of Prague and Brn o (a smaller city,
having Cze ch speakers in the minority ,
whereas in Prague they dominated ).
In hi s introducti on , Tyrre ll qu otes from a
lett er Janacek wro te to his first biograph er ,
M ax Brod , who managed to maint ain impor-
tant friend ship s both with the grea test com-
poser in Czec hos lova kia and with the grea t-
est writer, Kafka. Th e Brod story will appea r
in Tyr rell's second volume; the lett er is intro-
duc ed ear ly for what it says abo ut biograph y,
abo ut the di stin cti on between , in the co m-
poser ' s words , " poetical wo rk" and "sober
MUSIC
P A UL G R IFF IT H S
J ohn T yr r ell
J A N A c E K : YEA RS O F A LI F E
VolumeOne ( 1854- 1914): The lonely blackbird
800p p. Faber. £60.
978057 1175 383
facts" . Faced with a cho ice, Janacek wo uld
undoubtedly have opted for the for mer. His
ow n writing, when intend ed for publi cati on,
is full of vivid imp ression s, as in thi s mem oir
of a visit to the home of Vince nc Slade k, a
game kee per and friend in Janacek ' s native
village of Huk vald y:
It was qui et and dark in the cottage whe n
Sladek returned from the forests. The gun,
thro wn into a corner of the room , made a
strange rattle as if to say: "What the devil did
we do to deserve this?"
Stuart Kale (Mnsquito) and Gerald Ginley (Gatekeeper) in Janacek's The Cunning Little
Vixen, Royal Opera Hous e, London, 2003
Such is not Ty rre ll's style, and for at least
two reasons we ca n be grateful. One is that
quot ations from Janacek ' s essays stand out
so much in relief. The other, more important ,
is that the thorou gh detailing of the "sober
fact s" of the composer's everyday life of deal-
ing with colleag ues and family memb ers, trav-
elling to hear operas in Prague or to collec t
folkson gs in villages , study ing and readin g,
honours the mundane and eve n the humdrum.
Ty rrell's division of his grea t enterpr ise -
sixty yea rs for the first volume, fourt een for
the seco nd - itself spea ks of the division in
the composer's creati ve life, between
TLS J U N E 15 2 0 07
dec ades of disapp oint ment and sustained bril-
liance at the end. By the close of Volum e
One, Jan acek has compl eted only Jent fa and
some piano pieces amon g his major com pos i-
tions. Years go by with noth ing to show.
Years go by whe n he is hardl y a co mposer at
all, producing no more than the occas iona l
chora l piece or folk son g arra nge ment amo ng
his other activities as teacher, choirmas ter,
mu sic critic and folkl orist, in a minor centre.
To und er stand Janacek' s background it
might help to imagine so meone in, say, the
Ca rdiff of the tim e, whose life was one of giv-
ing musical trainin g to futur e schoo lteac hers,
directin g choirs, co llec ting and arranging
folk son gs, and writing conc ert reviews for
the local press. Few grea t composers have
had to live such a life for lon g, without the
prestige and the satisfac tion of important per-
for mances; Janacek was in such a predica -
ment for decades. The ca ntata Amarus ( 1897)
- w hic h Tyrre ll note s was Janace ks " first big
work in a decade that had nothin g to do with
Mor avian folk mu sic" and the fir st, apart
from a much sma ller chora l piece writte n
shortly before, "where his indi vidu al voice as
a compose r com es throu gh" (at the age of
fort y-th ree) - had a defecti ve airing in 1900
and was not properl y perfor med in full until
1912. Eve n after Jeniifa had reached the
stage, Janacek remained a pro vincial figur e,
and acted as such. As Tyrrell points out, the
dec ade after the Jenifa premi ere, the dec ade
of the compose r's fifti es, produc ed asto nish-
ingly little, despite his late-won success after
so much fru str ation . Of his two ea rlier
operas , Sdrka had not been perform ed ,
because he had failed to secure permi ssion
before setting Juliu s Zeyer's librett o, and The
Beginning ofa Romance had been return ed to
the shelf after fou r perfor mances. Now, with
Jenisfa , he had a hit. Tho ugh restri cted to
Brn o, the wor k staye d in the repertory there,
and wo uld see m to have been dropp ed only at
the irascibl e co mpose r' s ow n behest. But, so
far fro m moving for ward , Janacek was
caught up in revisions of Jen ufa and of his
two operas in pro gress (Fate and Broucelq.
Oth er proj ect s were aba ndo ned or destroyed.
"Wherever Janace k turn ed it see med to go
wro ng ." M eanwh ile, he we nt on as he had
before, teachin g, holidaying in Huk vald y and
at the spa resort of Luh acovice, occas ionally
writing pieces for Mor avian club s and cho irs.
One grea t virtue of Tyrrell's account, of
his marshallin g of so many "sober fact s", is
to sugges t that this life of unfulfilment was
necessary to the later co mpos itions - that
their ex ultation, their yell of achi evement,
co uld not have been possibl e wi tho ut all the
drearin ess and donk ey work. Perh aps one 's
heart does not always lift at a paragraph
openin g such as: "Janaceks contacts with
Bakesova ove r the photographin g of the pro-
po sed folk cos tumes continued". Neve rthe-
less, Ty rrell's steady narr ati ve pace and
straightforward style suit the unfoldin g of a
life of toil and routin e - an ordinary life, one
might say , ren dered extraord inary by back-
wa rds reflecti on from what was to come . By
holdin g that glow in view , however distantl y,
and by cherishing the normal, Tyrre ll gives
us the full grey of Janac ek and thereby help s
us comprehend the go ld.
Co ncen trating on the composer ' s wor king
life, thi s scrupulous biograph er avo ids spec u-
lation about the Jan acek s' marriage. The co m-
pose r was twenty-seven on his wedding day,
his bride not qu ite sixtee n. He see ms to have
made little effor t to understand her youth, her
attachment to her parent s, her bour geoi s
expectations (his own famil y was rougher) or
any other needs she migh t have had . They
split up soo n after their first child, O lga, was
born , after not much more than a yea r, and
thou gh they got back together two yea rs later,
both see m to have drunk in too much susp i-
cion and rese ntment. Tyrrell simply notes,
however, that we have only Zdenka Jan ack-
ova' s side of the story, and by placin g her
mos tly in the margin s he prob ably does ju s-
tice to how Janacek him self saw his life. The
compose r, as Tyrrell shows , habitu ally holi-
dayed alone, and did not see wedlock as an
impedim ent to roma nces . Such a partnership
coul d hardl y survive losing both its children :
Vladimir at two and a half in 1890, Ol ga at
twent y in 1903. Aga in, Ty rrell is discreet.
Janace k' s ow n comm ent , from the mem oir s
he w ro te mu ch lat er , is enoug h: " I wo uld bin d
Jeniifa simply with the black ribbon from the
lon g illn ess, suffering and lament s of my
dau ghter Olga and my littl e boy Vladirnfr".
His hom e childless and cheerl ess, the com-
po ser also lack ed friend s - perh aps lacked
the capacit y or need for friend ship that was
not flirt ation. Whil e an opera, Fate, ca me of
his affair in 1903-04 with Camilla Urva lkova
- a yo unger , married wo ma n, like the Ka mila
of his later years - he appea rs to have reli ed
on other acquainta nces only for their useful-
ness. Thus Artu s Rektorys, a bank employee
and the Editor of a musical journ al, was a
 MUSIC 29

good man to hav e o n his side in Prague, and anc e will so und on its tenth or hundredth hear-
Luci e Bak esova (me ntioned abov e) save d
him a lot of trouble in matt ers ethnographi-
cal. Both were let go whe n no long er need ed.
Just one note ing. Aft er readin g Genn ari , the qu estion of
placing a work into a master narr ati ve seems
of lesser importanc e, but we do still need to
A s for the man y minor ch aract ers in these know the ori ginal from the imitation, and
page s, it may be hard to keep in one ' s mind ecause John Gennari ' s new book , ST EPH EN BROW N hav e eno ugh of a framework to give the wor k
such nam es as Lad 'a Kozusnfce k, even with
Tyrrell' s helpful reminder that he wa s the
" ma ve rick journalist" , and so not to be con-
B Blowin ' Hot and Cool, reviews
revie wers of j azz , it risks see ming a
littl e clubby and se lf-referential; but in fact
J ohn G enn ari
context. A s to what mak es the work tick -
here the ideal critic hardl y ex ists. The j ourn al-
ist criti c takes the watch and says, "Lo ok at
fu sed with the teach er and choral dir ect or the presenc e of so man y comp etin g BLOWI N ' HOT AND C O O L the seco nd hand! See ho w it mo ves!",
Ma x Koblf zek. Such peopl e flit by on the fur- approaches and histori es saps auth orit y from Jazz and its critics whereas the acade mic critic tak es the wa tch
thermost edges of Jan acek ' s existenc e . them all. In the end, readin g it is a liberatin g 494pp. University of Chicago Press. $35; apa rt and says , "Here we have a very sma ll
It may be from worry that we will lose experie nce, one that brin gs the mu sic clo ser. distributed in the UK. £22.50. spring. And here a tiny gea r. And here is
978 0226289229
track , or it ma y be becau se he treats each For ge nerations of ja zz critics , access to another very, very small spring ...". Within
ch apt er as a separate ess ay (two are contrib- the mu sic was hard won . " Needed : Whit e G ar y G i d d i ns these limit s, Giddins is as go od as it ge ts .
uted by a medical ex pert, Steph en Lock, and Guy s witho ut Dates" is o ne of Gennari's He can be cutting ("Hollyw ood mo vie-
two , on the composer ' s fin anc es, by Jiff ea rly headin gs, and it nicely captures the ner- NA TU RA L S EL ECTIO N mak ers ha ve been tellin g us for a while . . .
Gary Giddin s on co medy, fi lm, music, and book s
Za hradka , cur ator of the Janacek Archi ve in din ess of the jaz z fan who latch ed on to so me- that gree d is bad, whi ch is a bit like havin g to
432pp. Oxford University Press. £19.99 (US $35).
Bm o) that Ty rre ll some times repeats informa- thin g, ge ne rally throu gh recorded rath er than end ure lectures on self-contro l from yo ur
978 0 19517 9514
tion. We are told five tim es, for ex ample, that live perfo rmance, that his par ent s and contem- neighbourhood crack dealer") , but he prefers
Janacek saw thre e performances of Il trova- po rari es derid ed . For him it was a "musical to "focus on wha t I admired - on wha t I
tore in Prague in the summe r of 1883. The re coming of age", or a coming of age tout court cnncism that ' s eve r been written, or one wa nted yo u to adm ire or at lea st know it
are also a few apparent contradictions. Wh y, - an ex perience that open ed windows o nto recording of a Mil es Da vis performance. You existed" . Seven pa ges on Ellington guide us
for instanc e, was the Augustini an monastery unim agin ed land scap es, providing an escape would choose the Mil es piece, of cour se . Ju st sure -footedly throu gh an imm ense thick et of
at Fulnek closed und er Joseph Il , if the from the stuffiness of bourgeoi s provinci al as , if you could trade the libr ari es of book s recordings and re-i ssues, straight to, among
Empe ro r's policy was one of " sparing the life. As Philip Larkin (to whom Genn ari that have been writte n abo ut Ancient Mu sic oth er beauti es, the gorge ous "Lotus Blos-
Au gu stini an s bec ause of their important rol e should hav e give n mor e space) said of Sid- for a thre e-minute recording of some thing som" . Thi s may not be wha t mak es the mu sic
as teachers" ? Suc h thing s, thou gh , and the ney Bech et : "On me your vo ice fall s as they actua lly sung during an Aesch ylu s play, yo u tick, but it mak es us wa nt to listen : "Fervent,
very occ asional editor ial slips are minor say lo ve should, / Lik e an enor mo us yes" . would make the deal in a heartb eat. I wo uld ori gin al , and self-refle ctive [Ellin gtons]
spots in a labour of imp osin g solidity . Thi s is a rich book, bur stin g with anecdo te go even furth er, and trade eve ry thing eve r mu sic echo es its own echoes .. . . Plu s, yo u
Besides documenting eve ry thing so full y, and ob ser vation. Genn ari is at hi s best in a can danc e to it." Giddins' s knowled ge of
Tyrrell brin gs us closer to the grea t unanswer- chapter abo ut Cha rlie Park er. He avoids co n- both film and j azz is ov erpowe ring. Reading
able question s rai sed by Jan acek' s life: what ve ntional critiqu es, and instead begin s with a him is like havin g a con versation with an
cau sed the ch an ge, and did he hav e an ink- story by Cortaza r, goes on to the first bio- intelli gent fri end who credits you with mor e
ling it would happ en ? The florescence of his graphy of Park er by Ro ss Ru ssell , mo ves savvy than yo u actually po ssess. The end-
last yea rs has been attributed to man y differ- from there to Ru ssell ' s pulp nov el based on pap ers of my cop y are co vered with notes
ent factor s: the freed om he enjoyed after retir- Park er ' s life and to his correspondenc e with about thin gs to see and hear.
ing from his teaching post s, his prid e in his the pulp biographer Albert Goldman, before Both book s are produced to a very high
country' s newl y wo n Indep end enc e, the clo sing with a reminiscenc e from Park er ' s standard. M y o nly qu arr el with Ga ry Giddins
boo st he ga ined from his intimacy wi th wife , Cha n. Al on g the way, the information is ov er his referenc e to Co le Port er' s minor-
Stoss lova , the atte ntion he was at last receiv- is subje ct to conte mpora ry comment from key melodi es - Port er always used major
ing in Pra gue and abro ad. But Amarus is criti cs such as Whitney Balli et , Martin keys. John Ge nnari for so me rea son claim s
proof that ch an ge was coming twent y years Willi am s, Leon ard Fea the r, Rob ert Reisner that ja zz educa tio n's "marginal" status in col-
before Czechos lov akia becam e a state and at and Ishm ael Reed, with further referenc es to lege curricula "was not radi call y different at
a time when Kamila Stoss lova was a child of Baldwin, Barak a, Adorno and Mail er , am on g the ce ntury 's end". Thi s is not ju st factuall y
six. Wh at touch ed thi s small-tow n teach er- oth ers. It is an unple asant ch apt er, dw elling wro ng but co ntradicted man y tim es by his
conductor with genius? on the mi xtur e of envy , adul ation , identifica- own text.
T yr rell' s proposition - and no w o ne under- tion and se lf-disgust that ch aracteriz ed the Th e rol e of th e cr itic is about to becom e
stands his keen counting of the Trovatore whit e biograph er' s proj ection of his ow n fan- more important. A ca se in point: imm ersed ,
attendances - is that Janace k was stirred by tasies onto the black mu sici an ' s life, thu s pro- from reading these books, in thou ght s of j azz ,
the mu sic he enco untered . Perhaps the drab , vidin g a pri sm throu gh which to view "the I was reminded of a piece I had not heard in
cold life was a necessar y precondition . In the pol itic s of raci al represent ation ". The read er decades. " Blue Ski es" , I recall ed , and on the
theatre, or in the concert hall , Jan acek ca me sinks into an un seemly mor ass of claim and Blu e No te lab el , played by a sax opho nist
alive. Tyrr ell suggests it was the ex perience counterclaim o ver the dead mu sician ' s bod y. who m my parent s had known , who had give n
of Mascagni' s Cava lleria rusticana, early in And then Ge nnari turn s to Chans acco unt of up on the Ne w York scene and go ne back to
1892, that mo ved the composer toward s how Park er lo ved to visit the Eas tern Euro- hi s hom e in Texas. Who knows if I eve r
Jenufa , and that of Tchaikovsk y' s Queen of pean bar s in their neighbourhood, "chatting would ha ve located hi s recordings in the pre-
Spades, fou r years later , that stopped the with the old men , learning Ru ssian ph rases, Intern et age - but with the aid of Goog le I
opera "dead in its track s". Similarl y, he sees talking politi cs, eating piro shki". Tha t littl e Miles Davis, 1991 had his nam e, John Hard ee, in half a minute,
the stamp of Charpentier 's Louise on Fate, anecdote simply would not fit in Ru ssell ' s and had listened to a cli p of "Blue Sk ies" - as
and of Debu ssy ' s mu sic on the piano cy cle bo ok s or for that matt er in any of the compet- writte n about jazz for o ne not e by Mil es, if it fin e as I'd rem emb ered it - in two; thr ee days
In the Mists. Th ese disco veri es were much ing acco unts. It is a perfect illu str ation of were his fir st note on "F lame nco Ske tches " . later the C D arrive d in the po st. As the cat a-
mor e po werful than tho se of Moravian folk Figaros qu estion: "W hy these thin gs and not To ju stify thi s, I have to return to M arfas. "A logue of choi ces expa nds, tru stworthy guides
mu sic (an interest go ing back to Jan aceks oth ers?" , which rem ain s the key challe nge to life is not tell able " , he says . And that' s what will becom e eve r mor e necessary.
D vo hikiun beginn ings as a compo ser ) or of any narr ativ e: yo u se lected A and B, but what
"s peech melodi es", the phrases Janacek cap- about C?
tured from the stree t in mu sic al not ation. As Jav ier Marfas says, or has the narr ator of
Tyrrell corr ectl y ob ser ves, the se j ottin gs hi s no vel Fever and Spear say, that it' s not
th at note co ntains - it' s not ju st an event, but
Davis' s life that he pou rs into that note. (And
they ca lled the style "cool" .)
Ga ry Giddins is one of the mor e ad mired
figures in Gennari ' s book , and in its pages he
-• FOUR COURTS PRESS

William O 'Brien, 1881-1968 : socialist,

we re mor e a sympto m of the composer ' s new the eve nt but the eve nt's tellin g - "unfail-
appro ach to voc al writing than a prompt. It ingl y impreci se, traitorou s, approx ima te and offers (in prai sing Martin Williams) a descrip- republican, Dail deputy, trade union
was the mu sic of his more imm ediately at its base empty" - that counts. Th e narr a- tion of wha t the rol e of an ideal criti c sho uld leader and editor
success ful cont emporaries - Tcha ikovs ky, ti ves that con stitute j azz criti ci sm are in fact be: "locating masterpi ece s, pinp ointing their T H OM AS J . M O R RIS SE Y SJ
only fourt een years olde r, and Masca gni, revealed as impreci se, trait orou s and approx i- significa nce, and demonstrating preci sel y An overdue first biogra phy of one of th e most influe nti al
Cha rpe ntier and Debu ssy, all youn ger - that mate - but they are never more imp ort ant what mad e them tick " . The fir st categ ory is figures in Irish Labour in th e first half of th e 20th century.

struc k the spark. More sparks were to co me , than the event s they try to narrat e. Here is a mor e important for jazz than for , say, mo vies ISBN 978-1 -84682 -067-0 400 pages £50 Published: 15 June
especially whe n Leos Jan acek enco untered thou ght experim ent. You can tran smit to the or no vel s, because no one bu ys a recording
7 Malpas Street, D ublin 8, Ireland
Strav insky. On e wa its imp atientl y for John future onl y one of these two thin gs to repr e- ju st to listen to it once . So the criti c has to see Tel. (D ublin) 453 4668 www.fourcourtlpress.ie •
Tyrrell ' s seco nd volume. sent the whole histor y of j azz: all the j azz into the future , and tell us ho w the perform-

TLS J UN E 15 20 0 7
30 POETRY

ccept that there is a Ca mbridge resist thi s process. The fastidi ousness with

A Schoo l, and J. H. Prynn e' s friend and

conte mporary R. F. Langley is an
original staff memb er. Yet, until his retir e-
ment in 1999, Langley was more con cerned
with teachin g English and Art Histor y in
schools in Wol verh ampt on and Sutto n Co ld-
field than with publi shin g many poem s. The
twent y-on e poem s in The Face ofIt, added to
the seve nteen in Collected Poems (2000)
make it clear, however, that Langley is not a
min or coterie poet but a distinct and signifi-
ca nt talent.
Langley' s debt s to the Obj ecti vists and
Black Mou ntain Poets, hi s Ca mbridge tics
and trait s have been absor bed into a poeti c
that is ch aracteri stic ally English and tradi-
tional. Poem s echo to Shakes pea re, the
Roma ntics and Hop kins, will be wrought into
strict, ofte n sy llabic form s, and laced with
rhyme. Langley mixes dicti ons, lets the
modern every day mingle with the tim e-hon-
oured aure ate, but he does not make them
cl ash ; and there is always a fairly stable,
somew hat for mal, poetic voice . There are
poem s of ek phras is, poem s inspired by liter a-
ture and poem s that reveal a fon dn ess for
churches, ama te ur entom ology and Suffolk.
Compress ion, ellipsis and the compou ndin g
of images and ideas ca n mak e the poem s
trick y to foll ow, and diction aries of art and
etymo logy and Langley' s Jou rnals (2006)
prove hand y aids to interpretati on. Still, one
ca n always get a fair gis t at first readin g, and
it wo uld be wrong to describe the poe try as
purpo sively diffi cult.
The blurb asserts that "R. F. Langley ' s
poem s ex plore percepti on". There are indeed
Pebble power
WI LLI AM WOOTT E N
R. F. L an gl e y
THE FACE OF IT
56pp. Manchester: Carcanet. Paperback, £8.95.
978 I 857549003
moment s when the poems are like notes of
immedi ate impr ession and reaction. Neve rthe-
less, the poet typicall y oscillates between
close atte ntion to the world and his responses
to it and a di scursive fondn ess for abstrac -
tion s or for train s of thou ght. "Touchstone"
turn s thi s into a rhetori ca l device as it pro-
nounc es for or aga inst grea t think er s and
their view of tim e and matter , before hop pin g
to bird son g on an Aug ust night :
Kepl er was wro ng to
talk of forces as if they
we re things. Here they are
generated by the robin . . .
The technique gives a con ventionall y poetic
subjec t novel handling and yields some inter-
esting observation s. Mo reover , it look s to
ove rco me Eliot's "dissociation of sensibility"
whereby : "a man falls in love, or reads
Spino za, and these two experiences have
nothin g to do with eac h other". Ho wever, the
delib erateness of the yo king - the willingness
to make the robin ' s song not interfu sed with
thought and sensuo us expe rience but an exem -
plum - achieves something rather different.
"Brute Co nflict" plays on the calculi, the
pebbl es the Ro ma ns used for counters, wish-
ing pebb les, and the idea of pebbl es, to be
conjured up and conju red away:
To ca lculate wi tho ut
desires, so the pebbles
vanis h when it co mes to
ca lculatio n. Desire for
pebbles.
As he circl es around words and thei r etymo lo-
gies, paintin gs, pigment s, and sense impr es-
sions, Langley see ks to objectif y ex perience ,
language and the world, while also see king to
word and thou ght risks the higher pedantr y,
and Langley ' s foregrounding of language and
artifice can get precious and tired. You need
to be a wittier writer than Langley to get away
with turnin g to a paintin g and thanking "the
old man, the moon , Bellini , / hopin g the next
words he read s will / mention me" as some-
one here in "lin e 57" . For the most part , how-
ever, Langley' s rega rd for the surface of
poe ms and ca nvases is not ju st late moderni st
habit but proc eeds from the same atten tive-
ness to detail that is there in his meticul ous
observation of the behaviour of was ps.
Mu ch of Langley' s poetr y is disqui stion al,
and many of its pro positions are susce ptible
to conve ntional debate. Yet, he practises
poetry as a magical art as well as a ration al
one. His beli ef that "A Midsummer Night 's
Dream might still be the answer to eve ry-
thin g" may com e fro m lon g thought on the
pla y, but eve n when Langley is not putting
"the magus, Ag rippa Vo n / Ne ttes he im"
among the rud e mechani cals there is an
occult qualit y to his Shakes pea riana. Further -
more, Langley ' s use of myth and folkl ore , his
fondn ess for a Me rrie Eng lish of brimmers
and Nuncles see ks to re-enchant the world, to
see a mod ern-day pub , the doings of beetl e
and spider as a way into the realm of troll s
and fairies.
Such contr ary urges, which mak e Langley
hard to ch aract erize , champ ion or di smi ss,
make for a read that is peculi ar and reward-
ing. No t onl y do the orna te and aw kwa rd
beauti es of the poem s dese rve to be apprec i-
ated more widely; their qualiti es mean there
is a go od chance that thi s will happ en .

--------------------------~,--------------------------

aurice Riord an, in age a close con- begin with a few, mea sured, situating sen-

M temp orary of Paul Muldo on, is a rel-

ative latecomer to the pa ntheo n of
Irish poets, having publi shed his first collec-
tion in 1995. The Holy Land, his third , see ms
unb othered by the noti on that he risks bein g
read as an adde ndum to the wor k of his illu s-
triou s fo rerun ners. The ce ntre-piece "Idy lls"
(of which more later ) is startling in its ca sual
breakage and reversal of Heaney' s hallo wed
birthpl ace ove r its fir st two sentences : "O ne
day the men were rep airing the fence by the
strea m in the Baw n. Mo ss drove in the stakes
.. .". The sequence, conce rned as it is with
rural nostalgia and fili al piety, may cove r
fam iliar ground, but influ ence, it see ms, need
not always entail anxiety.
The book as a whole falls into two sec tions
of lyric wor k, brok en by the dram atic prose
" Idylls" . The lyric poem s do not always wea r
their debt s so lightl y. The title piece, hintin g
that narr ative inconsequ ence may be
redeemed by lexical co incidence (the first
line intro du ces a dog, Basil ; the last
anno unces, "There too is a basili ca"), seems
more than a little Mul doonian . In "Annivers-
ary", the incon gruou s, eve n grotesque blend
of fili al elegy and eroticism is redolent of the
cree pier side of Mi chael Longley. Heaney is
the most obvious precur sor : many poem s ce le-
brate the numin ous in lon g-kn own plac es and
objects, while the middl e sec tion of the penul-
tim ate piece, " Understorey", echoes "Station
Island" , as an oracul ar mentor instru cts the
poet in terse tercet s.
The poem s are we ll made. The final part of
"Understorey" , for exam ple, is an intelli-
gently und erstated meditati on on the idea of
Dockets from Hyde's
A P R I L W ARMA N
M au ri c e R i ord an
T HE HOL Y L A ND
55pp. Faber. Paperback, £6.99.
9780 57I 234646
inherit ance. Rumm aging throu gh his fath er ' s
"old coat" , the spea ker find s:
In an inside po cket is the penknife
I'd bought myself at Carrig races,
the handle worn thin, its blade still keen.
And with it hayseeds, a cartridge, dockets
from Hyde' s, the numbers faded;
tuppence, so me sloes , a sma ll hol e.
We get from the dead , thi s sugges ts, only a
refin ement of what was ours alrea dy; mean-
ingless detritu s; and sma ll, thou gh app recia-
ble , abse nces. This thou ght is con veyed as
much throu gh the verse's skilfully modul ated
dimini shin g ca dences, as throu gh its seman-
tic content. It is a thou ghtful way to all-but-
end a collec tion whose central preoccup ati on
has been the va lue of the past, and how it
might viably be carried for ward . But while
most of these lyrics are admirable produc-
tion s, they offe r little that really surprises .
The " Idylls" are ano ther matter. Where the
more edg ily "modern" form s and idiom s of
the lyrics actua lly feel a little tired , these
prose pieces, wor king ex plicitly from cl assi-
tences: " It was nightfall late Au gust. The men
we re in the Po und smoking after supper. The
air was heavy and a haze had dimmed the
cal traditi on, offer an origina l and vital way stars". This civility towards the reader,
for the poet to engage with the pas t. The rev- putting us at our ease, is a rare ges ture in co n-
erent affec tion displ ayed in their assured temp orary poetr y, and pays off: settled by
recounti ng s o f sho rt, not especially sig nifi- such co urteo us ness, we are ready to s low o ur
ca nt episo des from life on Riordan' s father' s rea ding and give each phrase the atte ntion
farm (the rememb ered appa rition of a full- that foster s the pieces' mild lumin osity. Eve n
grow n stag, a Government Inspector' s visit), thou gh many pieces end with comments that
often enlive ned by, sometimes conveye d sugges t, but do not embody, new pers pec tives
throu gh, the co mme ntary of a cho rus of way - on their sce narios ("And they wo uld be out in
ward farmh and s, manages to balanc e an ele- the field s the same as always", " 'then out to
giac note with a suggestion that the unhur- sea'"), the pieces' frank clarit y means that
ried , con vivial modu s operandi of thi s past, one ca n accept such sugges tive ness at face
far from bein g obso lete, actually offers a va lue, witho ut suspec ting an intenti on that it
desirabl e alterna tive to mode rnity. sho uld take more weig ht than it ca n bear.
Thei r success lies in their embrace of clar- Riord an co mes across in his lyrics as a
ity in an age when poetic obfusca tion and poe t happil y at wor k within the es tablished
trick siness, or at least a prizing of the vag uely mod es of his day ; the " Idylls" show him in a
numin ous, have lon g been stap les . They often braver , and altoge ther more interestin g, light.
Dun an 6ir
It is always quarter-to-six
aro und these beach es, time
to be headin g hom e. Ca ll back
the children and sha ke out the rugs.
G ive up for lost the item s bur ied
in the san d: mini atur e rakes
and shells and summer arguments.
B ER N ARD O 'DO NO GH U E

TLS J UN E I S 20 07

Jews against Christians
E
vidence about the life of Jesus is found
almos t entirely in the New Tes tame nt,
but there are a few fragm ent ary refer-
ence s to him elsew here in ancient literature:
in the wor ks of Tacitus, in the Jewish
histori an Josephu s, and in the Ta lm ud . The
Ta lmud is a mass ive coll ection of Jewish
legal discussion, codified we ll into the Christ-
ian era (fro m the fifth to the seve nth centuri es
AD) . It co ntains a dozen or so references that
are either ex plicitly to Jesus or prob abl y have
him in mind ; all are highl y critica l of him.
In the past, some scho lars have thought
that there might be a histori cal basis for some
of thi s materi al, but , in Jesus in the Talmud ,
Peter Sch afer argues, surely rightly, that thi s
is unli kely. For him thi s is the wro ng ques-
tion . Rather than as king whether we ca n learn
anything about Jes us from these late and frag-
ment ary references, we sho uld as k what light
they shed on Jud ai sm and its attitudes
toward s Christianity and its founder. Once
the question is put in thi s way , the Jesus
material in the Tal mud turn s out to be very
illuminatin g.
In rece nt yea rs, there ha s been a grea t deal
of scho larly work on the so-called advers us
Jud aeos liter ature, copious early Christia n
writing opposing Jud ai sm. What Schafer has
uncovered in the Ta lmud is, in effec t, Jewish
writing advers us Christiano s. The anti-Jes us
material is far more strident in tone in the
Babylonian version of the Ta lmud, produced
in the seve nth century in what is now Iraq ,
--------------------------~--------------------------
he distincti ve feature of A quinas on
T God lies in Rudi te Velde' s insistenc e
that the thou ght of St Thom as is best
read neith er as straight theology, as with
recent North Am eric an interpr eters, nor as
the kind of natural theolo gy that has attracted
old-fashion ed neo-Tho mists and some Brit-
ish phil osoph ers of religion . Te Veld e, who
teach es at the University of T ilburg in the
Netherla nds, records a doub le debt, to the
Thomas Institut e at Utre cht as well as to the
Higher Institute of Phi losoph y at Leuv en .
Tho se who kno w ho w to read the map of the
many rival versions of Thomism will not be
surprised to hear that, for te Ve lde, Aquinas
is "an extreme ly gifted philo soph er and a pro-
found metaph ysical think er" . In the Summa
Theologiae, with which thi s book is entirely
and unapologetic all y conc ern ed, Aquinas
ex pounds his own deep ly per sonal version of
Neo-Plato nist metaphysics, which is, ho w-
eve r, grounded in the Christian doctrine of
creation .
Thi s doe s not me an that te Velde strives to
document connec tions with parti cu lar figur es
in the Neoplato nist tradition. He situates
Aqu inas in a genera l way with referenc e to
Augustin e and the sixth-ce ntury my stical
theolo gian Pseud o-Dionysiu s. Te Velde does
not align him self with interpr eters who play
down the debt to Ari stotl e. On the cont rary,
he ascribes Aquinas' s conc eption of met a-
physics as "divine science" to his discovery
of Ari stot le in the light especially of the Per-
sian philo soph er Avicenn a (whom we should
perh aps learn to call Ibn Sin al .
The standard topic s come up throu ghout
RELIGION
JOH N B ARTON
P et er Schiif er
J E S U S I N T H E TA L MU D
232pp. Princeton University Press. £ 15.95 (US
$24.95).
978 069 112926 6
than in the Palestini an version from fif-
th-c entu ry Jeru salem . Thi s, Schafer sugges ts,
is because Jews in Palestin e had to watch
their back s in a place where Christianity had
become the offic ial reli gion, whereas Babylo-
nian Jews und er the Sa sanian Empire we re
far freer to critici ze Christianity. They could
treat Jesus with the conte mpt they felt he
deserved, without fear of repri sals.
The Talmud' s picture of Jesus would
certainly have scandalized Christians. Its Jesus
is the illeg itimate son of Miri am (Mary) and
a Roman soldier, a rabbinic discipl e who
deviated from Jewish teachin g and talked
frivolou sly about holy things, as well as prac-
tising magic and worshipping idols. He was
executed for blasphem y by stoning rather than
by crucifixion, a fate he deserved as an apos-
tate. He had five disciples: Ma ltai, Naqqai,
Netzer, Buni and Todah, whose names are ref-
erences to various bib lical verses that can be
used, through the method s of Jewish interpreta-
tion, to pro ve that Christian doctrin al claim s
about Jesus are false. His eterna l fate is to sit
in hell, surrounded by boilin g excrement.
First Truth
F ERGUS KERR
Rudi l e Veld e
A QU INA S O N GOD
I92pp. Ashgate. £ 16.99 (US $29.95).
978 0 754607557
the book , such as analo gy, bein g, causality,
natur e, particip ation and, of co urse , God,
cri ss-cro ssing one another as te Veld e
explains ho w, for Aquinas, revealed know-
ledge of the Cre ator receiv ed in faith can be
recon structed as a scientia in a sense
indebt ed to Au gustine, as well as more ob vi-
ously to Ari stotle ' s mor e sophisticated tech-
nical vocabulary. Dissenting from Mari e-
Dominique Chenu, the French Dominican
scholar who pioneered thi s discu ssion , te
Veld e argu e s that sacra doct rina is not to be
understo od as a science in an ana logous
sense, or as an imperfect science. On the con-
trary , Christia n knowled ge of God deri ves its
truth direct ly from the First Truth itself.
Whil e the truth of God is too luminous to be
apprehe nded by viatores - tho se who are on
the way of faith - the faithful mind may be
brou ght by rat ional argument to the insight
that "the darken ed intell igib ility of mat er ial
rea lity po ints to a transcend ent principle of
truth and bein g" . The scientia beatorum , the
kno wledg e of God enj oye d by the saints in
heaven , is indi spen sable, so te Veld e main-
TLS J U N E 15 2 0 0 7
Sch afer shows that these Jewish counter-
claim s about Jesus rest on considerable know -
ledge of the Gospels, and especi ally of John .
Thi s is superficially surprising, since this of all
the Gospels is the one that most emphas izes
Jewi sh responsibilit y for Jesus' death, and
most strongly downpla ys the role of the
Roma ns. Remarkabl y, as Schafer shows, the
Talmudi c material about Jesus actually
accept s this slant and glories in it. It was
indeed , accordin g to the Talmud, the Jews
who we re prim arily responsible for Jesus'
execution, which is why (contrary to all the
evidence) he was stoned - a Jewish punish-
ment - rather than crucified. The Jews who
produ ced these Talmudi c traditi ons were more
than happy to accept responsibilit y, since they
believed Jesus was a heretic and bla sphemer
who thorou ghly deserved his fate: "the Roman
gove rnor wa nted to set him free, but we did
not give in. He was a blasphemer and idolater,
and although the Roma ns probably could
not care less, we insisted that he get what he
deserved . We eve n convinced the Roman
gove rnor [more precisely: forced him to
accept] that this heretic and impo stor needed
to be executed - and we are proud of it" .
It sho uld be stresse d that there is no reason
whateve r to think that any of these allega-
tions is true: the y all date from lon g after the
tim e at which any information about Jesus,
independent of that in the Gospels, was avai l-
able. Sch afer is by no me ans arguing that
they preserve any historical information
tain s, for understand ing Aquinass notion of
Christian doctrine as a science . Moreo ver, as
the author arg ues throu ghout A quinas on
God, thi s notion is think able only in the con-
text of a metaphysical conc eption of reality.
The key word is manuductio : the Christian is
"led by the hand " of metaph ysics, so to
spea k, into an intelli gible recepti on of the
revealed truth of God.
Te Velde makes a numbe r of criti cisms.
For exampl e, while he obviously likes the
Utrecht school's emphas is on Aquin as' s nega-
tive theo logy (that is, his pointin g beyond
human categori es to the God who cann ot be
conceptualized ), te Velde cont ends that they
overemphasize the distincti on between God
and the world , to the extent that they fail to
see negation as a move in locating the intelli gi-
bilit y of the cause as knowable from its pres-
e nce in the e ffec ts. Denyin g certain thin g s of
God should not be allowed to creat e the
impre ssion that nothin g is bein g said at all.
Again, the importance of participation in
Aquin ass metaphysics has long been played
down in the Thomi stic tradition, so te Velde
maint ain s. By acce pting Ari stotl e' s dismi ssa l
of participation , comment ator s are held to
have overloo ked the "speculative depth " of
the notion . Far from meaning merely that
finit e bein gs depend on an extrinsic cause
for their existence - a pede stri an enou gh
thou ght - Aquin as' s doctrin e of part icipation
expresses how all creatures, in their own dis-
31
about Jesus, or that Jesus was indeed exe -
cuted by Jewish rather than Rom an hand s.
What they do is to shed a vivid light on the
attitudes of Jewi sh communities toward s
Jesus and, by impl ication, toward s Christ-
ian ity. For the communities that compil ed the
Talmud, and es pecially the community in
Babylonia, Jesus was an arch-villain, and
Christian cl aim s about him were both absurd
and impious. "Taken togeth er, the texts in the
Babylonian Talmud, although fragmentary
and scatte red, become a darin g and powerful
count er-Gospel to the New Tes tame nt in ge n-
era l and to John in parti cular."
Jesus in the Talm ud is a learned book , yet
writte n in an access ible sty le. Sch afer has
lon g been an important interpr eter of the rela-
tion s bet ween Jud aism and Christianity, and
here he throws much-needed light on the
neglected area of Jewi sh attitudes to Jesu s. In
rece nt ye ars these att itudes have changed
enormously, partly throu gh the work of schol-
ars such as Geza Verm es, who have recov-
ered the esse ntial Jewishness of Jesus and
sho wn that he can be see n as authentica lly
Jewish in much of his teachin g, once that is
pur ged of its later Christian ove rlay. The Tal-
mud refl ect s the older mutu al hostility and
suspicion bet ween Jews and Christians over
Jesus and his cl aim s. If Christianity had not
become the domin ant reli gion in the ancient
wo rld, Jewish polemic of thi s kind might
well hav e developed much further. Eve n the
sma ll amount of material Peter Sch afer is
able to disco ver in the Ta lmud shows ho w
hateful Jesu s see med to many Jews in the
first millennium . It administers a salutary
shock to read ers famili ar with the pol iteness
of mod ern interfaith dial ogue.
tinct wa ys, ex ist in communion with the uni-
versa l source from which they recei ve their
bein g, an altogether rich er conc epti on, so te
Velde implies. In other words, for Aquinas,
cre ation is unthinkable witho ut a conc ept of
bein g, which mean s, ho we ver , not merely
factu al ex is tence in the se nse of "the re is":
that view of existence produces "a neutraliz-
ing and homogenizing effect" which is
radically different from Aquinass sense of
God's "being eve rything in a more eminent
way than the thin gs are in them selves" . A dis-
tingui shed contemporary phi losopher such as
Denys Turn er is wro ng, how ever , in say ing
that, for Aquinas, cre ation is a partic ipation
in the di vine nature - that would amount to
the kind of panth eism from which Aquinas
ofte n distanc es himself (Turner, by the way,
is not a woman , as te Velde assum es). On the
other hand , in te Veld es mo st cont entious
prop osal, Aquin as sho uld not be regard ed as
ho lding a "the istic" conc ept of God , at lea st if
by that we mean God as an absolut e entity
exis ting indep end entl y of the world. Rath er ,
"his approach to the truth of what Christian
faith confesses of God is primaril y ontolog i-
cal". For Aqu inas, God is "the pur e actu alit y
of subsistent bein g itself' ; indeed he has no
way of thinking of God out side God' s cau sal
rel ationship to created bein gs.
Old hand s will recogniz e familiar mov es.
Rudi te Veld es is, ho wever , an extre mely
original interpr etation , challenging admirer s
and criti cs alik e to con sider whether
Aquinas' s theologica l expos ition of Christian
kno wledg e of God is intelli gibl e apart from
his metaph ysica l account of reality.
32
Technology
David J. Hand
INFORM ATIO N GENE RAT ION
How data rul e our wor ld
288pp. Oneworld Publication s. £ 16.99.
978 I 85 1 68445 8
T he re ha s recentl y been cons iderable news
about the " knowledge di scovery" tech-
niqu e know n as da ta mining. On e of the fir st
act ions of the ne wl y elec ted Dem ocr atic
Am eri can Co ngress was to intro duce legi s-
lati on guara ntee ing the di scl o sur e a nd limit-
ing the sco pe of dom esti c data mining activi-
tie s by Government age ncies. The Natio na l
Sec urity Agenc y (N SA) cur ren tly has aro und
sixtee n such pro gram s w hich - without any
legal ove rsight - monitor all digiti zed co m mu-
nicati on wi thin, to and from the U nited States.
A Stanford sy m pos ium earlie r thi s year
re vealed th at the FB I now possesses a dat a-
base asse mb ling record ings of all intern et traf-
fic becau se Am erican pri vacy laws currentl y
prevent th em from co llec ting dat a co nce rn ing
targeted IP add resses. Thi s is ca lle d the " vac-
uum cl ean er" or " full p ipe " approa c h, a nd
so me regard it as the lar gest thr eat to per son al
pri vac y and civil lib erti es since the wireta p.
Wh en an overv iew of the hi stor y and prac-
tices of dat a bec om es ava ilab le, then , one
mi ght ex pec t it to de vot e mor e th an a bit of
space to se tting th e record stra ight on th e
matt er of " kno wledge di sco very" .
Unfor tuna te ly, David J. Hand' s Inf orma-
tion Generation does very littl e of thi s.
Hand ' s technical descri ption of th e most co n-
trover sial issu e in con tem po rary dat a sc ience
rem ain s un sati sfyin gl y vag ue . And, wh ile he
sta tes th at dat a- mining techniques can be
used invasi vel y, he is mor e int erested in the
po ssibilities of the " recor d linkages" th at
facilitat e co mp arati ve dat ab ase ana lyses by
co mb ining recorded informati on abo ut indi-
vid ua ls. Of co urse, linkages th at make con-
necti on s bet ween our di et and our health , for
ex amp le, will be of unquesti on abl e benefit to
man kind. But Hand fail s to add th at, in the
hand s of un scrupulou s mark et er s, suc h tech-
niqu es al so facilitate the dir ect applicatio n of
wha t th e market ing hi stori an s John
O'S ha ug h nessy a nd Nic ho las J. O'Shaugh-
ne ssy have ca lle d th e " optim u m le vel o f fe ar"
amo ng tar get ed " cl us te rs" of co ns ume rs, w ho
ca n now rec ei ve per son ali zed adve rts o n their
ce llph on es, iPods and compute rs .
Despit e these di sapp ointment s, Inf orma-
tion Generation is hi ghl y inform ati ve and
occ asionally eloq ue nt. Es pe cia lly enjoyable
is the c ha pte r in w hic h Hand surveys the hi s-
tor y of d at a sc ience from th e pe riod of medi-
ev al magi c onwards . Her e he rem ind s us th at
" science does not cl ai m to be infall ibl e,
rathe r it acce pts a nd enco mpasses fallibility
as part of its dr ivin g forc e".
G ILES SLADE
IN BRIEF
Rhoda, Lady Birley, in th e garden at Charleston; r eproduced from Garden People :
Valerie Finnis and the golden age ofgardening by U r su la Buchan (160pp. Thames and
Hudson. £16.95. 978 0 500 51353 8). "VaIerie had a weakness for outrageous hats, both
wearing them herself and photographing others in them", Buchan writes.
Literary Criticism
Mary Ann Gillies and Aurelea Mahood
M OD E R NI S T LI T ER AT URE
An intro ductio n
2 18pp. Ed inburg h University Press. £45
(pa perbac k, £14 .99).
978 0 7486 2 763 9
M ary Ann Gilles and A ure lea M ahood' s
pri mer Modernist Literature: An intro-
duction offers a new approac h for pr esenting
liter ary culture in a pe riod of int en se soc ia l
change. Foc using specifica lly on Briti sh litera-
tur e bet ween 1900 and 194 5, it appro aches
eac h decade through a sing le gen re and a ch ar-
ac teristic th em e - the 1900 s, for instanc e,
th rou gh th e sho rt story and th e New Woman,
or th e 1910 s through wa r a nd po et ry . Th ese
di scu ssion s are supple me nted by c hro no -
logi es of significa nt liter ary, artistic and hi s-
tori cal eve nts and a series of thoughtful sug -
ge stio ns for furth er readin g. Th is for mat en a-
bles G illes and M ah ood to indi cate the sh ift-
ing them atic and c ultura l preoccupati on s of
ea rly twenti eth- century liter atur e a nd also to
brin g less-e xamined authors, suc h as Ed ith
Some rville, M art in Ross and T . E. Hul me, to
critica l atte ntio n, a practi ce th at pro vid es
fresh stim ulus fo r our apprec iatio n of pr e-war
Briti sh liter ature. Wh at let s thi s book down is
TLS J U N E 15 2 0 07
its almost w ilful ex cl us io n o f th o se landmar ks
in liter ature by which mod erni sm is com-
monl y defined . The Waste Land (192 2), th e
sing le mo st cel eb rated po em in mod erni st lit-
era ture, does not fit the ge nre assign ed to its
decade, so its o miss ion, thou gh unfortunate,
is not en tire ly un warr a nted . T he sa me ca nno t
be said of major wor ks suc h as Ulysses (1922)
or Mrs Dal/oway (192 5), w hich are delib er-
ately passed over in an und eni abl y thin ch ap-
ter , o n the 1920s, th e novel and new mod es of
liter ary ex press ion, that gives cons ideratio n
onl y to E. M . Fors te r and Eliza beth Bowen.
Modernist Literature: An introduction
wo uld have been bett er named " Essays in
Ear ly Twentieth-Ce ntury British Lit er atur e" ,
but in its present form at it fail s to fulfil its
stated aim . Certainly the study of mo de rn ism
need s to ca tch up with hi stori ci st trends in
earlie r per iod s where minor authors rece ive
full er atte ntio n, but there is still a need to
add ress ca no nica l wor ks , and thi s is parti cu-
larl y the case so far as introducti on s are con-
ce rne d . To int roduce mod erni sm properl y
requires a magisterial kno wl ed ge of th e
per iod . Modern academ ic practic e di scour-
ages suc h breadth, and th erefo re the mo st
successfu l introductions are ofte n tho se that
brin g man y ex perts togeth er , such as the excel-
lent Cambridge Companion to Modernism.
In the p rese nt publi sh-or-peri sh cu lture ,
critica l int roducti on s offer attrac tive oppor tu-
niti es for aca demics to co nso lida te th eir pro-
fil e by res tating and to so me ex ten t resetting
the para me ters of cont em porar y sc holars h ip;
but th e dan ger, parti cul arl y in a m arke t w he re
commercial success dep en ds in so me meas-
ure on offering something differ ent , is th at
man y int rodu cti on s mer el y ges ture toward s
inclusi vit y.
SA RAH D AVI SO N
Portuguese Fiction
Eca de Queiroz
T HE M AI AS
Trans lated by Margaret Jull Costa
n opp. Manchester: Carca net/Calouste
G ulbenkia n Fou ndation. £ 14.95.
978 I 8575 4 033 6
he Maias is th e lon gest and mo st amb i-
T tiou s of Eca de Qu ei roz' s eleven novel s.
Ori gin all y intended for seria liza tio n in a Li s-
bon ne wsp aper but held over in fa vour of a
sho rter work, the bo o k, wh ich was fin all y
published in 1888, offers both an ex ten ded
co mme nta ry o n th e folli es and asp ira tio ns of
lat e ninet eenth-century Portu gu ese soc iety
togeth er with a se nsa tio na l, but always reali s-
tic , account of a do om ed love affa ir. Its he ro
Carlos de M ai a has a n a ntbiva lent cha rm,
based as mu ch o n hi s und erl yin g failu res of
impul se as on hi s intelli gen ce and person al
graces. Wh en he fin all y se izes the initi ati ve
a nd e mba rks o n hi s purs uit of M ari a Edua rda,
fir st beh eld, in all her lambent sophistica tion,
ste pp ing from a ca rr iage out sid e her hotel , hi s
obsession lead s to the tragic unveiling of a
lon g-sup pressed sec ret.
Its details are di scl osed to the lovers se pa -
ratel y by th e write r Jo ao da Ega, Carloss
alte r ego, some times a San ch o Panz a to hi s
Don Qui xote a nd sure ly the book ' s most
engaging character. He bel on gs to th at race
of dreamers and fant asists inte restin g to Eca
becau se th ey see me d to e mbody Portu gal' s
ow n ca pac ity for se lf-de lusi on and its retrea t
into nost al gi c versio ns of th e nati on al p ast.
Like Ca rlos him self, in hi s handsom el y fi tte d
doctor' s co ns u lting room w hic h rem ain s
almos t entire ly un vi sit ed by pro specti ve
pa tie nts, Joao ne ver realiz es hi s pot enti al , but
in the fl awed hum anity of both men the no vel
discovers a red e mpti ve qu alit y.
Eca is th e m aster of the narr ati ve fin ale,
usu all y accomplish ed th rou gh dial ogu e
link ed to skilfully depl oyed sy mbo lism . T he
last sce ne of The Maias, in w hich Ca rlos and
Joao, havin g ag ree d o n th e ultimate futility of
effo rt in their lives, sudde n ly ra ce to catch a
tra m , offe rs a fi ne flourish of co mic iro ny .
M a rgaret Jull Costa's new E ng lis h version
ex pe rt ly captures the no veli st' s refined
a ma lga m of th e ace rb ic satirist a nd th e co m -
pass io na te o bserve r.
J O NAT H AN K EAT ES
Essays
Maurice B1anchot
A V OICE F RO M E LS E W HE R E
Tra nslated by Charlotte Mand ell
146pp . State University of New Yor k Press .
Paperback , £8.75; $ 14.95.
978 079 1470 169
T his 1992 essay co llec tion by the Fre nc h
phil osoph er , no vel ist and liter ary c ritic

Mauric e Blanchot (1907-2003) contains
three reflections on poets and one on a phil os-
oph er. Quit e what conn ection "Michel
Foucault as I Imagine Him " ( 1986) has to the
other essays is hard to fathom. The link is per-
haps a relati on to the Out side: a rejecti on of
subje ctivity or "i nteriority" and a recepti vity
to what Fouc ault called the "unimaginable"
and Rene Char, one of the poets exa mined
here, ca lled "la vie inexpri rnabl e". Neve rthe-
less, "M ichel Foucault as 1 Ima gine Him "
mark s an almos t complete shift of tone from
what has gone before, where poetr y is the
prime conc ern, in particular "the movement
that is the gift of the poem " .
Paul Ce lan ca lled it "the swe lling move-
ment I of words that are always going" , and
Blanchot' s weighty enco unter with Ce lan,
"The Last To Speak" (1984), is sure ly the
best piece here, merging Blanch ot' s noti on of
the Out side with Ce lan's expose d and open
poetics. Alm ost as impr essive is 'T he Beast
of Lascau x" ( 1958) , the essay on Char , which
begin s with a di scu ssion of Plato' s Phaedrus
that rea ds like the seed of Jacqu es Derrida' s
"Plato' s Pharmacy" (196 8). As with Ce lan,
Blanchot admires "the flight of spee ch" in
Char 's work. (He has written elsew here of
Char that "the impossibility of singing itself
becom es the so ng".) There is a sense , too,
that Ce lan and Char pro vide a moral bearin g
for Blanchot, eac h poet in his own way
responding to the menace of Naz ism.
The opening essay, "A nacrusis: On the
poems of Loui s-Rene des Forets", is a cryp tic
medit ation on music, birth and non-b ein g,
but it somehow lack s the intensity of Blan-
chot's encou nters with Char and Celan. The
tran slator Charlotte Mandell appea rs entirely
co mfortable with what the Blanchot scholar
Leslie Hill has call ed the "impenetrable clar-
ity" of Blan chots pro se, but in A Voice from
Else where the absence of a contextualizing
introduction and the spare critic al app aratus
are a disapp oint ment. In "T he Beast of Las-
ca ux", Blanch ot sugges ts a co mmon origin
for the language of thought and the language
of poetry. They are often indi stin gui shable in
his writing and no more so than in this slim
but important coll ection.
IAN PI NDAR
Military History
W. A. B. Douglas et aI
A BL UE WAT ER NA VY
The officia l operational history of the Royal
Canadian Navy in the Second World War,
1943-1945
Volume 11 , Part Two
480pp. Vanwell Publishing. $60.
978 155 125 069 4
W hen the Second World War broke out,
the Royal Canadian Navy consisted of
thirteen ships; on D-D ay, the RCN pro vided
3 16 of the 444 major warships (battleships to
minesweepers) in addition to scores of landin g
craft. As the authors of this second (exe m-
plary) and final volume of the belated Officia l
History of the Royal Canadian Navy ill the
Secon d World War make clear, eve n as the
Canadians continued to grap ple with equip-
ment probl em s (chiefly out-of-d ate asdic sonar
and radar), it had become effective both as as
anti-submarine force and as a blue-water navy.
Canada 's four Trib al class destroyers that
joined the Home Fleet by early 1943 requ ired
IN BRIEF
hull strengthening - but on August 27, HMCS
Athabascan survived a German rocket bomb-
ing that passed throu gh her superstructure, and
made Plymouth under her ow n steam. In the
days before D-D ay, HMCS Haida sank two
Ger man destroyers; the numb er might be
small, but these losses left only four destroyers
capable of challenging the D-D ay armada .
Less than three wee ks later, Haida sank a third
destroyer.
Official histories are often written from an
Ol ympi an view point. W. A. B. Douglas
rightl y, however, makes space for details that
tell us how battles were won and how men tri-
umph ed . The pages on the most unheralded of
D-D ay fighters, the mineswee ping crews
who, under the nose of German guns, cleared
the way to the beaches, are awe -insp iring. The
same is true for the unn amed engine room
artificers who pump ed out the eng ine roo ms
of their landin g craft after they had been holed
runnin g to the beach es; one then undertook a
thirt y-six-hour sail back to the Solent.
The Canadian reput ation for polit eness is
often taken for guileless ness. It shouldn' t be.
When they were dissatisfied with the RCN's
equipme nt and their status vis-a-vis the per-
manent force, a cabal of reserve office rs
adeptly we nt around the chain of co mm and
and straight to the mini ster' s office and
ensured the fall of Admiral Percy Nelles .
When Prim e Mini ster King balked at acquir-
ing larger ships, that same Nelles used the
Admi ralt y to get to Win ston Church ill, who
then per suaded King to furth er the tra nsfor-
mation of the RCN into a blue-water navy.
N ATH AN G REENFIE LD
Cultural Studies
Brinda Bose and Subhabrata
Bhattacharyya, editors
TH E PHOBI C AND T HE E ROTIC
The politics of sexualities
in contemporary India
496pp. Seagull Books.
Paperback, £16.99.
978 I 90542 214 2
I n this colle ction of twent y-fi ve essays,
Brind a Bose and Subhabrata Bhatt a-
charyya show how sex ual topic s - and
homo sexuality in parti cul ar - entered publi c
discour se in the land of the Kama Sutra .
Politic s, rather than desire, dri ves the
co ntributions here, which are comp ellin g,
theoretic all y astute and so lidly gro unded in
the pol ymorphous sex ua l world of contemp-
ora ry Indi a.
Same- sex love in India is as old as its hills
and sac red rivers. But Western labels such as
"homosexual" or "gay" can be misleading.
These thoughtfull y arrange d ess ays illu mi-
nate a shadowy univer se inhabit ed by people
who ra nge from a handfu l of urbane, self-
confid ent gay men and wo men to thousand s
of men who have sex with other men but are
strange rs to any noti on of sex ua l identit y; and
they take in the co mpl ex world of the hijr as,
or the "third sex ". Here Western taxonom ies
encounter the boum of E. M. Forsters caves .
But , as the editors note in their subtle intro-
duction, so me sort of identity rather than a
purely beh aviour-based politic s is needed to
co mbat Sec tion 377 of the Indian Pen al Co de
which criminalizes hom osexualit y. Intro-
duced in the late nineteenth century und er
Briti sh rule, the law has been the focu s of
TLS J UNE 15 2007
recent publi c debates; it rem ains a brut al coer-
cive tool much loved by the polic e, though
they too may occas ionally panic: "Sab gay
ban rahen hay" ("Everyone is becomin g
gay"). Class, contac ts, gender and at tim es
caste, the essays sugges t, determi ne how
freely yo u live and love in India today: whe-
ther you choose to shock a bour geoi s audi-
ence by usin g pink ch ap-stick , or you flin g
yourse lf und er a train. Suicide pacts amo ng
lesbian couples are becomin g comm on in
modern India.
The main strength of this volume is its
remarkable ra nge . Aca demi cs, activists and
journalists from India and abroad are brou ght
togeth er to address questions of sex ua lity in
different contexts, which includ e Ga ndhi, glo-
balization and gay crui sin g, Boll ywood , high
art, the contro versial "lesbian" film Fire and
HIV /AIDS awa reness programm es. The
essays are at their most powerful whe n they
incorporate the anecd otal and the affecti ve:
as in a queer activist and lawyer ' s enco unter
with the polic e; a kot hi recounting the painful
process of castr ation ; a wo man journ alist' s
unsettlin g visit to a festival of the "third gen-
der". Ruth Vanit a pioneered the project of
gay studies in India in the 1980 s; this volume
shows how it ha s com e of age .
SANTANU D AS
Natural History
Peter Mortimer
THE LAS T OF T HE H UNT ERS
Life with the fishermen of North Shields
100pp. Five Leaves. Paperback, £6.99.
978 1905 5 12218
T wenty yea rs ago , the playwright and poet
Peter Mortimer publi shed The Last of the
Hunte rs, his fir st-h and acco unt of going to
sea with the commercial fishermen of
"Canny Shields" (North Shields) as they
scratched a living from the depl eted stocks of
fish and shellfis h living at the bottom of the
North Sea . It has now been reissued in paper-
back , with an additional chapter outlining the
fate, all too often sad, of the men and vesse ls
whose privations Mortimer shared. No ne of
the boats he join ed was large, and nearly all
were singularly lackin g in the mos t basic
faciliti es for was hing or other sanitary pur-
poses. Th at a land sm an with a good home
ashore wo uld wish to subje ct himse lf repea t-
edly to such discomfort and danger mu st
have baffl ed his shipma tes as much as it has,
over the past fift y yea rs, baffled others. Ask
the fishermen them selves why they do it
and they will tell you that they do it for
the money and nothin g else . That a high
pro portion cannot settle after more than
a few days ashore hint s that other forces are
also at work.
As the title of Mo rtimer 's book sugges ts,
co mmercial fishin g is a form of hunting, an
acti vity that appea ls to impul ses hard- wired
into the brain. Co mbine an indul gence of the
hunti ng instin ct with the co mrades hip insepa-
rable fro m share d danger and it is not so sur-
prising that fisherm en become irresistibly
wedded to their way of life. That many punc-
tuate their conversa tion with lavish helpings
of A nglo-Sax on expletives and inno centl y
gut living fishes, as do Mortimer ' s col-
leagues, in no way det racts from their status
as the mos t ga llant of men.
RICH ARD SHE LTON
33
History of Medicine
Markham J. Geller
RENAL AND RECTAL
DIS EA SE TE XT S
Die babylonisch-assyrische Medizin
in Texten und Untersuchungen
284pp. Berlin: Waiter de Gruy ter.
€ 118.
9783 II 0 17964 4
W hen in 1923 R. Cam pbe ll Thompso n
publi shed so me cune iform tablets,
then in the British Mu seum, as Assyrian Medi-
cal Texts, and we nt on to pro vide tent ati ve
translation s of them (in 1929 and 1934 ), it
was clear eve n to non- speci alists that these
preciou s docu ments were far too fragment ary
to dra w fir m conclu sions about the medicine
and dru g lore of ancient Mesopotami a. Ove r
the followin g decades, new j oin s of the tab-
lets have gradually produced texts that could
be asse mbled, copied and edited, with tran s-
lation s as in this pioneerin g volume by
Markh am J. Ge ller. The previou s six vol-
umes, Die babvlonisch-assyrische Medizin ill
Texten und Untersuchuge n (BA M to Assyri-
olog ists), present ed only autograph copi es of
the cun eiform medic al tablets, with useful
indices listin g all know n parallel passages,
but not until pain stakin g analysis and fre-
quent rereadin gs could one begin to classify
the diagnoses, prognoses and therap ies of
particul ar diseases.
Ge ller asse mbles tablets on diseases of the
kidneys, bladd er and lower intestin al tract ,
and a numb er of ass umptions are qui ckl y
dem oli shed , including the ge nera l impression
that ancient Mes opo tamia n pharmacol ogy
was exclusively magical. Spell-c astin g, mag i-
cal formul as and formul aic pron oun cements
were cert ainl y character istic, but the spec ific
pharm aceuti cals as recomm end ed for parti-
cul ar ailm ent s we re not, e.g . No. I with its
"male" mandrake for the pain s of a tat tiku
(dribbling urin e) di sea se. Th omp son' s occa-
sionally and intuit ively correct botanical, min-
eralog ica l and faun a} identificatio ns are no w
augmented a hundred-fold , and added
bonu ses in the Renal and Rectal Disease
Texts are the transliter ated and translated
"Diagnostic Handb ook" , and "Lexical Ta blet
of Disea se Names" as Nos . 49 and 50 . Ge ller,
with typical courtesy, credits JoAnn Scurlock
for her fresh edition of the "Diagnostic Hand-
book" , thereby ca lling our attention
to another scholar of high abilities opening
long-cl osed port als to the millenni a
of success ful medicine as practised by the
aship u and asii .
An yone with an interest in the earliest
known documents of a "Western" medicine
should carefully study Ge ller's texts, as well
as the transliterated, tran slated and " inter-
preted" tabl ets in the bulk y Diagn os es ill
Assyrian and Babylonian Medicin e co-
authored by Scurlock and Burton R. And er-
son (2005) . There will be much debat e
among ancie nt medi cal histori ans rega rding
connection s between ancient Mesopotamian,
Egyp tian, Hittit e, Hebrew and Greek medi-
cin e. Ge lle r ea rlier signalled a new approac h
to old probl em s with his studies of Assyri an
medical term s nestled in the Talmud, so
that multipl e traditi ons will be involved
in this new histor y of medicine of the
An cient Nea r Eas t.
JO H N SCARBOROUG H
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 35

T erri Apter is Sen ior T utor of New nham
College, Ca mbridge . Her most recen t book
is The Sister Knot: Why we fig ht, why we 're
jealous, and why we '11 love each other no
matter what, publishe d thi s yea r.
John Barton is Professor of the Interpreta-
tio n of Holy Scripture in the Unive rsity of
Oxfor d. Hi s nex t book , The Nature of
Biblical Criticism , is d ue to be publis hed
next mon th.
St ep hen Brown is Emeritus Professor of
Music at So uthern Illinois University . He is
the autho r of The Sense of Music , 1988.
James Ca m pb ell is the author of a bio-
graphy of James Baldwin, Talking at the
Gates , 1991 , and more recentl y This Is the
Beat Generation, 1999. Hi s new book ,
Through the Grap evine : Essays and por -
traits, will be published next yea r.
M atthew Cob b is Sen ior Lecture r in
Anima l Be hav iour at the Unive rsity of
Manc hester. His book The Egg and Sperm
Race: The sevent eenth-century scienti sts
who unrave lled the secrets of sex, life and
growth was published in pa per back ear lier
thi s year.
Santanu Das is a British Aca demy Postdoc-
toral Fe llow at Qu een Mary, Unive rsity of
Lo ndo n, and the author of Touch and
Intimacy in First World War Literature,
publ ished last yea r.
Elizabeth Eg er is a lecturer in Eng lish at
King ' s Co llege Lond on. She is co -cura ting
an ex hibition at the Na tiona l Port rait Ga l-
lery, Brilliant Women: Eighteenth-centu ry
Bluestockings, which will open nex t spring .
Car r ie Etter is an Associate Lectur er in
Crea tive Writing at Bath Spa Unive rsity .
WiIliam Fitzgerald is a Fellow of Go nville
and Ca ius Co llege , Cam bri dge . His mos t
rece nt book is Martial: The epigrammatic
world, publ ished thi s year. He is the author
of Slavery and the Roman Literary Imagina-
tion ,2000.
Judith Flanders' s most recent bo ok , Con-
suming Passions : Leisure and pleasu re in
Victorian Britain, wa s publi shed last yea r.
She is the autho r of The Victor ian House,
200 3, and A Circle of Sisters , 2001 .
Na th a n G reenfield 's new book , Baptism of
Fire: The Second Battle of Ypres and the
for ging of Canada , April 1915, will be
published later thi s year.
Paul Griffiths' s mos t recen t book is The
Substance of Things Heard: Selected essays,
reviews and occas ional pieces , 2005.
Andrew HadfieId is Professor of English at
the Unive rsi ty of Sussex. His book s includ e
Shakespeare and Renaissance Political Cul-
ture , 2003.
M . John Harrison ' s most recent no vel is
Nova Swing, publi shed last yea r. His co llec -
tion of shor t stor ies, Things That Never
Happen, appea red in paperb ack in 2004 .
J . L. Heilbron is Seni or Research Fellow at
Worcester Co llege , Oxford . Hi s book s
includ e The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals
as solar obse rvatories, 1999.
K atharine Hibbert was shortlis ted as
Yo ung Journ ali st of the Yea r in the 2006
Bri tish Press Awards for her wor k at the
Sunday Times Magazine.
G eoffrey Hill ' s new co llec tion of poe ms , A
Treatise of Civil Power, will be published
later thi s year.
Nich oIa s A. Joukovsky edited The Letters
of Thomas Lo ve Peacock, 200 I. He is
Prof essor of Eng lish at Penn sylvani a State
University.
J onathan K eates' s mo st recent bo ok is The
Siege of Venice , publ ished last yea r. His
mos t recent novel is Smile Please, 2000.
Fergus Kerrs book s include After
Aquinas: Versions of Thomism, 200 2, and
Immortal Longings: Versions of transcend-
ing huma nity , 1997.
Ferdinand Mount' s new novel , The Con-
dor 's Head, will be published next month .
His recent book s include Mind the Gap:
The new class divide in Britain, 2004 .
AIva No e is Professor of Ph ilosoph y at the
Univers ity of Ca lifornia, Berkeley. He is
worki ng on a book ca lled Out of Our Heads:
Why you are not your brain and other
lessons from the biology of consc iousness.
Bernard O'Donoghue ' s verse tran slati on
of Sir Gawa in and the Green Knight was
published in 2006.
David Papineau is Professor of Phil osoph y
at Kin g' s Co llege Lon do n. His book s
include Thinking about Consciousness,
2002, and Philosophical Na turalism, 1993.
MichaeI P eel is a Financial Times journal-
ist. He wa s that newspaper' s West Africa
correspon de nt bet ween 2002 and 2005 .
lan Pindar is the autho r of a biogr aphy of
Jam es Joyce , 2004 . His most recent book is
The Folio Book of Historic Speec hes,
published thi s yea r.
Mi chaeI Saler teaches Intell ectu al History
at the Unive rs ity of Cal ifornia, Davis. He is
the author of The A vant-Garde in Interwar
Eng land , 1999.
John Scarborough is Professor in the
Schoo l of Phar macy and the Departm ent of
Class ics, University of Wiscon sin , M ad ison.
A second ed ition of his Rom an M ed ici ne is
in preparation .
Richard Sh elton is the Research Director
of the Atl antic Salmon Trust an d Chairma n
of the Buckland Founda tion. His mem oir,
The Longshoreman: A life at the water's
edge, was published in 2004 .
A. W . B. Simpson, Eme ritus Professor of
Law at the Univer sity of Kent at Ca nter-
bur y, is the author of Human Rights and the
End of Empire: Britain and the European
Convention , 200 1.
Gil es Slade' s book Made To Break: Techno-
logy and obso lescence in America was pub-
lished last yea r. It wo n the IPP Y 2007 go ld
meda l for best env iro nmen tal book.
John Stokes is Pro fesso r in the Dep artm ent
of English at King' s Co llege Lo ndon. He is
the co- edit or of The Cambridge Companion
to the Actress, published thi s yea r.
Michelen e Wandor' s history of crea tive
wr iting in the Un ited Kingd om , The Author
Is Not Dead, Merely Somew here Else, is
published thi s year.
April W arman is a co ntributor to Eng lish:
The journal of the Eng lish Association and
The Oxford Handbook of British and Irish
War Poetry, publis hed thi s year.
William Wootten is a book sell er and
literar y critic livin g in Londo n.
Correction: TLS/Foy les Poe try Co mpe tition
shor tlis t (Jun e 8). The 19th line of poe m F
("T he M au ve Ta rn-o' -Sh ant er" ) sho uld read
"O nco log ists co uld do no more" , not "co uld
do mo re" as printed. In the same poe m, line
39 should begin with a capital "A" .
Author, Author, Co mpetition No 1,348
(May 18). So lution: 1 Philip Larkin , "Wed-
ding -W ind" 2 Euge nio Mont ale, " Notizie
de ll' Ami at a" 3 Rob ert Lowell , " Skunk
Hour" . Winn er : Rob ert Hamlin, West
Sussex .

TLS C RO SSWORD 699 M A K

A L
E A
M
N D
I
B R
U
E A
B
K
A M
ACROSS DOWN T H E W A R D E N B E T Z I

1 Blow recalling Norah Lofts' s climber, 1 Comic relief, perhaps, on the part of [ I Z 0 E 0 H L
L A N D 0 R A B S T R A C T
perhap s (7) theatre piece (2-4)
D N E L 0
5 Hunting type confuses maestri (7) 2 Sutcliffe subject is rejected (7) A S V A I N E R 0 P T I o N
9 Miscellany possibly up to Prior (9) 3 What Sussex landscape painter will do, 0 A J G 0 A
10 Parish record feat ured by John Ga it (5) in confrontations? (9) S A L [ N G E R A L T H E A
11 A dra wback , but not for a strugg ling 4 Man of Argyle put out by king' s ha lf- P T P I n
writer (5) sister (6, 2, 3) H I A W A T H A N A U S E A

12 Location of Trollo pe'x mode st 5 Maupassant' s was handsome (3) [ I M T A K Y M

N 0 R M A H I P P o C R A S
home (9) 6 Sibling conceals a novelist (5)
X E T A S F I 0
14 Shute' s place like Dodgson 7 Composer hardly recognizable in M I C H A E L F R A Y N
chara cter? ( 1, 4, 4, 5) motet (7)
17 Goldin g ceremo ny confined to 8 Some quiet contributions by Tillie SOLUTION TO CROSSWORD 695
lob by? (5, 2, 7) Olsen (8)
21 Mother of nine (doubtless had a way of 13 Mere feature near hellhole in The winner of Crossword 695 is
remembering their names) (9) Campania (4, 7) Philippa Goold, South Had ley, MA.
23 American accolade for Porter' s 15 Inaccurately cite haste to describe an
D' Hara? (5) attitude of Pre-Rap haelites (9)
24 Poem on theatre (5) 16 Early blossom for Yorkshire church-
25 Heard Wa ughlike tit le (3, 2,4) ma n (8) The sender of the first correct
26 "He did - me, past all saying nay" 18 Theatre flop at that place (7) solution ope ned on Jul y 6 will rece ive
(Merchant of Venice ) (7 ) 19 Eldest daughter left on Rhode Island a ca sh pri ze of £40 .
27 English version of Horatian with a pound (7) Entrie s should be addre ssed to
Carmen (7 ) 20 Poet who made conditions (6) TLS Crossword 699 ,
Times House, I Pe nning ton Stree t,
22 Quantity of civet required to sweeten
Lear' s imagination (5) Londo n E9 8 IBS .
25 Encountered leading minimalist enter-
ing Tat e (3)

TLS J UN E 15 2007
36

M eals and Recip es from An cient Greece

by Euge nia Salza Prina Ricotti is
di vided into two part s: in the first, she offers
Clicking of Cuthbert" (sent by Steve Love-
man), in which the writer Vladimir Bru siloff
rates his conte mpora ries: "No noveli sts any
a background to ancient ea ting and drinking goo d exc ept me. Soviet ski - yah! Nastikoff -
habit s, based on classical sources ; in the bah ! I sp it me on zem all. P. G. Wod ehouse
second, the study is put to pract ical use, in the and Tol stoi not bad. Not goo d, but not bad".
form of recip es. Ms Ricotti tells us that, "to A writer rarely count ed am ong the self-
begin with, in the Iliad , men sat do wn to eat deprecatin g is Vladimir Na bokov. Vinc ent
... chunks of beef roasted over an open fire"; Sievekin g reminds us of the moment in
at the tim e of the Troja n War, she beli eves,
no other cooking meth ods we re kno wn.
"Black wine was served in ex pensive cup s."
Ancient wisdom Na bobov 's mem oir Speak, M emory in which
the novelist, meetin g other emigre writers,
refers to Sirin , "the author that interested me
We kno w what expe nsive cup s are, but most. He belon ged to my generation. Among
what is "black wine"? Ms Ricotti states that it minut es), lobster, bream and kid goat. The then in his eighty-fifth year. To Glasgow , this the yo ung writers produc ed in ex ile he turn ed
was "far stronge r than toda y' s wine" and that last, attributed to Apiciu s, we are happ y to pro ved "that it is intell ect , after all, that out to be the only major one . .." . Sirin was ,
Western civiliza tion requi red the develop- pass on: "Put it in the oven, roast it and serve counts as one goes over the hill of life. He is of course, Nabokov's early nom de plum e. Mr
ment of a dilut ed version. Onl y the Scythi ans it". The wisdom of the ancients. far more mod ern and advanc ed than most Sievekin g is awa re that Metafiction II applies
continued with the hard stuff, hence the direc- With pork , Ms Ricotti finall y produ ces a men of twenty-five". Two yea rs later , to fiction , but claim s that Speak, Memory
tion to one's merchant: " make it like the classic: Vulva Eiec tita, "the vulva of a sow Edmund Gosse visited Hard y, and beheld "A belon gs in a category of its ow n making.
Scythians", Bein g partial to a drop of both that had miscarried". But she turn s out to be wo nder ! At 87Y, without a single defici ency
of sight, hearing mind or con ver sation". Ma x
the Scythian and the non- Scythi an , we too deli cate for the deli cacy , dashin g our
wond ered how it was produc ed , ho w it might hopes of findin g any sow 's vulva in the loc al
ha ve tasted, what exa ctly "far stronge r" agora . "Eve n if we wanted to try it, which I
Beerbohm found him "younger than eve r".
These recollections and some 150 others,
I t is doubtl ess ju st coincidenc e, but since we
began our "Poetry babbl e" series, spotlight-
ing incomprehensibl e recomm end ation s of
means. Ms Ricotti does not say. doubt , it would be impossibl e given mecha- long and short, are contained in Thomas sometimes incomprehen sibl e poetry, the bab-
Still , the table is laid and dinn er mu st be nized meat-proc essing sy terns", she wr ites , Hardy Rememb ered , edit ed by Martin Ray ble see ms to have decreased . The Ca mbridge
served. We turn ed to a recipe for "Ze nos ignorin g both the hardin ess of the modern pal- (Ashgat e, £55) . However, we do not always publi sher Sa lt, once a reliabl e prov ider, has
Lentil Soup ", consisting of I Ib lentil s, 2 litres ate and the potenti al of organic farming. The see our sel ves as others see us, and Hard y dis- begun isssuin g books witho ut any blurb s at
broth , a chopp ed leek, carrot and on ion tossed first reader to send in a recip e for sow 's vulva closed to a reporter from the Eng lish Illu s- all - To ny Lopez' s Covers, John Hartl ey
in oil; add hon ey and " 12 coriander seeds". will rece ive a copy of M eals and Recipes trated Magazine that "the crue lty of fate Willi ams' s The Ship - and when the y do put
It' s prob ably deli ciou s - in fact, we kno w it is from An cient Greece (Ge tty, £1 5.99). becomes app arent to people as they grow some words of wisdom on the back , what do
because we make it all the time (using parsley older. If one lives lon g enough one reali zes yo u kno w, they make sense . The poem s in
instead of coriander). Ze no never enters our n 1925, the Amer ican noveli st Elle n Glas- that happin ess is very ephe meral" . To the Elea nor Rees' s new book Andraste 's Hair,
mind s. The same goes for the Greek recipes I gow wro te to a friend that she "never saw
for fried shrimp (cook in olive oil for 6-7 such an attractive man as Thom as Hard y" ,
anonymous journalist, Hard y was not
"attractive" or "a wo nder", but "a littl e,
according to Paul Farley , " seem to issue from
a lyric count ry where they do th ings differ-
timid-l ookin g man, very pale, and with an ently . Instincti ve, elemental, limber and
embarrassed look . . . on his sea red face". rea dy for anything . ..".
As reported in NB some time ago , there is There' s still a bit of babbl e out there,
one livin g surv ivor of a stage produ cti on of thou gh. Shearsman of Exeter have issued On
Tess of the d ' Urber villes witnessed by Ruins & Return by the A merica n-Israe li poet
Hard y, Norrie Woodhall , no w aged 101. Mr Rachel Tzv ia Back, and have invited Kazim
Ray does not reproduce her reminiscence - Ali to pen a few words for the back cove r:
that Hard y, on notin g her disappointment at "Though lyric in their shape, these poem s are
having onl y one line to spea k ("Oh, Tess, disjun cti ve injunctions, ase mic prayers, des-
Tess") gave her another : "I am so glad perately disparate, becau se in a land of stran-
you've come hom e" . Instead , Ray tell s us of gers ... eve ry idea of citizenship is suspec t" .
Gwe n Ffrangcon-Dav ies, who played Tess in So much for the cont ent , what about the
a produ ction at Barn es, West Lond on, in form ? " Back is able to use open field compo-
1925 . Meetin g Hard y, she asked if there was sition, multivocal address , pol yval ent tex-
an "origina l" Tess, to which he repli ed: " I tures, and a particul arly disturbing fractur ed
thou ght so onc e, but the next tim e I saw the form of couplet."
girl she was totally different". Hard y enjoyed
. . wed in tne
the Lond on co mpany's performance, but
offe red one critici sm: "In Dor set, you know, I ntimations: The winners of the 200 7 Co m-
monwealth Writ er s' Priz es are the novel
\<5 reVle h r - we don 't drop our aitches" . Mi ster Pip by Lloyd Jones of New Ze aland
All oo0 a million ot"e Interviews did not app ear onl y in English (Overall Best Boo k), reviewed on p21 , and
lLS and over ava'tlable from paper s. The New York Times of Jun e 4, 1926 Vand al Love by D. Y. Bech ard of Ca nada
·,..,t, , areS BOO~s
t:tles, .In pr!. ." hOP
I tne ,.L d prices w'ttn
at d'tscounte . tne UK.
reported that an Am eri can returning from
England had heard the novelist say that there
we re two "g rea t thin gs" about the United
(Overall Best First Book ). The priz es, which
aim to "reward the best Co mmonwea lth fic-
tion writte n in English, by both established
fREE de\'tverY In States : "the poetry of Edna St Vincent Mill ay and new wr iters" , are worth £ 10,000 and
and what he call ed our ' recessional build- £5,000 respecti vely. Mi ster Pip is reviewed
. e bOO\( ings" '. We think we know what he means; on page 23.
d advl c ,
Ass'tstance an pp'tng, gift but why " recessional" ? The wi nner of the 200 6 Antho ny Hecht
gift-wra s Poetr y Priz e, for an unpubli shed book-l ength
catalOgues, mendation collection , is Big-Eyed Af raid by Erica
om
voucners , rec estiOns f ro m
and SUgg d nelpful
M etafiction 1I: in which noveli sts refer to
them selves in their own ficti on. Exam-
ples are most charming when faintl y disobli g-
Daw son . She is enriched by $3,000 . Her
book will be publi shed by Waywiser Press
able an
\(nowledge boO\(sellers. ing. We ca nnot decid e if thi s is the case with later in the yea r.
P. G . Wodehou se, in his short story "The J.C.

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TLS J UN E 15 2007