NOVEMBER 9 2007 No 5458

~
11
Late at the British Library
Four specia l lat e eve nts ce lebrat ing th e op enin g of th e British
Libra ry's new ex hibition Brea ki ng th e Rul es: The Pri nte d Face
o f th e European Avan t Carde 1900 - 1937 (opens 9 Novemb er).
Enjoy live sonic a nd visual perf orm an ces, a lice nsed bar a nd a
uniqu e at mosphe re.
ILS
Telephone: 0207782 5000 Fax: 020 77824966 letters @the-tls.co.uk

Editor Peter Stothard (editor@ the- tls.co. uk)

Assistant to the Editor Maureen Alien (editor@the-tls.co.uk) 020 7782 4962
Deputy Editor Alan Jenkins (deputy@the-tls.co.uk)

Mary Beard Classics. Ancient History (mb I27@hermes.cam.ac.uk)

Michael Caines Bibli ograph y, Film, The atre, Referen ce (theatre@the-tls.co.uk)
J a mes Camphell American Literature, Scotland (scotus@the-tls.co.uk)
Luc y Dallas. Web site, In Brief (TLS_lnternet_Editor@newsint.co.uk)
Lindsay Duguid Fiction, English Literature (fiction@the-tls.co.uk)
Will E a ves Mu sic, Architecture, Art History (arts@the-tls.co.uk)
Dav id Horspool Histor y, South As ia, Sport (history@the-tls.co.uk)
Mick Imlah Poetry, Archae ology, Ireland , English Literatur e (mick.imlah@the-tls.co.uk)
Rohert Irwin Middl e East, Islam (alhambra2@gmail.com)
Alan Jenkins Co mmentary, English Literature (deputy@the-tls.co.uk)
Toby Lichtig Website, East As ia, English Literature (TLS_lnternet_Editor@newsint.co.uk)
David McKitterick Biblio graphy (dmckitterick@gmail.com)
Maren Meinhardt Science, Psychology, Medicine (maren. me inhard t@ the- tls.co. uk)
Redmond O'Hanlon Natural History (science@the-tls.co.uk)
Robert Potts Production , Australas ia (australasia @the-tls.co.uk)
John Ryle. Africa, Anthro pology (tls@ryle.net)
Rupert Shortt Religion , Latin America, Spain (rupert.shortt@the-tls.co.uk)
Martin Smith Pictur es (images@the-tls.co.uk)
Friday 9 November, 19.00 - 22.30
Peter Stothard Politics , Classics (editor@the-tls.co.uk)
THE FUTURE OF SOUND
(Performances start at 20.00) Ga len Strawson Philo soph y (tlsphilosophy@mac.com)
A sonic spectacular showcasing cutt ing edge artists in music and audio design , performing Adrian Tahourdin France, Italy, Lett ers to the Ed itor (adrian.tahourdin@the-tls.co.uk)
their innovations and discoveries in surround-sound in t he Entrance Hall of th e Library.
Anna Vaux. Biography, Soc ial Studies, Learned Journ als, Travel (anna.vaux@the-tls.co.uk)
Monday 12 November, 19.00 - 21.30 Elizaheth Winter Germa ny, Russia, Jewish Studies (elizabeth.winter@the-tls.co.uk)
'STRIKE' BY SERGEI EISENSTEIN WITH A NEW SCO RE BY EO HU GHE S
PERFOR MED BY THE NEW M USIC PLAYERS
(Screening starts at 20.00) Managlng Director James Muclvlanus (caro line.jo hnston@newsi nt.co. uk)
New Music Players perf orm British composer Ed Hughes' new score fo r Eisenst ein 's Disp lay Advertising Linsey Kenhard (Iinsey.kenhard@newsint.co.uk) 020 7782 4974
first silent feature film Strike (1925). Cla ssified Advertising Luc y Smart (Iucy.smart@newsint.co.uk) 020 7782 4975
Thursday 15 November19.00 - 22.30 Head of Marketing Jo Cogan (jo.coganO the-tls.co.uk]
WEIRD AND WONDERFUL EXPLORIN G AVA NT·G AR D E M USIC
PERFORMANCE PA ST A N D PRESENT
(Screening starts at 20.00) Correspondence and deliveries Time s House, I Pennin gton Street, Lond on E98 IBS
An evening of sound and visual experiments, by London Sinfon ietta musicians Subscriptions tls@subscription.co. uk 01858 438781; US/Ca nada custsvc _ times upl@f ulco inc.co m
and conte mporary electron ic artists. 1-800 370 9040 Suhscriher archive webmaster@the-t1s.co. uk
Commissioned by the British Library and Arrivals
Back issues 020 7740 0217 tls@ocsmedia.net
- celebrating the arrival of Eurostar to St Pancras.

Friday16 November, 18.30 - 22.30 are de voted to mu sic . Pe te r

LOCOMOTION: ARTISTS' FILM AND THE RAILWAY
(Screening starts at 20.00)
An evening of Avant Garde fi lms and live performances of new and old
experimental works about the railway.
Commissioned by the British Library and Arrivals
- celebrating the arrival of Eurostar to St Pancras. W alk do wn Bak er Stree t
and yo u will always
find someone look ing for the
Price £5. These events are not seated.
Book Online www.bl.uk/breakingtherules T +44 (0)1937 546546 address of Sh erl ock Holmes,
th at ficti onal yet sure ly so
rea l place of the " menage"
with Or W atson . Walk
Breaking the Rules through Dublin and yo u may
The Printed Face of th e European Avant Garde 1900 - 1937 find a liter ary touri st pond er-
9 November - 30 March 2008 ing the shapes made o n map s
FREEEXHIBITION by th e journeys in Ulysses. A
Explore the creative revolution that took place in Europe at the beginning of the 20th cro ss o ver the city centre?
cent ury - encompassing visual art, design, photography, literature, t heatre, music and Wh at is the meaning of th at?
architect ure. This exhibitio n includes a variety of artistic movement s - from Cubism to Ian Pindar di scu sses a major
Surrealism, draw ing on th e Library's unrivalled collections and internatio nal loans. ch an ge in the literar y use of
map s du rin g the shift from
rea lism to moderni sm a
century ago. In our ope ning
pi ece, Din ah Bir ch stays
behind the study do or, ex am-
inin g how the life and lett er s
of Sir A rthur Cona n Doyle
influ enced the quintessenti al
det ecti ve stor ies of Lond on.
Co lour is as imp ort ant to
th e art of mappi ng as prec ise
Johannes Brahms, c.1865
loc ation. Wm . Roger Loui s
praises two outstand ing
book s on ho w the globe,
onc e so Briti sh pink, becam e
a thin g of so man y variant
hu es. Both Ron ald Hyam ' s
and Pier s Brendon' s
acc ounts of the failing
Em pire cont ain episodes of
the graphic savagery that
stains the story , the fir st from
a cli ent Kin g of Swaziland,
the seco nd from the co loni al
torturer s of Ad en w ho se t the
ton e for Abu G hra ib.
Se ver al rev iews thi s wee k
Willi am s con sid er s wha t we
mean by " late" sty le. Is th ere
any cl ear lin k bet ween the
maturity of a string qu art et or
M ass (" it mu st be late" ) and
the age of a composer ? John
Coltrane 's j azz recordings lib-
erated eve ry saxopho nist
from the need to master the
o ld skills : unfortunately,
as Stephen Bro wn wr ites ,
the others "weren' t John
Co ltra ne" . Hu gh M acdonald
takes on M endel ssohn and
the wi tc h-hunters.
T he TLS has lon g been
proudly associated with the
prizes for literary tran slation
offere d in Britain und er the
aus pices of the Soci et y of
Authors. If there is a bett er
commitment to the compre-
hen sion of oth er cultures
th an tran slati on - thi s yea r
covering Fre nch teen age
slang and an Ar ab assa ult on
a teach er - we do not kn ow
w hat it is.
PS

TLS NOVE M BER 9 20 07


Elementary love
A Life of Conan Doyle illuminates the passion behind the creator of Sherlock Holmes:
newly published letters show the role of the supernatural
t is odd that so much comfort is to be
I had from Sherlock Holm es, given
the brut al violence of his adve ntures.
No t only are those who cross his path
routinely shot, blud geon ed, or knifed, they
run the risk of bein g starve d, buri ed alive,
attac ked by huge and fren zied hound s, killed
by hor ses, jell yfi sh, or ve no mous snakes ,
asp hyx iated with toxic va pours, affl icted
with foul diseases, or crushed in giant iron
presses. They might lose a thumb or an
ear; occas ionally they lose their mind s. Yet
Holm es is the most con solin g of literar y
icon s. He cannot always prevent crime or
puni sh the criminal, but he never fail s to
ex plain what has happ ened , and ho w, and
wh y. Th e pro saic Wat son likes to claim that
his hero is inf allibl e because he scorns the
emotional bagg age that befuddles the judge-
ment of lesser men. In fact these stories
are ten se with feelin g, for Holm ess hatred
of wro ngdoing is a passion rather than an
intell ectu al commitment.
Thi s per son al resonance is streng thened
by the bond between the detecti ve and his
biograph er. In "The Ad venture of the Bruc e-
Partin gton Plans" , Watson stee ls him self to
acco mpany Holm es on a particul arly dan ger-
o us enterprise : "' I knew yo u would not
shrink at the last ' , said he, and for a mom ent I
saw something in his eyes which was closer
to tend ern ess than I had eve r see n". Wh en
Watson takes a bull et in "The Ad venture of
the Th ree Garrid eb s" , Holmes revea ls his
distress:
It was worth a wo und - it was wo rth man y
wounds - to know the depth of loyalty and love
which lay behind that cold mask. The clear,
hard eyes were dimm ed for a mom ent, and the
firm lips were sha king. For the one and only
time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well
as of a great brain. All my years of humble
but sing le- minde d serv ice culm ina ted in tha t
mom ent of reve lat ion.
Th ese are late tales, and such glimpses of
em otion are not characteri stic of Holm es' s
fir st app earan ces. But the earlier relation
between the two men in their shared qu arters
in Baker Street is like a settled marriage
betwe en widely different partn ers. The
ex traor dinary success of the stor ies depend s
o n a continued dialo gu e bet ween opp osit es.
Re stl e ss int elli gen ce is c ontras te d w ith stolid
convention ality. Mundane detail s of dail y
life, with regular meals, railw ay tim etables,
newspaper s, tob acc o and blazing fires, are
juxtaposed with Holrn es' s taste for cocaine,
melan chol y mu sic and the exc iteme nt of his
biz arr e detecti ve cha ses. The langu age is as
plain as the cases are grotesque . Th ese divi-
sions, where hidd en strange ness con stantl y
disrupts commonplace habit s, mirro r Arthur
Co nan Doyles own life. Andrew Lyceti' s
livel y and illuminatin g bio graph y has much
to say about the fissur es that split Do yles
apparently con servative ex istence from top to
BIOGRAPHY & LETTERS
DINAH BIR CH
Andr ew L yc ett
CONAN DO YL E
T he man who created Sherl ock Holm es
527pp. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. £20.
978 0297848523
Jo n L ell enb e r g ,
Dani el St a sh o w er a n d
Ch a rl e s Fol e y , e d i to rs
A RT HU R C ONAN DOYL E
A Life in lett ers
687pp. HarperPress. £25.
978 0 007247592
bott om . Insecurity hovered ove r his child-
hood. Thou gh he later bec ame the mo st patri-
otic of Englishmen, he was brou ght up in
Edinburg h, and the famil y was Irish in ori gin.
They were de voutl y Ca tho lic. Arthur' s uncl e
Richard (" Dicky") Do yle, the mo st famou s
memb er of the cl an, was a celeb rated cartoon-
ist and illu strator; his grandfa ther John was a
prominent polit ical caricaturist. His father,
Charles Do yle, was also a talented artist,
but he lacked the famil y' s distin cti ve se lf-
TLS NO VE M BE R 9 20 07
ass urance . Charles 's Irish wife, Mary Foley,
was more cap able and forceful. Wh en
Charles becam e a ment all y unstabl e drinker,
and had to be confined in instituti on s, it wa s
Marys tenacit y, togeth er with the practical
support of the Doyl e famil y, that held ruin at
bay. Arthur' s disciplined educ ation at Ston y-
hur st, the leadin g Rom an Catholic boarding
school, and his medic al trainin g at Edin-
burgh, wo uld have been impo ssibl e without
his famil y' s backing. He knew what he owe d
to them , but he also kne w what was ex pected
in return, and was haunted by the need to find
success , make mon ey and re-establi sh the
famil y' s respect ability. Hi s moth er ' s devo-
tion was esse ntial to his self-estee m and
sense of purpose; it also impo sed paralysing
burd en s which Do yle per sistentl y tried to
shed .
A likin g for romance and fant asy was one
symptom of thi s tend enc y, but it often took
more haz ardou s form s. Do yle never lost his
boyi sh inclin ation to take risks . He was
almos t shot as an intruder when he found
him self lock ed out of a hou se where he was
stay ing, and cl amb ered up a drainpi pe.
Havin g signed up as a ship's surge on on an
Arctic whaler, he repeatedl y fell into a freez-
01.10.07
Sheffield
The Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion,
who describes his function as that of
a "town crier for poetry", has
answered th e call of Sheffield Hallam
University, a place which prides itself
on its innovations in the field of crea-
tive writing, meeting their commis-
sion of a piece to cover the plain
facade of the nine-storey Owen Build-
ing with "What If?", a poem in solid
steel letters which was unveiled on
Novemher 1.
No exception will he taken to the
content of Motion's poem, which com-
bines gratifying local reference (to
"Sheffield Station and Sheaf
Square") with a sure sense of its
place as puhlic or "hard-poster" a r t
(as "words I Set down to decorate a
blank facade"), And no on e will
mind much that its form - five stan-
zas each of three rhymed pentame-
ters, the shape on paper of an ordi-
nary townhouse - has heen mislaid in
the installation. This poem is a hun-
dred and ten feet high. "Pause now,
and let the sight of this sheer cliff I
Become a priming-place which lifts
you off I To speculate What if .• • ?
What if • . . ? What if • . . ?".
3
ing sea as he pur sued seals. Th e capt ain
call ed him the "No rthern Diver". Do yle
could very eas ily have dro wn ed. He became
a pion eer skier, eage rly took the chance to try
out a hot-air ballo on , owned motorcycl es and
cars as soon as they came on the mark et (and
dro ve them as fast as he could , sometimes
with unfortunate con sequ enc es). A found er
memb er of Port smouth Football Association
Club's team, he also played cricket we ll
into middl e age. Oth er ventures we re mor e
serious. He vo luntee red to help with a field
ho spit al in the Boer War, where he worked
tirelessly to combat the typhoid that was kill-
ing mor e soldiers than died in battl e, and later
invol ved him self as an obse rve r and histori an
of milit ary action in the Fir st World War.
These activities were partl y inspir ed by
Do yles belief that onl y perp etual conflict
could keep a red-blooded man in good heart ,
but his ob sessi ve pur suit of danger also
signals a reluct ance to accept the oppr essive
respon sibiliti es of maturit y. Thou gh he did
not participate in the cont emporary cult of
childhood, he shared many of its impul ses.
The epigraph to his high- spirit ed novel The
Lost World, describin g Professor Challenge r's
rac y adventures on a dino saur-infested
plateau near the Am azon , makes the point :
I have wrought my simple plan
If I give an hour of Joy
To the boy who's half a man,
Or the man who's half a boy.
Writing allowe d Doyle to expre ss both
sides of his natur e. It was not his fir st ambi-
tion , for the famil y plan was that he sho uld
make hi s way as a doctor, and he toil ed for
years in a profession that was never con-
genial. He practi sed in Southse a, sometimes
sitting up late at night so that he could slip
out and poli sh his nam e-pl ate unob ser ved.
Who wo uld trust a practitioner too poor to
employ a serva nt? Lon ely and downc ast,
Do yle was joined by his stalwart younge r
brother Innes, and togeth er they es tablished
an unorthodox male hou sehold that was one
of the seeds of the mena ge at Baker Street.
An adeq uate livin g began to tak e sha pe, but it
was clear that Doyle did not have the mak-
ings of an eminent doctor. Yet his efforts
we re not wasted . A s he strained to di sco ver
accurate diagno ses and effective cur es, he
conc eived the image of Sherlock Holm es.
The sca rcity of patients gave him time to
write, and he was plying journals, sometimes
success fully, with a copious supply of the
apprentice wor k that sharpe ned his story -
tellin g skills . Literatur e became mor e
rewarding, per son all y and then fin ancially,
than medicine . Do yle the doct or, and Holm es
the detecti ve, gre w up tog eth er. They have
much in common, for clo se ob ser vation was
the ch osen wea po n of both men . On e of
Do yles prototypes for Holm es was his
old professor at Edinburg h, Dr Joseph
Continued 0 11 page 4
4

Continued from page 3

BIOGRAPHY & LETTER S 3 Dinah Birch Andrew Ly cett Conan Doyle - Th e man who created Sherl ock Holm es Be ll, austere and analytica l. But Holm es was
Jon L ellenberg et al Arthur Conan Do yle - A Life in lett er s prim arily mod ell ed on Do yle him self, with
bu rsts of ment al and ph ysical energy inter-
LITERARY CR ITICISM 5 lan Pindar Eric Bulson Novels, M aps, Mod ernity sperse d with the attac ks of depr ession that
wo uld sometimes brin g the grea t detecti ve
LETT ERS TO T HE ED ITOR 6 The Lond on Lib rar y, Ge rma n wa r mem orial s, Perestroika, etc low: " But is not all life pathetic and futil e ?
.. . We rea ch. We gras p. And what is left in
HI STORY 7 Simon Ditchfield Anthony Grafton Wh at Was Histor y? o ur hand s at the end? A shadow. Or wo rse
Markus Viilkel Ges chichtssc hre ibung than a shadow - mi ser y" . Holm es was a
Wm. Roger Louis Ronald Hyam Brit ain ' s Declining Empire reflecti on of Doyle. He was also his anti-
Piers Brendon The Declin e and Fall of the Briti sh Empire 1781-1 997 thesis - solitary, alway s co nfide nt of victory,
and imp erviou s to sex ua l tem ptation , while
M USIC 9 Peter Williams Margaret Notley Lat eness and Brahm s. Inge van Rij Brahm s ' s So ng
Doyle feared defeat, needed co mp any an d
Co llections. Barbara Ow en The Organ Mus ic of Johannes Brahm s
was ex treme ly susceptible to attra ctive
Stephen Brown Ben Ratliff Coltrane - Th e story of a sound
wo men. Eve ry rea de r wa nts to po ssess
Hugh Macdonald John Michael Cooper Men de lsso hn, Goe the, and the Walpurgis Night
Holm es' s powers, but most of us, like Doyle,
EC ON OM IC HISTORY 12 A. J . Sh erman Amity Shlaes Th e Forgo tten Man - A new history of the Great Depr ession are a goo d deal closer to Wat son: " Facts are
facts, Wat son , and, after all, yo u are only a
POE MS 12 Frank Kuppner Two Poems general prac titioner with very limit ed ex peri-
15 Peter Porter Voltaire ' s All otm ent ence and medi ocre qu alific ation s". It was a
25 Claire Crowther Backp acker fair estima te of Doyl es positi o n as a yo ung
31 J ean Sprackland The Wa y Down doctor.
Sherlock Holm es rescued Do yle, but it
COMMENTAR Y 13 A. S. G. Edwards Sca ttering the leaves - The melancholy legacy of Ott o F. Ege , book did not hap pen ove rnight. The sleu th's fir st
co llector and bo ok destro yer appearance , in "A Study in Sca rlet" (1887),
Robert Irwin Mu sic in the Hou se of Te ars attrac ted littl e noti ce, and it was only whe n
Zinovy Zinik Free lance Doyle had begu n to make his name with
Then and Now TLS November 14, 1918 more substantial fiction that Holm es' s
ex ploits caug ht the atte ntion of publishers
ART S 17 Lindsay Duguid Art Treasur es in Manch ester (M anches ter Art G allery) and read er s. The real breakthrough came
Tristram Hunt and Victoria Whitfield Art Treasur es in Manchester with Micah Clarke ( 1889), a vigo ro us histori-
A Passion for Briti sh Art - Paul Mellon' s legac y (Roya l Ac adem y) cal novel describin g the eve nts of the Mon-
John Baskett et al A Passion for British Art mouth Rebelli on . Doyl es protr acted strugg le
Toby Lichtig Co ntro l (V arious cinemas) . I' m No t There (BF I London Film Fes tival) to find a publi sher for thi s wor k shows him at
Katherine Dun can-Jones Eli zabeth - The Go lde n Age (Va rious cinemas) his best - indo mit able, but not so con vin ced
of his ow n gifts that he wo uld be offend ed by
FICTION 19 Bill Broun Richard Ford, ed itor Th e New Gra nta Book of the A merican Short Stor y repeated rejec tions, or refu se to take adv ice
St ephen Burn Steve Erickson Ze rov ille as to how his work might be impro ved. Th e
Mark Kamine Elmore L eonard Up in Hon ey' s Ro om novel had a goo d reception, and was soon
Caroline Miller Jane Gardam The People on Pri vilege Hill followed by The White Compan y (1891), set
Al ex CIark Ali Smith G irl meet s Boy in the Hun dred Years War. Th ese book s
sec ure d the reput ation that opened the way
BIOGR APHY 22 Martin Walker J eff Gerth and Don Van Natta Hill ary Clinton, Her Way
for Holm es ' s prominence. But it was charac -
Carl Bernstein A Wom an in Charge
teri stic of Doyl es self-distrust that it took an
POLITICS 23 Justin Willis Al ex de Waal, editor Wa r in Darfur - And the search for peace alarming bout of illn ess, when his life
M. W. Daly Darfur' s Sorrow - A hi stor y of destruction and ge nocide see med threatened , to liberate him from
ea rl ie r tie s:
SO CIAL ST UDI ES 24 Paul Levy Joan Thirsk Foo d in Early Mod ern Eng land For a week I was in grea t danger. and then
found mysel f as wea k as a child and as em o-
PHILOS OPHY 25 Bart Streumer Ingmar Persson Th e Re treat of Reason tio nal, bu t with a mind as clear as crystal . ..
I determined with a wild rush of joy to cut the
LA NG UAG E 26 David Coward J can-B enoit Nadeau and Julle Barlow Plus Ca Cha nge painter and to trust for ever to my po wer of
Glyn Burgess William Rothwell et ai , editors A nglo-No rman Dicti onary writing . .. . It was one of the great moments of
exultation of my life.
TRANSLATIO N 27 Elizabeth Winter The ro ug h and the smoo th - Translation Prizes 2007
Th e detecti ve stories in The Strand Maga-
NATU RAL SCIE NCE 28 Virginia Smith Peter C. H. Pritchard Ta les from the Thebaide - Reflections of a turtleman zine rapidl y bec ame a literar y sensa tion, and
almos t as sw iftly turn ed into yet another trap.
CLAS SIC S 29 William Fitzgerald Victoria Emma Pagan Rome and the Lit eratur e of Ga rdens Having abandoned the safe ty of hi s co nsult-
ing roo m for Holm es' s ficti on al vers ion ,
RELI GION 30 Simon Scott-Plummer Alvyn Austin China 's Millions Doyle soo n found it as claustro ph obi c as the
William Whyte Ronald Hutton The Druids - A hi stor y one he had left behind in So uthsea . With his
mild and accommoda ting wife, To uie, he
PO ETRY 31 Aingeal Clare John Ash Th e Parthi an Station s moved to Lond on , and began to live as a
.Tohn Greening Togara Muzanenhamo Spirit Brides pro sp eroll s ge ntle ma n . T he re we re chi ldren
to provid e for, a hou seh old to maint ain. The
IN BRI EF 32 Helen Walla ce Boosey & Hawkes. Julian Walfreys Wr iting London . clamour for mor e Sherlock Holmes adve n-
Paul Ri chardson A Late Dinner. Rustom Bharucha An oth er Asia. tures was hard to resist, for nothing else paid
Umberto Eco Turning Back the Cloc k. Michael Whitehall Shark- as we ll. But Doyle felt that the repetiti on of
Infested Waters. Sherry Turkle, editor Ev oca tive Obj ect s. the formul a had becom e a profession alliabil-
Julian Preece The Redi scovered Writings of Veza Ca netti ity. As early as 1892 he was hopin g to be rid
of him for goo d: " I am in the middl e of the
35 Th is wee k's con tributors, Crossword
last Holm es story , after which the ge ntleman
NB 36 J. C. To lstoy vs Tolstoy, Woolf on Sassoon , Catheri ne Carswe ll and Lawrenc e, etc van ishes, never to reapp ear. I am wea ry of his
nam e" . The desperate cont est on the brink of
the Reichenb ach Fall s kept the brilli ant detec-
Co ver picture : "A Study in Scarle t" (200 1) © by Nick Cudswor th/Br idge man Art Library; p3 © Acquire Images; p lO © Charles Vlen/Be ttmann/Corb is; pl 6 tive qui et for a while , but fail ed to fini sh him
Hulton Arc hive/Ge tty Images; p22 © AP Photo/Elise Amendo la; p2 3 © T im Dirve n/Pa nos Pictures; p28 © Fran s Lanring/Corbts: p29 © Bridgeman Ar t Libr ary off. He was resurrected in The Hound of the

TLS NO VEMBE R 9 20 07

Baskervilles (1901 -02), and Doyle was
closely follo wed by his own creation for
many years to come. Oth ers beside him self
had com e to depend on the wealth created in
Baker Street, and though Doyle produced a
steady strea m of inventiv e and popular
works, he could not repeat the scale of his
triu mph with Holm es.
Hemm ed in by literary celebrit y, Doyle
also found him self impri soned in his dom es-
tic life. Faithful Toui e, who had never
wave red durin g the precarious early years,
contract ed tuberculosis and becam e an un-
complaining invalid. Doyle, to his joy and
angui sh, fell in love with another woman -
Jean Lecki e, an accomplished and beautiful
singer. The affair grew into a lingerin g dis-
tress that Doyle could neith er resolve nor
avoid . It see med, at first, that Toui e would
die with con venient spee d, but instead she
faded throu gh a long declin e. Doyle con-
tinued to see Jean, though they see m not to
have become lover s. They waited, tormented
by their guilty need for a release that onl y
Toui e' s death could provide. Doyles famil y
came to term s with the situation, after some
indi gnant huffin g and puffin g, but the rela-
tionship had to be co nce aled from his sick
wife. The deception made it hard for Doyle to
see him self as an honourable English gentle-
man , and no other model of manhood could
earn his respect. The imp asse dra gged on for
ten yea rs, until in 1906 Toui e at last suc-
cumbed to her disea se, enabling Doyle to
marry Jean the foll owin g yea r. Much of his
frantic activity at this time, and after, see ms
to have been motivated by the need to live up
to the idea ls of an upright masculinity with an
unwaverin g resolve that would cancel out
this one disqui etin g failur e. He earned a
generous incom e for his fra gile wife and
numerou s depend ant s, tested him self in
manly sporting activities , experimented
(mos tly unprofitably) as an investor in
ingenious commerci al schemes , campaigned
for authors' rights, and restor ed hi s sense
of moral self-worth throu gh champi onin g
victims of inju stice, like George Eda lj i, the
lawy er of Anglo-Indi an descent wro ngly
accu sed of mutilati ng shee p, ca ttle and
horses. It was a wearing programm e, but it
built a life equipped with enough di stractions
to keep his corro sive anxieties at bay.
Lycett ' s capable work , Conan Doyl e: The
mall who crea ted She rlock Holme s, gives a
detailed picture of these multipl e occupa-
tions, despit e the fru strati on of the dispersal
and des truction of significant docum ent s
after Doyles death. The surv iving letter s,
newly publi shed in the wa ke of what see ms
to have been a comp etitive tussle bet ween
Lycett and the editors of Arthur Conan
Doyl e: A Life 111 letters, John Lellenberg,
Dani el Stashower and Charles Fo ley (the
present executor of th e lit er ar y estate), are
not presented with the sa me scholarly exper-
tise. Nor are they con sistentl y stimulating in
their own right , for they do not sugges t that
Doyle was much given to the subtleties of
intro specti on. Mostly addresse d to hi s
moth er , they are brisk , good-humoured and
stra ightforward. What emerges , howe ver ,
some times with unexpected forc e, is his
search for spiritual meanin g that wo uld tran-
sce nd the rationalities of his scientific educa-
tion, or the orthodoxies of social custom. He
aband oned his parent s' Catho lic faith in early
manhood, but continued to hunger for a
BIOGRAPHY & LITERARY CRITICISM
confirmation of immortality - "infinitely the
most important thin g in the histor y of the
world" . At the time that Sherlock Holm es
first emerge d in Doyles writing, he began to
develop what would become a lifelong inter-
est in spiritualism. Thi s is more than coinci-
dence. Holmes will have no truck with the
supernatural: "This age ncy stands fl at-toot ed
upon the ground, and there it must rem ain.
The wor ld is big enough for us. No ghos ts
need apply" . But his omniscience often
see ms a little more than hum an . Holm ess
function , and his appeal , is to supply unfail-
ing answe rs, and that sense of a constant
dependability was also what Holm es wanted
from his religious life. Perh aps spiritualism,
with its promi se of direct communication
with the dead , could supply it. Doyle moved
wa rily for years, expe rimenting, attending
table-rappin g sess ions, readin g report s and
investigation s. His stubborn materi alism held
him back, but he longed to be convinced that
spiritua lism could offer solid ev idence of the
survival of the spirit after death.
For Doyle, as for many others, it was the
First World War that pushed him from sympa-
thetic inquir y into serious commitment. His
famil y suffered more than most. His broth er-
in-law Malc olm Lecki e was killed in the
retr eat from Mon s in 1914; Lily Loder-
Sy monds, a close famil y friend, lost three
broth er s in quick success ion; Doyles
nephew s Oscar Hornung and Alec For bes
we re cut do wn "with bull ets throu gh the
brain " ; his brother-in-law Leslie Oldh am was
"killed by a sniper durin g his first days in the
trenches". Such butchery was very different
from the bold adventuri ng Doyle had always
ce lebrated. What had become of these ga llan t
boys and men, who had lived according to
the codes of hon our that had see med so trust-
worthy? Had they simply toppl ed into a black
and silent pit? When Doyles con ver sion
ca me in 1916 , it was compl ete and final. Spir-
itualism was a "real thing", not "a matter of
fait h" ; it was "founded upon concrete facts" .
Lik e Holm es, it could be depended on to
dispel mystery and put an end to doubt.
As hostiliti es finall y ground to a halt,
Doyles need for such cert aint y deepened .
His eldes t son, Kingsley, wea kened by a
thro at wound he had sustained on the
Somme , died of tlu in Octob er 1918. Fo ur
month s later , Doyles broth er Inn es, whose
che erful companion ship had made the dreary
yea rs in Southsea tolerable, also fell victim to
tlu , after fightin g with distin ction throu ghout
the war. The loss was unspeakable. Until the
end of his life, Doyle braved deri sion to
spend his energy , his time and his money on
the prom otion of spiritualist ca uses . " I am
doing what I feel to be my plain dut y, tho'
not always an easy or pleasant one." Thi s
was, as many have noted , a matter of some
patho s. Doylex spiritualism ha s certainl y
done his literar y reputation no favou rs. Yet
there is a resolut e dignit y in his refu sal to
retr eat, of a kind that is entirely con sistent
with his blunt and troubl ed natur e. His zea l
was grounded in the sense of shared hum an-
ity that had always made his writing
something more than commercial hackwork .
No thing finally meant more than the loyalt y
and love that lay behind Sherlock Holm es' s
penetr ating reaso n: "All fine-d rawn theories
of the subcons cious go to pieces befor e the
plain stateme nt of the intelligence, 'I am a
spirit. I am Innes. I am your broth er :".
TLS NOVEM BER 9 2 0 07
5
Guided books
n Nove ls, Maps, Modernity, Eric Bulson IA N PI NDAR
I exa mines the many ways in which writers
have, literally, mapped out their plot s. In
particul ar, he look s in detail at the "carto-
E r i c Buls on
graphic enco unters" of Herm an Melville, NOVE LS , MAP S, MO DE RN ITY
Jam es Joyce and Thomas Pynch on. Melville The spatial imagination, 1850- 2000
consult ed sea charts, maps, guideboo ks and 171 pp. Routledge. £40.
97804 1597648 0
logboo ks while writing Moby-Dick (1851 ),
in order to plot Ahab' s meetin g with his
nemesis. As Bulson point s out, trackin g Bulson is alert to the politic s of literary
down one spec ific whale ove r four oceans is mappin g, which develop ed out of "literary
highl y improbable, but by referri ng to genu- nation alism" and the age of empire. He per-
ine wha ling routes Mel ville man ages to give haps makes too much of the fact that the
Ah ab ' s plotting of this climactic encounter Ordn anc e Sur vey map of Dublin that Joyce
an air of prob ability. co nsulted was a produc t of the Briti sh
Nove lists have kno wn about the "reality Empire. By choosin g to use this map was
effect" of using maps in their ficti on at least Joyce reall y "reclaiming the country that had
since Robinson Crusoe ( 1719), but , acc ording been taken away from the Irish" , as Bul son
to Bulson , the shift from realism to Mod ern- claim s? Somehow, I doubt it. If it was an "act
ism in the last century led to a significant of reapp ropri ation" the moti vation was per-
change in the use of topo graphi cal detail s. sonal rather than political. Joyce re-creates
Instead of trying to orient ate their read ers in a Dublin in his ow n image.
"novelistic space ", Mod erni sts like Joyce Bulson is criti cal of literary maps. In his
sought to disori entat e them , by referri ng to an view they diminish the experience of reading
overabund ance of street names and other rather than enhancing it, redu cin g a uniqu e
details, creating a fragmented space in which fictional land scape to a bare two dim ension s.
it is easy to lose one' s way . Modern urban How can a map of London eve r do ju stice to
living is bewildering, says Bulson, and this Dicken s' s "M egalosaurus, fort y feet long or
shift in the novel from orientation to disorien- so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up
tatio n we nt hand in hand with urbanization Holborn Hill ", he as ks. The literar y map
and indu strialization. An extreme exa mple is co ncea ls more than it revea ls. But not
the "Wandering Roc ks" section of Ulysses always. When plott ed on a map, for instanc e,
(1922 ), which Bulson ca lls a "topographical Leop old Bloom' s journ ey in "The Lotu s Eat-
sym phony" of Dubli n, and which Joyce plot- ers", to see if there is a letter for him at the
ted using a red pen and a map of Dublin. Westland Row Post Offic e, form s the shape
Just as Joyce pored over an Ordnance of a question mark. With Joyce, the idea that
Survey map to create his fictional world, there might be some topographi cal code wa it-
Thom as Pynchon studied Baedekers, and ing to be cr acked is not so fanciful. How else
Bulson' s chapter on Pynchon ' s "Bae deker ca n we explain the fact that, if plott ed on a
trick" is fascinatin g. "Loot the Baedeker I did, map, the path s of Father Co nmee and the
all the details of a time and place I had never vicerega l cavalc ade of the Earl of Dudl ey
been to", says Pynch on in Slow Learner in "Wandering Rocks" form an "X" ove r
(1984), though he worked hard to ove rcome Dublin ?
the "two-dimensionality" of the travel guide. As Bulson obse rves, when it comes to fic-
Bulson' s comp arison of two passages is tion, accurate maps might be less valid than
instructi ve. Here is Baedeker' s Egypt (1898): " more whimsical, personalised" ones. The
The prison lies to the left of the road; and reader produces the space of the novel as
on the same side are the village of Gize h and much as the writer, drawin g on her own
the station of the same name on the Upper Egyp- memory, experience and und erstandin g. "N o
tian railway. The road makes a curve, crosse s city indeed is so real as this that we make for
the railway, and then leads straight towards the ourse lves and people to our likin g", observed
Pyramids, which are still nearly 5 M. distant. Virgini a Woolfin the TLS in 1905 , reviewin g
And this is what Pynch on made of it in his a guidebook to Dick ens. In a discu ssion of
short story "Under the Rose" (19 61 ): psychogeograph y (in which he con siders the
"Damned if it isn' t the road to the pyramids," positi ve aspec ts of disorientation, the Situa-
Goodfellow said. Porpentine nodded; "About tioni st derive , and the urban experience of
five and a half miles." They made the turn and "losmess") Eric Bulson remark s that " In the
passed the prison and the village of Gizeh, hit a futur e, indi vidu al readers may actua lly
curve, crosse d the railroad tracks and headed decide to compile psych ogeographi c map s of
due west. Ulysses", Rut why stop there" In his Lectures
Bulson also looks at Pynchon's use of O il Literature (1980) , Vladimir Nabokov
Baedekers and Second World War aerial maps draws his own maps, locatin g the action of
in Grav ity's Rainbow (197 3), where he plots Mansfi eld Park or Bleak House, or follo win g
the unlikely correspond ence between Tyro ne the trajectori es of Bloom and Steph en
Slothrop' s sexual conqu ests and the fall of the Dedalu s in Dublin . He eve n sketches the
V-2 rockets. As Bulson points out, Pynchon layout of Gr egor Sarnsa' s tlat.
knew that the Nazis used Baedekers to locate Perhaps we should all be encourage d by
targets, and he quot es the Naz i propa gandist Nabok ov' s exa mple to make our ow n literary
Baron Gustav von Sturm in 1942: "We shall maps, or at the very least to amend the pre-
go all out to bomb every buildin g in Britain ex isting ones - new versions of Hard y ' s
marked with three stars in the Baedeker Wessex or Zo la's Pari s, infu sed with our ow n
Guid e". So began the "Baedeker Raids" on dream s and prejudices, our incomprehen-
Exeter, Bath , Norwich, York and Canterbury. sions and our private angs t.
6
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

German war The London Library Professor Po lkinghorne exc uses

memorials
Sir, - The Germany I know is obvi-
ously a different country. Co ntra ry
to Edwa rd Ti mrnss experience of
"touring the town s and villages of
Bavaria and lookin g - usuall y in
vain - for mem orials to those who
lost their lives in two world wars "
(Letters, October 26), my impress-
ion (co nfirmed by my famil y who
have had to put up with my regu-
larly pointin g them out) is that
Ge rma ny (and Aus tria) is very well
stocked with mem orials to both
world wa rs and the wa rs of unif ica-
tion too. No t the least striking are
those rememb erin g the Seco nd
World War illustrated by portrait
photograph s of the fallen , including
a goo d number in the unifor ms of
the SS. I could be pers uaded that
there is regio nal variation in this
phenomenon, but rare they are not.
Perhaps the contributors to the Jour-
nal for the Study of British Cultures
as quoted by J. C. (NB, Oc tober 5)
would regard it as furth er evide nce
of the Briti sh obsession with war
that I noticed them , but I write
becau se they have alway s struck
me as a rich potenti al source for
Sir, - At the AGM of the Lond on
Library on Nove mber 1 the Tru s-
tees' proposal to raise the annual
subsc ription from £2 10 to £375 was
passed on a show of hands by a mar-
gin of about three to two. While we
full y accept that last year there was
a deficit of £l Am on expenditure
of £3 m and that some thing needed
to be done, we are disturbed by the
uncollegial way in which the Tru s-
tees handl ed a situation which has
developed on their wa tch. Most
memb ers did not hear of the pro-
posed incr ease until rece iving a
brochure tucked into the Annu al
Report some three wee ks before the
mee ting; there was no prior consul-
tation with members about the finan-
cial crisis or how it should be
solved . The brochur e did not set out
the details of the financial deficit,
for which memb ers had to delve
into the notes on the acco unts in
the Annual Report. At the meetin g
the Chairman, Sir Thom as Legg,
refused, on a strict interp retation of
the provision s of the Charter , to
---------------~.----------------both Seott and Co lin Kidd , in his
letters @the-tls.co .uk
allow a moti on put by Paul Barker ,
the form er Editor of New Socie ty,
to refer the matter back to the Trus-
tees; he on ly permitted a stra ight
vote on the proposal.
He also refused to allow Barker to
sum up for those who oppo sed the
increa se and the way in which it had
been introdu ced . Legg, however,
did sum up for his ow n propo sal.
The London Library is a rem ark-
able institut ion, found ed by Thom as GASC OlGNE, JULES LUBBOCK,
Carly le in 1840, which until now
has provided extraor dinary services
his God (who refu ses to be "a
mag ician") from intervenin g in
what he calls "natural proc esses".
to wr iters , researc he rs, aca demics, "The integrit y of creation" , he
publi sher s and reade rs at an afford- commen ts, " is a kind of package
able cost. It is more than a business, deal." 1 thought Go d was meant to
eve n if not full y mutual, and is an have so me po wer beyond Nature 's
objec t of grea t affec tion amo ngst laws? Oth erwise, can ' t we simply
memb ers. substitute Nature for Go d?
It is not acce ptable that a rise of
nearl y 80 per ce nt in the annual fee DAVlD FAIRER
should be rushed through in this Schoo l of Eng lish, Univer sity
way, with the inevitable danger that of Leed s, Leeds.
the numb er of non- renewals may
----~----
compound the financial diffic ulties.
We write to ex press o ur con cer n
about the curre nt gove rnance of this
The Union
Sir, - The troubl e with Paul
grea t Briti sh institut ion which has
played so imp ort ant a role in our Hend erson Scotts famili ar refrain
of the role of corr uption and
literary and artistic culture, and to
urge a breathin g space of a few connection in the makin g of the
month s during which the full mem- Union of 1707 (Le tters, November
2) is not so much that it is
bership ca n be consulted at what is a
untru e as that it doesn't explain
potentiall y dangerou s turnin g point
in the library' s long histor y. very much - as Smo ut (1969) ,
Mi tchison (197 0), Devine (1999) ,
PAU L BAR KER, BAMBER Wh atley (20 06) and Bow ie
GASC OlGNE, LAURA (2007) have all convincingly
dem onstr ated.
MAR INA WA RNER However, there are furth er, and
10 Dunoll ie Place, London NW5. more important, probl em s with
the conven tional assumptions that

insight s into the Ge rma n twentieth
centu ry, and I hop e someo ne will be
inspired to use them as the basis for
a book.
MA RK WHITTOW
St Peter' s Co llege , Oxford.
Sir , - Readers interested in Ge rman
war me mor ials may like to know
of the famous inscription on the
Monument for the Graduates of
Ber lin Univers ity who fell in the
First World War.
The inscript ion, so metimes
attributed to the grea t Pru ssian
classicist Ulrich von Wilamowi tz-
Moellendorff, but in fact by Rein-
hold See berg, rea ds " lnvictis Victi
Victuri", or "To the unconquered,
from the conqu ered, who will
them selves conqu er" .
Thi s inscripti on , which now
see ms fraught with Aeschylean
menace, was dedicated on Jul y 10,
1926.
ROD ERI CK BLYT H
Mi ll Co urt, Cho lsey, Oxo n.
----~---
China not Japan
Sir, - The fascinatin g letter fro m
John A. Dav is (Nove mber 2) about
Briti sh-Jap anese relation s is marred
by his erroneo us reference to
Knatchbull-Hugessen as a former
ambassa dor to Japan, sym pathetic
to their cause . In fact , notoriously,
he was the British ambassa dor to
China who, en rout e to Nan king in
August 1937, found his offici al
car attacked by the air force of burn ed herself to death on the steps was a great variety of heterod ox review (Oc tober 12), adop t about
Japan, then agg ress ive occ upiers of of St Buryans' s church, having thinking within the ran ks of the the makin g of the Union; that it
Manchuria. told me seve ral times that it was Com munist Party itself. was an affair of elites north and
His repl acem ent was Sir Archi- Bertrand Russell ' s granddaughter. With the new freedom s inaugu- south of the Tweed with the
bald Clark Kerr, a rob ust anti- rated by perestroik a, this fact finally Scottish people playin g, at best,
appeaser, who firm ly promoted a HUGO WILLIAMS became clear eve n to most of those the role of extras in the dram a.
British gove rnme nt line opposed to 3 Raleigh Street, London N I. who had ea rlier been obliv ious to In the light of Christopher
Japanese agg randize ment. It may be this diversity of views and its signifi- Wh atley' s The Scots and the
that Davis is thinkin g of Sir Rob ert Sir , - Hugo Willi am s is always a cance. The "monolithic unity of the Union (2006) and Karin Bowies
Cra igie, ambassador to Japan at this joy to read, but I must correct him Party" was a facade and even the Scottis h Public and An glo-Scottish
time, who was act ive in see king a on one point: W. S. Graham lived facade could not survive M ikhail Relations, 1699- 200 7 (2007) this
rapproc hemen t, desp ite his low not in Ze nnor but in the village of Gor bachev 's refor ms . Elliot sug- elite narrati ve is in need of radical
profile at the Foreign Office and Madron (from 1967 until his death ges ts that my differentiation of re vision . Both hi storian s de m on-
elsew here: Peter Fleming, a visitor in 1986, at 4 Mount view Cottage s), ove rt di ssident s from "within- strate that a "robust politica l cul-
at the time, jud ged his outlook naive about six miles south of Ze nnor sys tem reform ers" (also know n as ture" (Whatley) of mass addr ess-
in the extre me, ca lling him "a poor along a rolling Co rnish roa d best "intrastructural disse nters") is artifi- ing, pamphleteerin g and a coe r-
sap" . not attempted after tippli ng in the cial, and gives exa mples from the cive crow d politi cs left its mark on
Overall, 1 don't think Davis' s Tinners Ar ms. perestroik a era. He appears to think the fin al term s of the Union, in the
argum ent holds up: the Briti sh he is corr ecti ng me, but several process mak ing it much more to
gove rnment saw Japan as imperial IAN BUCKLEY chapt ers of my book are concerned the mutu al benefit of Scotl and and
riva ls in the Eas t even as late as Kerthen Edge , Townshend, with show ing that the previou sly Eng land and more enduring as a
1941 , and the position seems to Cornwa ll. sharp distin ction between ove rt and result.
have been to oppose them at any covert dissent bec ame completely Why established histori ans such
----~,---
cos t, all the more so because of their meanin gless as form erl y taboo con- as Scott and Kidd are so resistan t
fascist sympathies. It is hard to see
on what gro unds any alliance
Perestroika cept s such as pluralism, checks and to thi s revi sio nism is inter estin g,
balances, and separation of powers but another matter entirely .
could have been possi ble, desir able, Sir, - Kno win g lain Elliot's long- were embraced by Gorbac hev and
or ju stifi ed. stan ding views , I am not surprised the reformist wing of the politi cal DAVIE LAI NG
that, in his review of my Seven esta blishment. I II 15 Hyndland Stree t, Glasgow .
DONALD GILLIES Years That Changed the World: Per-
----~--­
5 1 Air threy Avenue , Glasgow. estroika in perspective (Nove mber ARC HIE BROW N
----~----
2), he disagrees with my interp reta-
tion of change in the Sov iet Union.
St Anto ny' s Co llege , Oxford . Biblical?
----~---
In Cornwall What is surp rising, though, is his Sir, - In his rev iew of Ivan the
attribution to me of the absurd view
Sir , - 1 wo uld like to apologize to that only a "few thousand people"
The God of Nature Fool by Andrei Sin yavsky, Oli ver
Ready refer s (October 26) to the
the poet Lind a Cleary , who gave up thou ght differently from Sov iet Sir, - Readin g John Polkinghorn e ' s Virgin Mary, and to "the bibl ical
her time to take a few of us round orth odo xy. There we re onl y a few review of Joh n Humphryss In acco unt of the Ass umption ".
the ancient sites in Penwith, Co rn- thou sand ove rt dissidents on the eve God We Doubt: Confess ions of a We ll, what bibli cal acc ount?
wall, last month. She must have of perestroik a, for the KG B had fa iled athe ist (Nove mber 2), I'm
been surprised to read in my Free - crac ked down on them all too effec - delighted to see that eigh teen th- GEO RGE STEVEN SW AN
lance column (November 2) that tively. Yet, at that very time, as my century deism is back in fashio n. NC A&T State Univer sity,
Robert Gravess gran ddaughter had book amply de monstrates, there On the top ic of ev il and suffering, Green sboro , North Caro lina 27420.

TLS N O V E M B E R 9 2007

he title of Anthon y Graftons new
T book, based on the G. M. Trevelyan
lectur es give n in Cambridge in the
spring of 2005, clearly plays on that of E. H.
Ca rr's ow n Trevelyan lectures of 1961 :
"What is history?" . Ca rr's lectures are per-
haps most famous for their insistence on the
"situated" nature of the historian' s practice -
an elegan t res tatemen t of Benedetto Cr oces
dictum: "all hi story is co ntemporary history"
- and for their assa ult on the notion that facts
ca n ex ist independentl y of their discoverers.
Ca rr certainly showe d no expli cit awa reness
of such early modern predecessor s as Dionigi
Ata nagi , who aske d in 1559, "C he cosa sia
historia?" , or Giova nni Vipera no in 1567
who set him self to repl y to the challe nge ,
"Quid sit historia?" . But then Carr had read
Classics, not History, at Ca mbridge and,
according to an autobiograp hica l fragment he
wro te at the requ est of Ta mara Deutscher in
1980, he attri buted his first awa reness of hi s-
torical relativism to " a rather undi stin gui shed
classsics don, who spec ialized in the Persian
wars, [and] taught me that Herodotu s'
acc ount of them .. . was shaped and moulded
by the Peloponnesian War, which was go ing
on at the time he wro te" . In the same frag-
ment , Carr noted that his grea test influence
while a studen t was not a histori an, but the
textu al critic (and poet) A. E. Housm an : "the
most powerful intellectu al mac hine I've eve r
see n in action .. . whose effortless handlin g
of obsc ure classical texts I enormo usly
admired and should have liked to emulate".
In their mar kedly different ways , both
Grafton and Mar kus Viilkel elucidate the
ge nealogy to Car r's enduring admiration for
classical literatur e and those who study it,
and the effect this has had on histor y as a
di scipline. Grafton, known for his work on
the histor y of early mod ern scholarship, sup-
plies an engage d and engag ing acc ount of
the eme rge nce, progress and declin e of the
genre known as the "art of history" (ars histo -
ria) dur ing the sixtee nth and seven teen th
centuri es. Viilke l, like Gra fton a "public
intell ect ual" (as a regul ar rev iewer for the
Frankfurter A llgemeine Zeit ung) and the
author, inter alia, of a highl y rega rded
work on early modern historical scep ticism,
offers the reader a darin gly comp rehe nsive
history of history writing that ranges chrono -
logically from Herodotus to Habermas, and
geog raphica lly from Halicarnassus to the
Him alayas. Grafton and Viilkel are early
moderni sts, however, and cent ral to both
their stories is the awa reness of the fact that
history per se did not ex ist as an autonomous
field of inquiry until well into the eighteen th
century. Before that it was not cons idered to
have method ological or conceptu al pro blems
of its own that required solving. Rather, it
was simply see n as a reservoir of exe mpla
for the rhet ori cal ev ocatio n o f the past to
co mment on con temporary issues (C iceros
historia magistra vitae).
Gra fton begins his story, chronologically,
in Ferrara in the 1440s, where Leonello
d' Este insisted that modern artists portray the
ancients on the walls of his winter palace in
historically appropri ate clothin g and settings .
However, the ca non of the ars historia -
viewe d as a counter part to Horace' s ars poet-
ica - was not to emerge until ove r a century
later, whe n the Basle printer Johann Wo lf
publi shed an anthology of such texts, the
Artis historicae pe nus , in two volumes from
HISTORY
Noted down
S IM ON OIT CH FI ELO This com bination of narrative with analys is
was acco mpa nied by an enlargeme nt of the
Anth on y Gra ft on scope of history to encom pass not ju st
material culture, such as co ins, inscriptions,
W HAT WAS H IST O RY ? antique statues and old painti ngs, but also
The art of history in early modern Europe travel literature in a then dramatically expa nd-
3 19pp. Cambridge Univers ity Press. Paperback, ing wor ld . Viilkel' s acco unt here also gives
£ 13.99 (US $23.99). due we ight to the importance of images as
978 052 1697 149
communicators of stor ies about the past:
M a rku s V iilk el from frescoes and tapestries to portrait ga ller-
ies and cabinets of coi ns.
G ESCH ICHTSSCHRE I B U N G Jean Bodi n and hi s countryma n Franco is
Eine EinfUhrung in globa ler Perspektive Beaudoin also wished to stre ngthen the alli-
399pp. Vienna: B6hlau Verlag . Paperback, € 19.90.
ance between law and histor y, to combine the
978 3 8252 2692 1
legal hum ani sm of the so-called mos ga llicus
with the ars historia, as Donald Kelley noted
1576- 9. These protoco ls for the reading of years ago. Both French scholars, Gra fton
histor y were to hold sway until the ea rly argues, began to treat histor y in a new way :
eightee nth century, when such works as "as a comp rehe nsive discipl ine that ranged
the Ars eritica (16 97) by the Sw iss-D utch acro ss space and time and as a critica l disci-
theol ogian, editor and critic, Jean Le Clerc, plin e based on the distinct ion bet ween pri-
finall y seve red history from the moorings of mary and seco ndary sources ". For Beaudoin ,
classical rhet oric. in particular, an indispensable source for his
A centr al preoccupation of the artes histori - historia integra were the proliferating accounts
cae was their focu s on the cons umption, as of Asia and the New World then being brought
oppose d to the produ ction of historical texts. back by missionaries and merchants.
In other wor ds, they con cen trated on how to In an arres ting passage, Gra fton notes how
read rather than how to write good histor y. "the ars histor ia promi sed to give the young
Previously, the focu s of theor y of history in reader the equipment to ca rry out . . . textu al
the West, such as it was , had been on the alchemy, to process the histori ans he read
rhetori ca l devices that enabled the writer to into sure guides to virtuous and effec tive
instru ct and touch the rea der/listener. Prima- actio n". An esse ntial instrum ent here was the
"Saint Catherine Hypathia" (c 1670) by Onorio Marinari ; from The Look ofReading:
Book, painting, text by Garrett Stewart (University of Chicago Press. 978 0 226 77394 0)
rily, this had exa mined the co mpos ition of notebook, "the hum ani st' s key to all mytholo -
contrived spee ches which were put into the gies" , which "processed the catch" . Whil e
mouth s of the prot agoni sts. Here Viilkel' s Bodin advised the ass iduous reader to keep
chronologica l and geographical compass three notebo oks at hand to record choice
co mplements we ll Graftons exclusive ly examples fro m the field s of divine, natur al
early modern Euro pea n focu s. The French and hum an history, Justu s Lip siu s favou red
phil osopher of histor y, Jean Bodi n, author of fou r notebook s, for transcribin g apt passages
the Method for the Easy Comprehension of und er " memorabilia" (great thin gs and
History (Met hodus ad faci lem historiarum eve nts) ; "ritualia" (ancient rites and institu-
cog nitionem, 1566), and his equally influ en- tions); "c ivilia" (affa irs relevant to life and
tial contempor ary Fra nces co Patrizi, author common gove rnmen t) and "moralia" ("every-
of Della historia dieci dialoghi (1560), thin g that goes toward s formin g us and our
sought to crea te historia integ ra, that co m- lives privately").
bined "antiquarian preci sion in the use and The death of the artes historicae only
citation of evidence with form al narrative" . came with the aba ndoning of the notion that
TL S NOVE MBER 9 2007
7
"the critica l study of the pas t was necessaril y
and directl y connec ted to the active use of
histori cal exa mples in the present ". Jean Le
Clerc brok e with a 1,500- year tradition ,
therefore, whe n he ma intained in 1697 that
the historian must add nothin g of his own but
simply "examine his sources , take from them
only what was demo nstrably credibl e, and
reproduce it, in plain prose" . By including
analys is of non- Europ ean histor y writing -
India and Japan as well as China and the
Ar ab world - Viilkel rem inds us j ust how
localized the production and circulation of
histor y writing was, save perhaps for China,
where there appears to have been a sea mless
integration of histor y writing with the state
produ ction of knowledge.
Indeed , the imp ort ance of institutio nal
patronage, which briefl y placed London at
the cutting edge of histor y writing during the
161Os, is a theme wh ich comes throu gh loud
and clear from Viilkel' s narrative. It was thu s
no acc ident that a cas te of professional histori-
ans emerge d in early ninetee nth-ce ntury
Pru ssia, whe re histor y bec ame the highest
express ion of and j ustification for the nation
state (his toria magistra patriae). Alth ough
Viilkel is careful to note that, j ust as in the
pre-m odern period, histor y writing never
enjoyed the mono poly ove r the sources and
method olo gy of the present ation of the
past, so also in the nineteenth century the nov-
els and plays of Sir WaIter Scott and Leo
Tolstoy , Alessandro M anzoni and Vict or
Hugo outsold the learned tomes of Leo pold
von Ranke and William Stubbs .
Marku s Viilkel's concl uding chapter on
twentieth-century deve lop ments in Euro pe
and Am erica ends not with an acc ount of the
postmodern phi losophy of histor y, but rather
its exemplifica tion. Th at is to say , after a
brief account of the Ann ates schoo l and of the
fragm entation of historical narrati ve after the
second "linguistic turn" of the 1960s and 70s
(the first having been the aba ndo nme nt of
Latin in favour of the vernacular in Wes tern
Europe), Viilkel ends with a fascin atin g
accoun t o f history wr iting in A frica , w he re
since the 1960 s co lonial acco unts ha ve been
challenged by indi genous narratives that
have effect ively given the lie to Hugh
Trevor-R oper ' s notorious charac terization
of Afri ca as a "continent without histor y" .
The read er is left refl ectin g on the fact that
Europea n history writing enj oyed a globa l
hegem ony that lasted barely more than two
centuri es, the nineteenth and twenti eth.
"When you read a work of histor y, always
listen out for the buzzing [in a histor ian' s bon-
net]. If you can detect none, either yo u are
tone deaf or your histor ian is a dull dog."
Both Gra fton and Viilkel heed this adv ice of
E. H. Carr, and their books enable us better
to appr eciate ju st how culturally spec ific the
practices of history writing (and readin g)
have been , and remain . By focusing on a parti-
cul ar time and place - essentially Fran ce and
Italy in the period c.1560-1700 - A nthony
Gr afton has, with charac teristic brio and
panache, alerted us to the buzzin g in the
bonn ets of the citizens of the Republic of
Letters. In comp leme ntary fashion, Marku s
Viilkel's trul y global survey under scores the
coincidence of the emerge nce of Europea n
colonial empires in the New Wo rld with the
creation of a clu ster of Western Europea n
ways of und erstandi ng and writing about the
past.
8 HISTORY

hese two superior books on the declin e Pier s Brend on ' s The Decline and Fall of

T of British Imperiali sm take similar lines

of attack and are aimed at compatible
thou gh different readership s. Ronald Hyam is
Out of it all the British Emp ire is written in similar vein
and includ es descripti ons of Briti sh torture
that, aga in, brin g to mind recent practic e in
a scholar's scholar, while Piers Brendon takes Abu Ghraib and Guanta namo (an Am eric an
aim at the genera l reader. Britain 's Declining WM . ROG ER LO UIS wa rd with grea ter spee d to liquidate Britain ' s nation al disgrace). In Kenya, Cyprus, No rth-
Empire focuses on fifty years of the twentieth Empire in East and Central Africa. Hyam ern Ireland and Aden , the techniques of tor-
centu ry, from the end of the First World War Ron ald H yam rightly places great weig ht on Ma cmill an' s ture includ ed "wall-standing, hoodin g, noise,
to the British decision in 1968 to recall all decision to declare a wind of change, but Ma c- bread and water diet and depr ivation s of
troop s eas t of Suez. Decline and Fall of the B R I TA IN 'S D E CLI N[ N G E M P I RE millan him self lamented Macleod ' s calcul ated sleep" . In Aden, screa ms from the torture
British Empire 1781-1 997 begins in the after- The road to decoloni sation , 191 8-1 968 and determin ed drive towards independence. cells could be heard in the nearby Corporals'
math of the Americ an Revolution and ends 464 pp. Cambridge Univers ity Press . Paperback , "The wind of change has blown us away", Club, where Briti sh so ldiers j oked and made
with the handover of Hong Kong to China. For £ 17.99 (US $32.99). Macmill an ruefull y comm ented in 196 1. comment s such as, 'T hat' s another cunt get-
978 052 1685559
all that, their similarity is striking. The other point is that Britain 's Declining tin g fuckin g don e in". At once popul ar and
Britai n's Declining Empire is a case in Pi e r s Br endon Empire harb ours an anti-federati on bias and scholarly, The Decline and Fall of the British
which per sonalit y and reput ation come along does not do ju stice to the consequences of fed- Empire dem onstrat es a thorou gh command
with the book. For ove r four decades, an aus- THE DEC LINE AND F ALL OF T HE eration plans, which have ramifi cations down of the historic al literatur e. Neither Brend on
B R IT [S H EMPI R E 17 8[ -[ 9 9 7 nor Hyam is an eco nomic historian, and nei-
tere, yet person ally warm, quirk y historian to the present. The Co lonial Offic e vision of
778pp . Cape. £25.
with a racy style has lived in Magdalene the I940 s, and on into the 1950s, was to create ther book will commend itself to those look-
978 0 224 06222 0
College, Ca mbridge , as Fellow, Co llege large territorial units, future states, that would ing for sys tema tic eco nomic history. But both
Lib rarian, President of the Co llege , Read er in be economically as well as politic ally viable. deal exte nsive ly with the eco nomic under-
Imp eri al History, but above all as scourge of century. As late as the 1950 s, there were still In the end the balance sheet was evenly drawn, pinnin gs of empire, while holdin g in only
sloppy scho larship. Fello w historians, espe - four requirem ent s for self-ru le or independ- major examples being three failures and three slightly veiled conte mpt, in Hyam' s phrase,
cially youn ger ones, fear the lash of Hyarn' s ence : (l) the emerging state must be eco nom i- successes (success in the sense of former colo- "unrege nera te Ma rxists and nati onalist patri-
footnot es, which relentlessly expose ignorance ca lly viable and able to defend itself ; (2) nies that have held together territorially). The ots" as well as postcolonial hi stori ans and
of the subje ct, not least of his ow n scholarship. there must be a reliabl e elite ready to take failures occurred in the federation s of the cultural theori sts. Both Hyam and Brend on
His book s includ e Britain 's Imperial Century , ove r; (3) there must be guarantees for minor- West Indies, Central Africa and Aden. The suc- make extensive use of the magnifi cent photo-
the best work on the nineteenth-c entury ities; and (4) Briti sh strateg ic bases must not cesses were Nigeria, Malaysia and the United graphic collec tion of the Royal Co mmon-
Empire. Britain 's Declining Empire contin- be placed in jeopardy. Durin g the plun ge into Arab Emirates . By decidin g to wind down the wea lth Society now hou sed in Ca mbridge .
ues the story to the end of the 1960s. Hyam granting independ enc e to so me thirt y coun- narrative in 1968, Hyam does not give prop er Takin g inspiration from Gibbon, Brendon ' s
embodies a Ca mbridge traditi on . He is the tries in the fift een yea rs after Suez, Hyam weight to the astonishing success of federating Decline and Fall shows breadth and imagina-
linear descend ant of Sir John See ley. jud ges that success ive British gove rnments the Gulf states, thereby securing the oil wealth tive reach but suffers from the limitati ons
Like See ley , Hyam has a lot to say about threw ove rboard the test of viability. of a critical part of the Middl e East. imposed by tracing descent more or less in a
ga ining and losing an empire in a fit of The genera l clim ate of decolonization was Hyam pursues a memo rable aim of describ- straight line. This approach allows Brend on to
abse nt-mindedness. The Briti sh publi c took crea ted by the Co ld War and the antico lonia l ing, in his phrase, the "dysfunctional" and push declin e further back in time than most
sca nt interest in the Empire - no more in its stance of the United Nations. The straitened contradict ory co mponents of the Empire. The accounts, and to demon strate that the British
di ssolution, with the maj or exce ption of circumstances of Britain ' s eco nomy and res ult is perh aps the opposite of what he Empire was always a relatively wea k power.
Suez, than its acquis ition. Britain's Declining defenc e bud get, along with the need to sus- intends. He cre ates the impression that only But he does not challenge the idea of decline
Empire makes no judgement on public indif- tain collabor ation with coloni al nationa lists, by a minor miracle did the Empire continu e itself. Con trary to Gibb on, and it would seem
ferenc e, and it wo uld be difficult to place the gave point to the wisdo m of decolonizi ng to funct ion as well as it did ove r a long period to Brendon, decline is a relativ e concept. Brit-
book politi cally. Th e radical Left converges sooner rather than later. Hyam ' s arg ument is of time. By including an asto undin g and ain's decline and degradation, as it was popu-
with the radical Right. Hyam has unbounded compl ex, but its ce ntral propo sition is that gra phic chapter on the latter-day savagery of larly thought of in the 1960s and on into the
admiration for cert ain radical figur es on the by the 1960 s, one calcul atio n domin ated all King Sobhuza II of Swaz iland, Hyam 1970s, was replaced by something else.
Left , not least an obscure Co lonial Offi ce offi- others : how to identify politi cal elites willing dem onstr ates that the colonial sys te m proved Empires, like count ries, revive as well as
cial named J. S. Benn ett , who happened to be to take ove r and how to transfer sove re ignty to be dysfun ctional to the end . The Empire's declin e. The British Empire died in convul-
a member of Ma gdalene Co llege, and for to them as soon as possibl e. But why the liquid ation was uneven, sometimes anti- sions yet with spasms of recovery. The public
Attl ee and the Labour Government of rush ? To brin g into play the word used by modern, and by no mea ns predict able. certainly suffered from fits of absence of mind ,
1945 -5 I. At the oppos ite end of the polit ical critics at the time and fo r ever after, why the Ne lson Mandela became President of South yet could occas ionally recall that Britain was
spec trum, Hyam sometimes writes in radic al scuttle? Hyam ' s answer is that the antic olo- Afric a in 1994 , an eve nt that brin gs to a once a great Indian, naval and colonial powe r.
Tor y vein, rather like EIie Kedouri e or nial movement at the United Nations worked conclusion, in a postscript , the major So uth Brendon hardl y does ju stice to the Co m-
Maurice Cow ling, searching for an answe r: increasingly to British disadvantage, with Afric an theme of Britain 's Declinin g mon wealth by referring to it as the mere
who should be held acco untable for the repercu ssions in the House of Co mmons, in Empire. No one would have predi cted ghos t of the Empire. The Co mmonwe alth has
sinking of the gre at ship of empire? newspapers such as The Times and the Mandela' s joinin g in the singing of "Land of many limitations, and it assuredl y did not
Ultimately, indi vidu als, including Church- Observer, and in the Gove rnment. When more Hop e and Glory" at his inaugur ation . fulfil the extravagant hop es of the 1950 s, but
ill, and institution s, such as the Co lonial and more former colonies join ed the UN in the Reader s familiar with Hyams Sexua lity it is not a spent forc e. Durin g the era of
Office, proved to be defenceless aga inst the I960s, international insistence on colonial and Empire will be surprised that the sex ual decolonization, it served a useful purp ose as
anticolonial tidal wave of 1956. The outcome independence continued to mount. The British quirks of Briti sh proconsuls and others are a sort of psychol ogic al cushi on. On the
of the Suez crisis marked a change in the found themselves increasingly isolated, though re lega ted to the footnotes. But the detail s are whole, however, Brend on takes full acco unt
natio nal and international politic al climate, a paradoxically they remained committed to cert ainl y there, including an account of Alan of the Empire 's pomp , circumstance and
gathering of natur al forces hostile to the the UN in principle and practice. The United Lenno x-B oyd' s "highly active hom osexual achieve me nt; yet it is the negati ve theme that
Empire, as gauge d by the Co lonial Offi ce - Nations forced the pace of decolonization. lifestyle". Lennox-Bo yd was Colonial Secre- prevails. "On the debit side were arrog ance,
nationalist insurgency, intern ational interfer- Hyam' s argume nt coheres and persuad es, tary from 1954 to 1959. Despite a clo se ca ll, violence, exploitation, jin goi sm , raci sm and
ence, and metropolit an indifferenc e. It ca me but invites dissent on two point s of critica l "a sca ndal which could have ecli psed that of authoritarianis m." Britain's Declining
as a nati onal moment of truth that Britain no import ance. He emphasizes the inspir ation John Profumo", his pri vate life did not affec t Empire and Decline and Fall share the deter-
lon ger po ssessed the ec o no m ic and m ilit ar y and domin ant grip of Attlee and of the other his decision s at the Co lonial Offi ce. Hyam min ed view that decolonization was usu all y a
power to be rank ed with the United States or Prim e Mi nister who played a cruci al part in writes throu ghout with a ca ndo ur that will violent rather than a peaceful process.
the Soviet Union. Th e attempt to reoccup y decoloni zation , Harold Ma cmillan . But probably startle many reader s and satisfy Pier s Brend on is a Fellow of Churchill
the Suez Ca nal zone unit ed virtually the Hyam fail s to take suffic iently into acc ount others interested in the sheer vulgar ity of Co llege and a form er keeper of the Churchill
entire world against British Imperialism, as the deci sive lead taken by Lord Mountbatten empire. Gi ving exa mples of epithets that Co llege Archi ves Centre. His book achieves
revealed in the moral indictm ent of the vote at in Indi a and lain Macl eod in Afri ca. Th ey mu st rank seco nd onl y to those used by some a high level of acc uracy and mak es for
the United Nations. Only Australia and New were more than mere instruments of Prime American offic ials in similar circumstances , comp ellin g readin g from start to fini sh: it is
Zea land remain ed loyal. "It was a moment of Mini steri al will. Mountbatten , for better or Hyam quotes derogator y phra ses such as the best one-volum e account of the Briti sh
blinding reve lation for many British peopl e worse, and to a grea ter extent than Hyam "wogs, niggers, nig-n ogs, Gy pos , Chinks, Empire. Its success is partiall y accounted for
that the days of empire were numb ered ." acknow ledges , acce lerated the timetabl e and and Japs", In its use of ev idence, Britain 's when the reader discovers that Pier s Brendon
Hyam sums up the con sen sus of historic al took the deci sion to align Britain with Nehru, Declining Empire is about as politi cally incor- was Ronald Hyam ' s student. The Ca mbridge
debate on the cau ses of decoloni zation. He and as far as possi ble with Gandhi. M acleod , rect a book as one can find. On e gets the traditi on of Sir John See ley is not onl y alive
also delin eates the continuity of prereq uisites Co lonial Secret ary from 1959 to 196 1, was a sense that Hyam takes pride in his assa ult and well. It has reassert ed itself with two
for self-gove rn ment that had ev olved over a force in his ow n right. No one pressed for- again st present-d ay trendin ess. outstanding book s.

TLS N OVE MBER 9 2 0 07


Twilight zone
hen we discuss Beetho ven' s "late
W quartet s" , it is worth rem emb erin g
that we are referrin g to the wor k of
a man in his mere mid-fifties. Wh y, then,
"late" ? Bec ause in a man of fift y-fi ve we
ex pect or are determined to find a new kind
of serious ness , an ori gin al slant on co nve n-
tion , an avo ida nce of bustle, a tend enc y to the
abstrac t? Because we know he died a year or
two after ward s? Or because eithe r way bio-
graphy will ju st not stay out of thin gs, and
knowled ge of it rules the listener ?
Or does the docum entary record of mu sical
ge niuses offer no bett er idea for the way they
work than Hansard does for non- geniu ses?
An ythin g I know of the bio graphical bac k-
gro und to Bach ' s B minor Mass will affec t,
gove rn even, any feelin g I have that such-
and-such a mo vement mus t he late, while
another is muc h ear lie r; but it is very easy to
be wro ng. When we note ho w fascin ated
Beeth oven bec ame with the most elementary
mu sical ideas in his lateish Diabell i Varia-
tion s, or ho w hard Wa gner fin ally had to
work on me lody in Parsifal compared to
Gotterdtimmerung, we may be tempt ed to
asc ribe these chan ges in emphas is and inten-
sity to the co mposers ' ages (fifty and mid-
sixties respecti vely). But is there any neces-
sary correlation ? Brah rns' s most mature
wor ks, argues Mar garet Notley in her book
Lateness and Brahms, express the "melan-
cho ly" of "a middle-age d person awa re of
lateness", but eve n if there is no intenti onal
fallacy lurkin g here, the question is certainly
raised whether mu sic expresses anything
beyond itself. Is there not, in all these composi-
tion s, simply an experienced compo ser ' s calm
and confide nt gras p of the tool s of his trade?
The three books under rev iew deal in differ-
ent ways with the notion of lateness in co nnec-
tion with a much-loved compose r, one whom
it is not easy to im agi ne ha vin g ever been
young, so we ighty and we ll-wro ught is his
music from first to last. Brahms 's Song Collec-
tions by Inge van Rij centres on the Op. 105
and Op . 12 1 sets of songs , publi shed at the
ages of fift y-fi ve and sixty-three respectively.
Ma rgaret Notley 's Lateness and Brahm s
takes a different line: the compose r 's "late
rom anti c" idiom is found to be appropriate to
the "tw ilight of Viennese liberali sm", and any
archaic elements in the music reflect his
"close ties to the upper-class elite" who liked
the famili ar. Barb ara Owen ' s The Organ
Mu sic of Brahms pays particular atten tion to
his organ chorales Op. 122, based on old
Luth eran chora le-melodies. Since some of
these settings are the last music Brahm s ever
wrote , th e temptati on is to see in th em both a
deliberat e return to his Prot estant root s and a
natur al habit of matur e cont empl ation . But
Ms Owen is nicely discreet on such matters.
Van Rij' s book toys with the Anxiety of
Influence (not so called) insofar as it recog-
nizes that nobod y composing sets of songs,
eve n today perhaps, can be quit e free of
Schubert's Winterreise and Schone Miillerin.
Askin g anew in what way these, and therefore
Brahm s' s, sets of songs really are coherent
cycles is the book ' s main topic , as it examines
the composer's ow n term , "Bouquet" . This
wo rd has a long history in mu sic, with exa m-
MUSIC
P E T ER WILLI AMS
M ar g a r e t N otl e y
L AT E N E S S AN D BR AHM S
Music and culture in the twili ght of
Viennese Libera lism
245pp . Oxford Univers ity Press USA . $55 (£32.99).
978 0 19 5305470
In g e va n Rij
B R A H M S ' S SONG C O L LECTI ONS
27 1pp. Ca mbr idge University Press . £40.
978 052 1 83558 9
B arb ar a O w en
T H E OR G A N MUS IC OF JO H A N NE S
BR A HM S
I84pp. Oxford Univ ersity Press. £ 19.99 .
978 0 1953 11075
pIes from the 1730s (Fischer's Blumenstraussi
or eve n the 1630s (Frescobaldi's Fiori) , and
these are ju st the kinds of publication the
antiquar ian-minded Brahm s knew and stud-
ied. His interest in old mu sic co uld have
played a bigger part in van Rij' s story: one
co uld hardl y think of a comp oser more
remo ved from Brahms than Francois
Couperin, yet the former edited the latter and
knew his wor d "o rdre" for sets of pieces - a
categorica l term much less restrictive than
either "cycle" or "suite" .
No tley 's book deals with what it calls the
" Viennese clim ate of opini on" , in which
Brahm s appears as a "dogmatic Lib eral" . It
contains quite a lot of Adorn o, and occasion al
M arxist ja rgo n ("p hase"), all rather disgui sing
the book ' s con ventional aes thetic arg ument,
which is that music "expresses the spirit of its
age" and is a handy indic ation thereof. In my
view this is quit e wro ng; I don't understand
how aspec ts of the Austrian Liberal wo rld-
view - "pro-German sentiment, antago nism
toward the [Rom an] Catho lic church, and pro-
found distru st of anti-intellectual trend s" , all
as en terta ined by "the Jew ish-Ger man upper
middl e classes" - say much about spec ific
compos itions. For exa mple, what do they
reveal abo ut the backwardness of Brah rns' s
last sympho ny, written j ust as Mahler , in the
same city, was abo ut to ex plore new wo rlds
with his first? At least Notley usefull y makes
it clear that A dornos dicta are less than illumi-
natin g. (Hannah Ar endts criticism of Adorno
- "such a mishmash of anything that co mes to
mind is unb earable" - rings true for me when-
eve r he pontifi cates on mu sical socio logy .)
Owen ' s book includ es a lot of useful infor-
m ati on on the period . Its focu s on Bra hms' s
organ music is refreshin gly down-t o-earth and
revealin g about his modest but creative inter-
est in orga ns and organ music. It was ev idently
less of a co ncern for Brahms than it was for
Liszt, had been for Mendelssohn or wo uld be
for Rege r, yet it should not be forgotten that
more people from the seve nteenth to nine-
teenth centuri es heard organ music than they
did any song cycle or chamber music.
Brahm s' s involvement in it reflec ted his life-
long preoccupation with J. S. Bach , fugal coun-
terpoint and cho ral tradition . And how many
other composers were not similarly engage d?
TL S N OVE M BE R 9 2007
9
These three volumes prompt thou ghts aga in
on what it is to write scholarly books on
mu sic, espec ially diffic ult today when univer-
sity depart ments have to strugg le on two
front s. On the one hand , they need to keep
"classical mu sic" alive in an age when cultural
chit-c hat co nstantly interferes with it, and
when young musicians, barely able to harm o-
nize a sca le on the piano, are wizards at
composing electronically. On the other hand,
mu sicologists heavily influ enced by literary
theory, part icularly in Am eric an universities,
still find them selves having to face up to
mu sic' s age less incorr igibility, and the fact
that it is more than a sociopolitical manifesta-
tion . Indeed, how does one write about it?
Notley's solution is to discuss previous
author s' ideas abo ut "lateness " , to sketch in
aspe cts of Viennese society (including its anti-
Semiti sm) and to discuss other relevant mu sic.
These general matters are interspersed with
lengthy techni cal-analytical details about
Brahrns' s fondn ess for certain kind s of
count erpoint , similarities between themes, Selected Poems of
gra mmatica l rules, types of adag io, etc. But Jacint Verdaguer
the deep link between culture and mu sic is not ABilingual Edition
as appare nt as Notley assumes it to be; more- Edited and Translated by Ronald PuppO
ove r, the techni cal detail itself seems to me With an Introduction by Raman Pinyol i Torrents
not very adv anced, and deri ved from passive, "It ishigh time thatsomeone produced aselection of
partial readin g rather than experience "from themajor Catalan poet,Jacint Verdaguer,for English
the inside" of as much mu sic as possible. readers. Ronald Puppo'sexcellent translations now
allowusto enjoy verdaguer'suse ofarangeof poetic
Van Rij's survey of the songs is rather more formstodea l with mythological and historical themes,
straightforwa rd. It tend s to look at concepts Catalan historyandlandscapes,human relationstender and
(musical organicism) and people (Schlegel, tragic,and hisownspiritual development:'-Peter Bush,
Co leridge) as if they haven't been looked at former director ofthe British CentreforLiteraryTranslation
before, but a certain freshness results. Again, I Cloth £17.00
am not convinc ed by the handling of techni cal
details, such as the illustrati ons of "harmonic
ambiguity" , or themati c similarities, or those
effec ts the author calls "chromatic" and "Nea-
politan". More import antl y, I am not sure that
in co nsiderin g what a song-cycle ought to
mean she has properly ack now ledged a basic
fact of musical life: that compose rs will do
almost anything to have their music per-
form ed, whether in sets, cycles , one-off s, or
pieces that are tran scrib ed, transposed, put in
one orde r, an d then an othe r.
Just as Notley draws on other authors of
Brahrns's time and her ow n, so van Rij draws
on a "graphic artist" , Max Klinger, to who m
Brahms dedi cated his final set, the wonderful
Four Serious Songs . But was there really in
Klingers nightm arishly erotic and mythologi-
cal images something that matched Brahrn s' s
"increasingly dark songs of matu rity" ? Any-
thin g more than a certain heavy density, com- Tricks of the Light
mon to so much artistic produ ction of the New and Selected Poems
period ? If there is anything in Klinger that can Vicki Hearne
trul y be show n to be relevant to Brahm s' s Edited with an introduction by John Hollander
conceptions - the way, for instance, so many "Inpoetry, it's easier tothink likeadog. Ms. Hearne's
of his works mo ve from "sorrow to comfort" language hasitsown force,trumping the needforlogic
(the Requiem , the First and Third Sy mpho- orevidence.. . . What Ms. Hearne'spoetry triesto
nies) - well, I don 't see it. And is there not a capture, and it oftencomes close, [is] notthe song of
thehorseorthe philosopher, but anew song-aduet:'
risk that for readers of the book , perfo rmances
-NewYork Sun
of the late Clarinet Quintet will for eve rmore Cloth £16.00
brin g to mind Klinger' s horribl e drawings?
Owen' s answe r to the probl em of writing Balk InP,lnt
about mu sic is more tradit ional and practical.
She discusses the pieces one by one, the Poetic Closure
personnel (not many people know that Clara AStudy ofHow Poems End
Schum ann pum ped organ bellows for Robert) Barbara Herrnstein Smith
and organs from Brahm s' s early days in "RangingfromtheElizabethanlyricthroughfree and
Hamburg to late on in Vienn a, and she offers syllabicverseand concrete poetry,PoeticClosure isa
learned,witty and richlyillustrated studyofthe behavior
advice on performance . Other co mpose rs,
of poerns-RchardM. Elman,New YorkTimes
including Leip zig' s Reger and Glouc ester' s
Paper £16.00
Parr y, are neatly involved. It would be a pity if
readers took one look at the lists of orga n stops Trade enquiries to UPM,0117 9020275
DIStributed byJohn Wlley,01243 779777
The University of Chicago Press
www press uchicago.edu
10
and thought the book had nothin g to say to
them about Brahm s. Such book s on music are
becomin g increasingly rare, so vulnerable has
the (tiny) market becom e to cultura l theory.
O ne of the main difficult ies that such theory
has is with the expressio n of useful value
jud gements, positive and negati ve. I used to
End that Brahrnss songs were of imm ense
worth for one particula r reaso n: you could
wor k out from their melodi es a goo d and logi-
cal harmony. This was invaluable experience
for the stude nt. Br ahrnss songs make
"musical sense", the best thing one can say of
a co mposer, and something that ' s worth tryin g
to pin down . If this process involves odious
comp arison and personal opinion, so be it.
At the same time, I think it a pit y to ignore
Geo rge Bern ard Sh aw ' s view of Brahm s' s
major wor ks as
a string of incom plete dan ce and ballad tunes
. . with no more co here nce tha n the
succession of pass ing images re flec ted in a
shop window in Piccadilly during any twenty
minutes of the day.
Thi s is a rem ark that becomes the less vague
the more one thinks abo ut it: Shaw , who was
by no means deaf to Brahm s' s abiliti es, is
makin g a real point , and doin g so, after all, as
a contemp orary reactin g to the mu sic. When
he refers to the late Clarinet Quint et as "this lat-
est ex ploit of the Leviathan Maund erer", he is
making two criticisms: first, that Brahrn s' s
idiom is full of com mo nplaces, and seco nd
that it "outfaces" these "by dint of sheer magni-
tud e", in both respect s very like (so Shaw
claim ed) the speec hes of Mr Gladstone.
Now Margaret Notley's descripti on of a
cert ain series of chords in the Clarinet
Qu intet as a "pro totype" - the series was an
old for mul a, worn to a frazzle after two centu-
ries - may appe ar to be mor e exac t than
Shaws "commonplace", but I think the latter
pro mpt s better ideas about lateness. Brahm s
disgui ses the chords by a clever filigr ee of
melod y and rhythm ; they are so formulaic
that any divergence is immedi ately effect ive ;
the wor k begin s in a rapt , cool-h othouse kind
of way ; the clarinet ca n hardl y help bein g sen-
suous; and eve ry poli shed de ta il is that of a
com plete master. But does it all reall y add up
to more than the ma undering of a Leviathan
(a "perso n of formidable ability", QED )?
11 ~~= JI
r JOHN CAGE
and the Music ofAlways
EDitION
f
_ 79 mesosticsre and nor re John Cage
. . . . . PAUL HILLIER (2007)
- . . . . Paul Hillier - internationally renowned
I. conductor and author of books on Arvo Part
_ and Steve Reich - reflects on John Cage
_ through Cage's own process of writing
mesostics - making poems like collecting seashells.
r=~ Order now from www.amazon.com or
www.tov-edition.com - or from your local
book-dealer.
TH E THEATRE OF VOI CES EDITION
ISBN 87-90056-89-2
14 € I $ 19 + shipping
MUSIC
The Supreme
ST EPH EN BROW N
B en R atliff
C O LT RANE
The story of a sou nd
250pp. Faber. £ 16.99.
978 0 57 1 23273 4
US: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. $24 .
9780374 126063
f yo u we re a saxo pho ne player in the
I 1960 s, John Co ltra ne's mu sic was liberat-
ing. You didn 't have to foll ow those intri-
cate chord changes any more, or keep that
trick y sw ing feel go ing. On e chord, one
sca le, could last for measur e after measur e,
and honk s, squea ks and splats we re part of
the voca bulary; sincerity was as impo rtant
as skill. Troubl e was - yo u weren' t John
Co ltrane. The man him self was infinit ely toler-
ant of younge r players' ex perimentation and
was happ y to share the stage with them and to
includ e them in some of his later gro ups -
what the saxophonist Jimmy Heath called his
"anti-poverty band s" , meanin g that witho ut
Co ltr anes spo nsorship these musicians
wo uld have had a hard time findin g wor k.
His ca ree r - like that of a host of other j azz
musicians - benefit ed fro m tim e in M iles
Davis ' s gro up. To geth er they made a har mo-
niou s co ntras t, Mil es all curved inward, like
his solo on "So Wh at" , Co l tranes ho rn
raised , his solo - like his ton e - ex trove rted,
challe ng ing, reachin g out. On his own , he
developed his definitive qu artet , one of the
most perfect band s in j azz histor y, with
Mc Co y Tyner on piano , Jimmy Garri son on
bass, and Elvi n Jon es on drums. Th e apparent
looseness of that rh ythm sec tion, marri ed to
its ev iden t tightn ess, is unlik ely ever to be
surpasse d. In Coltrane: The story of a sound,
Ben Ra tliff is di smayed at the decl ine of the
long and we ll-paid ($7, 000 per wee k in 200 7
dollars) club gigs, with their intimate relation -
ship to an audience, that allowe d the gro up to
evo lve its sound. Those gigs , with their inevi-
table repetition s, mu st, thou gh , have led to
some of Co ltra ne's res tless ness.
Here we co me to an esse ntial ele ment in
his mu sic: he was incapable of playin g some -
bod y el se' s cliches. Davis also had a horror
of the cliche, and would dism antl e a so ng
compl etely in orde r to ge t a fresh take on it.
Co ltrane co uld play the melod y straight, prac-
ticall y play the plain not es on the page - and
eve ry not e would sound new and freshly
minted, eve n on a for gett abl e pop ballad like
"Too Youn g To Go Steady ", where his ton e,
when it shifts into the tipper register , feels
like a voice go ing into falsetto. He strove to
crea te mu sic any small part of which wo uld,
with compl ete integrit y, ex press his entire
self. Beyond that, his was the high am bition
of an artist who feels that in expressing
him self he is ex press ing the wo rld.
Aft er rea ding Aaron Co pland's Music and
Imagination, Coltrane writes to Don
McMichael , Editor of Downbeat maga zine,
to des cribe his sense of the olde r co mposer's
strugg le to find a place and a role, whereas
he, Co ltrane, altho ugh sensing a kin ship with
someone "at odd s with the wor ld" , like Van
TLS NOVE MBE R 9 20 07
John Coitrane, 1962
Gogh, has a sec ure sense of co mm unity
within the wor ld of j azz and the larger world
of those whose grea tes t need is the need
to create. We find Coltrane chatting abo ut
Einstein with the co mpose r and French -horn
player David Amram . Co ltrane ex plains that
Einstein strove to sum up the compl exit y of
the cos mos in a formul a, and he wa nts to do
so mething sim ilar with mu sic. Ra tliff fin ds
an app osite quote from Rob ert Lowell on
Am erican poet s: " W e have so me imp atien ce
with the sort of pro saic, eve ryday thin gs of
life . .. . We leap for the sublime ... . We
have a feelin g the arts sho uld be all out" .
In go ing all out, Coltrane was embarking on
a quest that was person al and spiritual rather
than politic al. Yet his follo wers, and especially
the critics who championed them , had an
explicitly political age nda, so that any attem pt
to criticize their music was seen as an implic it
attack on the goals of the revoluti on. Revolu-
tionary music had to signify revolutionary poli-
tics, eve n if the oppresse d whom the revolu-
tion was to raise up were actually listenin g to
Martha and the Vandellas. Philip Larkin ,
writing soo n after Co ltrane's death, in a piece
so ill-m an nered that the Daily Telegraph
rejected it, comp ared Co ltrane to the agitator
Stokely Carmichae l. This was precisely wrong,
yet Larkin was not so wro ng in seeing that Col-
tranes avant-garde style wo uld not be long-
lived, and in fact the movement, once it lack ed
his cent ral presenc e, lost much of its vitality .
We have a Rom antic tend ency, as Ratliff
not es, to give imp ort anc e to what an artist
pro duces ju st before death , and Co l tra nes
late-p eriod mu sic thu s gains a special signifi-
cance. But in fact Co ltra ne, who died of liver
cancer at fort y, never had a late period , or at
least no mor e of one than did Mozart or
Schubert or Gers hwin, and there is no way of
knowing if the trajectory of Co ltranes caree r
wo uld have led him furth er away from the
mainstream , or back to its centre, or if it wo uld
have taken a turn in some other directi on .
As much as I admire this book - and 1 wish
Ratliff wo uld give up writing reviews for the
New York Times in order to devote him self
to writing more mu sical biographi es like this
one - I have to say that it seems on shaky
gro und when it gets into techni cal description.
For exa mple, in his discussion of the first
section of " A Love Suprem e": "Coltrane
plays an asce nding I-II- V pattern that form s
an E-majo r cho rd, and turn s it into a melodi c
cell that he run s up and down for the major
part of his imp rovisation". Thi s is awkward
first becau se Rom an numerals are conve ntion-
ally used to de note harmoni es, not scale tones,
but more importantl y because the whole point
of a melodi c ce ll based on E, F# and B is that
it avoids the third of the chord and is thu s
ambiguous about being maj or or minor. This
is prob abl y the qu ality that first drew Co ltrane
to "My Favo rite Things", the opening of
which uses the same E, F# and B melodic ce ll
to create a suspended feel before famili ar
cho rd progr essions lead it to ward s a min or
resoluti on. Elsew here, Ratcliff call s Johnn y
Hart man a tenor (Hartma n had a particul arl y
lusciou s bariton e vo ice), and sure ly John Len-
non was attac king not liberal hypocri sy but
radical chic in "Revolution" . It' s also hard to
figur e out what he mea ns by the stateme nt
"[ Coltrane 1 started to think in higher ranges
for the tenor, from the low B-flat upward" ,
since the tenor' s lowest note is the low B-fl at.
These are minor flaws. Writers with a deep
knowledge of music theory too often use it
as an exc use not to thin k seriously about what
is heard. Ratliff has listened . He guides us
throu gh the thick ets of the j azz scene with
precision, delicacy and an absolute absence of
pol emi c. His book is thorou ghly researched,
with ju st enough relevant biographi cal infor-
mation (I was particularly glad to have the
image of Co ltrane driving to gigs in his white
E-type) and a wide range of sources. Ratliff
quotes the poet and critic Amiri Baraka
attempting to animate a description of an
Albert Ayler solo: "He began to open a hole
in the roof so his ange ls co uld descend, sum-
moned by his ex ploding plaint s" . Co ltrane
approaches Ayler after the co ncert, and Bar-
aka is anxiou s to hear his reaction to it, which
is: "What kind of reed you using?". Th at' s
Coltrane, straight from the shoulder, direct,
and it' s Ratliff, too, in this exce llent book.
 MUSIC 11

he mythology of Wa lpurgisnacht was as eve n relevant in this case. Co oper is at

T fami liar to Germans from medieval

times . At the he ight of the witch-
hunt ing craze, the Brocken, or Bloc ksberg, in
the Harz mo untains to the south-east of Hano-
ver, was he ld to be the scene of demonic rev-
el ry every year on May I, the day sacred to St
Walpurgis, a blam eless eighth-cen tur y nun.
Stor ies of witches on broomsti cks, devil s in
mon strou s form , and unfettered sexual frenzy
cir cul ated freely for ma ny centuries before
the Enlightenment succee ded in puncturing
the superstition and reinin g in the cru elty it
had enge ndered. In 1777, Goet he, on an ex pe-
dit ion from We imar to study mining co nd i-
tion s near Erfurt, took the opp ortu nity to
climb the Blocksberg in misty Decemb er wea -
ther and gaze at the cloud s wi th a scie ntific
eye fro m above .
He had already plan ned to inclu de a
Walpurgisnachtstraw n in the lon g-gestatin g
Faust, and it was thi s image of the Brocken
and its demonic cults that became famili ar
to European reade rs, whether in Goeth e ' s
poetic text or in the many opera tic versio ns
of Faust (partic ularly Act Five of perh aps the
most famou s reworking, by Go unod) . Th e
lure of sorcery and witches' sabbaths was irre-
sistible in the Rom antic theatre, but such a
craze was onl y possib le because the devil and
his deeds were no lon ger trul y fri ght enin g to
theatregoe rs, ju st as horr or films tod ay are
design ed for comfortable , unth reatened audi-
ences . The Wa lpurg isnac ht sce ne in Faus t,
Part Two has a cl assical back ground, while
Darker tones
H UGH M A CDO N A LD
J ohn Mi ch a el Coo pe r
M E ND EL S SO H N , GOETH E , A ND
THE WA L P U RGIS N IG HT
The heathen muse in European culture, 1700-1 850
284pp . University of Rochester Press. $75;
distributed in the UK by Boydell and Brewer. £45 .
978 I 580462525
Goe thes short ball ad "Die erste Walp urgis-
nacht" (1799) treated a different aspect of
the myth ology, namely the co nflict between
Chris tians and Sax ons in the time of Char le-
magne, in which the lands between the Rhin e
and the Elbe were the fro ntier between pagan-
ism and Christianity. In his sea rching curios-
ity about the man y reli gion s of the world,
Goethe did no t take the Christian side, but
present ed the pagan druid s as legiti mat e,
wholeso me celebrants of their parti cular rites
on the slopes of the Broc ken.
John Mic hae l Co oper's new book is pri-
maril y co nce rne d with Fe lix Mend elssohn ' s
setting of th is nin ety-nin e-lin e poem - a work
wi th a co mplicated histor y since the co m-
poser typi call y suffe red fro m the des ire to
revise and impr ove his ow n music, eve n to
the point of not allow ing publication of some
of his mos t poli shed piece s. Cooper digs deep
into the history of the Wa lpurg is myth olo gy,
into Goe thes ma ny treatm ents of it, and into
the rece ption of both Goethe and Mendelssohn
durin g the nineteenth century. The tale of Men -
delssoh n' s remarkabl e friend ship with Goethe,
sixty years his senior, has been told many
tim es, but the most sign ifican t work that link s
them , Die ers te Walpurgisnacht, for soloists,
chorus and orches tra , has been side lined in
the twenti eth ce ntury , despite the author 's
clai m that, worldwi de, it is amo ng the mo st
frequ entl y performed of all chora l-a nd-
orchestr al compositions. In fift y yea rs of
concert-go ing, I have heard it on ly once .
Not a pebbl e is left unturned in Cooper's
ex ha ustive disc ussion of eve ry co nce iva ble
det ail of the mu sic: the source s, the sketches ,
the structure, perfor mance issues, critics '
responses from different countries, the Victo-
rian Eng lish translation (very goo d), and so
on. Man y pages of the score are reprodu ced
in the text. Readers in our ow n time are natu-
ra lly intrig ued by the spec tacle of a devout
Christian of Jewish orig in setting a poem in
which the Christians give way to the authen -
tic identity of pagans. But it see ms doubtful
that Mend el ssohn was eve r as troubl ed by
thi s as mod ern critics might suppose (or
wish), or that he thou ght of his Jewish orig ins
pains to stress issues of ide ntity and alterity,
of Self and Other, thou gh the gai ns of doing
so are far from obvio us, especially whe n
Other often turn s out to be Self and vice
versa. It is hard to imagin e that these
concept s wo uld have meant anything to
Goethe or Mendelssohn , neither of who m,
with their vas t erudition and profound
engagement with langu ages, science, history
and wor ld culture , can be stra itjacketed by
bin ary categori es such as these.
Wh en Cooper has a story to tell , he does
so with flu ency, enthu siasm and an eye for
detail. Wh en he ado pts a critica l sta nce, an x-
iou s not to omit a sing le possibl e ave nue of
arg ument, the pro se is qu ickl y overladen.
Th e musica l analys is is marred by the desire
to show that themes and motifs that have
barely anything in common co ntribute to
the work's orga nic un ity. Mend elssohn knew
very we ll how to organize his large-scale
design witho ut resor ting to resembl ances that
only a sq uinting eye ca n see . Thi s half-hour
cantata/o ratori o (it never had a hand y designa-
tion ) does ind eed deser ve to be better known.
If Eng lish audiences ca nnot take druids seri-
o usly, thi s wor k will pro bably not persuade
them to, although the mu sic is fin e, espe -
ciall y the sy mpho nic pictur e of stor my wea -
ther that serves as an ove rture . The chora l
writing is vigoro us and deft , an d eve n if we
never see any Mendel ssohn in the theatre,
Die ers te Walp urgisnacht sugg ests that his
dr amati c gifts were real.

Music Journals from Routledge for 2008

Jazz Perspectives
Winner of the ALPSP Best New
Journal Award 2007
Editors:
Lttwl $ Porter and John Hcwland
Volum e 2, 2 issues per year, 2008
Rout ledge announces Jazz
Perspectives, an international peer-
reviewed journal entirely devoted to
jazz scholarship.
As a referee d acad emic journ al, Jazz
Perspttctivtts bridges the jazz-as-music
andjazz-as-culture divide of
contemporaryjazz studies, and
promotes broader international
perspectives on the jazz tradition and its
legacy. As an int erdisciplinary platform
for jazz studies, the journal considersall
articlesreporting on original research
and analysis (musical, historical,
cultural, or otherwise). The journal
furthermore includes reviews and essays
on significant recent literature and new
recordings and media. The journal is
published biannually with issues
released each April and October.
Popular Music and Society
Editor: Gary Burns
Volume 31, 5 issues per year, 2008
Popular Music and Society, founded
in 1971, publishesarticles,book
reviews, and audio reviews on popular
music of any genre, time period, or
geographic location.
The journal is open to all scholarly
orientationstoward popular music,
including (but not limited to) historical,
theoretical, critical, sociological, and
cult ural approaches. The terms
" popular" and "society" are broadly
defined to accommodate a wide range
of articles on the subject
Recent and forthcoming Special Issue
topicsinclude: Digital Music Delivery,
Cover Songs, the Music Monopoly,
Jazz, and The Kinks.
www.informaworld.com/music
Ethnomusicology Forum
Editors:
Laudan Nooshin and Andrew Killick
Volume 17, 2 issues per year, 2008
Ethnomusicology Forum , formerly
known asthe British Journal of
Ethnomuslcology , is the academic,
refereed journal of the British Forum for
Ethnomusicology. As the name implies,
the journal seeksto provide a dynamic
forum for the presentation of new
thinking in the field of ethnomusicology,
defined broadly asthe study of " people
making music",andencompassesthe
study of all music, including Western art
music and popular music. Articles often
emphasise first-hand,sustained
engagement with people as music
makers, taking the form of
ethnographic writing following one or
more periods of fieldwork. Typically,
ethnographiesa im for a broad
assessment of the processes and
contextsthrough and within which
musici sim agined,d iscussed andm ade
Ethnography may be synthesised with a
variety of analytical,h istorical and other
methodologies, often entering into
dialogue with other disciplinary areas
sucha s musicpsychology, music
education, historical musicology,
petiormance studies, critical theory,
dance, folklore and linguistics, The field
is therefore characterised by its breadth
in theory and method,i ts
interdisciplinary nature and its global
perspective
Journal of New Music
Research
Editor: Alan Marsden
Volume 37, 4 issues per year, 2008
Th" Journal of New Music Research
(JNMR)was founded (previously under
the tit le Interface) in 1972. JNMR seeks
to establish an interdisciplinary
foundation for the creation and study
of music by means of the most
advanced technologies, by publishing
material which is both scientifically
rigorous and musically relevant. JNMR
drawson disciplines ranging from
musicology (music theory, aesthetics,
sociology), psychology (from
psychoacoustics to cognitive psychology
- with emphasis on modelling),
acoustics(including sound engineering),
computer science (from signal
processing to artificial intelligence),
philosophy (epistemology and
methodology) t o brain sciences.
Contemporary Music
Review
Editor: Peter Nelson
Volume 27, 6 issues per year, 2008
Contemporary Music Revie w is a
contemporary musicians' journal. It
provides a forum where new tendencies
in composit ion can be discussed in both
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Muziki: Journal of Music
Research in Africa
Co-published with UN/SA
Editors:
George T King and Chris Walton
Volume 5, 2 issuesper year,2008
Research into the music of Africa has
for many years been concentrated in
the Americanand European diaspora. lt
has further been characterised by the
same divisions as music research
elsewhere,b e theyb etween
ethnomusicologists and musicologists,
or theorists and historians, The journal
wishes t o establish a unified African
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'Western', it int endst o reflectth e
diversity of African musics and the
research that they inspire
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Editor: Deborah Kauffman
Volume 27, 4 issues per year, 2008
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TL S N O V E M B E R 9 2007
 12 ECONOMIC HISTORY
MUSICBOOK~

BOYDELL & BREWER

T h e 1'1I TSlI it o f
They didn't suffer enough
Hi gh Cu lt ure
he traditional wisdom about not A . J . SH ERMAN gave the nation its National Ga llery of Art

T
K1tl'oi OM ...... rl lH '\ \1 1'l1.1l o\\lL" l("
I:" \'l("lt'Ill-\.~" ''\;t ...~~
judging a book by its cover see ms
peculiarly appo site here, where the
arresting du st jacket of The Forgotten Man
features a photo graph, taken in December
1931, depicting a large anonymous cro wd of
unemployed men , lined up outside the Munic-
ipal Lod ging Hou se in New York City in
expectation of a free meal. These men look as
if they have been waitin g a long time. Most
in cloth cap s, some wea ring fedoras that sug-
gest better days, the men fill the pavement,
The Pursuit 01 High Culture crowded together down the entire length of a
John Ilia and Chamber shabby street, their grim faces and averted
Mu.lc In Vlclorlan London
CHRISTINA BASHFORD
eyes eloquent of misery and humiliation. The
An investigation of the promotion and caption informs us that on the day the photo-
consumption of high musical culture among graph was taken , over 6,700 men were fed at
leisured society in Victorian London, focusing on this one site. These were some of the peopl e
the activities of the concert manager John Ella
behind the unpr ecedent ed statistics of the
and his Musical Unian (1845-81) - an eminent,
long-lived institution for chamber music, much Great Dep ression : out of work , often hom e-
feted across Europe in its day. less and hun gry, most feeling bewild erment
978 1 843832980 £SO as well as loss, all mark ed by experiences of
Music in Britain, 1600-1900
priv ation destin ed to scar them with psychic
wounds enduring in the coll ective mem ory of
Maurlce Durulle
The Man and HI. Music subsequent generation s.
JAMES E. FRAZIER Mo ved hy our e nco unte r with thos e faces,
Drawing on the accounts of those who knew we open this self-proclaimed "new histor y"
Durufle personally as well as on his own detailed of well-documented event s with some curi os-
research, Frazier offers a broad sketch of this
ity, wondering what new could conc eivabl y
modest and elusive man , widely recognized
today for having created some of the greatest be written about the economic catastroph e
works in the organ repertory - and the masterful and its long aftermath that has been describ ed
Requiem. and analysed in an entire library of popular
978 1 580462273 £35
University of Rochester Press and academic works. We are soon told , with
retro specti ve dogm atic cert aint y, that both
Discovering Mahler President s Hoo ver and Roosevelt presided
Writing. on Mahler, 1955·2005 over polici es which were misconceived, disas-
DONALO MITCHELL trou sly wrong, thu s exa cerbating the effects
The fourth and final volume of Donald of the 1929 crash; and that the fundament al
Mitchell's un ique studies of Mah ler and his probl em was inter venti on itself , "the lack of
music. It fills the remaining gaps in the scrutin y
of Mahler's works in the series, principall y the faith in the marketplac e". If Hoo ver the
Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Symphanies, with the ameliorationist enginee r and Roo sevelt the
Ninth and Tenth. restless tink erer, with his "new kind of inter-
978184383345 1 £40 until 31/12/2007
£50 thereafter est-group politi cs", had desisted from action,
allow ing tough , resilient Am erican men and
Staking out the Territory women to help them selves, all would eve n-
and Other Writings on Music tuall y have been well, and the Depre ssion
HUGHWOOD
A selection of the writings of Hugh Wood
never as prolon ged or deep as it bec ame.
Amit y Shlaess faith in the self-hea ling
- composer, teacher and writer - published to propensity of mark ets ec hoes with uncann y
mark his 75~ birthday. fidelit y doctrines espoused by Andrew
978 0 95560 870 4 £40 Cloth
Mellon , the devoutl y immobile billionaire
97809556087/ 1 £15.99 Poper
Plumbago Books who reigned over the United Stat es Treas ury
durin g the Harding, Coolidge and Hoo ver
Music In Educational administrations, who also believed in the
Thought and Practice redempti ve power of suffering, which
A Survey Irom 800 BC would lead others to work harder. Beyond
BERNARR RAINBOW WITH GORDON Cox Roo sevelt , Shl aes blam es the pernicious
Now available In paperback.
Indispensable ... The profession of mus ic education
influ enc e of John Maynard Keynes, with his
has at last been providedwfth a detailedand emphas is on consum er s - " also vote rs", as
documented history... the volume should be on she reminds us. Keynes both inspired and
the shelves of every libraryand musician . guid ed the New Deal, giving intellectu al
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MUSIC EDUCATION
respectability to the insouciant notion of
978 1843833604 £16.99 Poper
"perpetual experime ntation" , which Shlaes
insists characteriz ed the Roosevelt years.
Coming in Ja nuary
Immer sed in "the fun of experiments", the
Edmund Rubbra: Symphonist New Dealer s failed to und er stand that busi-
LEO BLACK
nessm en might thereb y be intimidated into
A new account of Rubbro's symphonies, setting
them fully in the context of his life and other " terr ified inaction" , a nd , as a con sequ enc e,
work, by the author of Franz Schubert: Music & become unwillin g to invest, thus deepenin g
Belief. the downturn and adding to unemployment.
978 1 84383 355 0 £30
Sympathetic to timorous businessmen,
Shl aes reserves her prin cip al compassion for
BOYDELL & BREWER LTD tho se who lost money on Wall Street. The
www,boydell.co.uk
Tel ' (01394) 610600
E-mail. troding@boydell co .uk
Amit y Shla e s
T HE FORGOTTE N MAN
A new history of the Grea t Dep ression
464 pp. Cape . £25.
978 0224 063128
US: Harp erCollin s. $26.95. 978 0 06 621i 70 1
stock market , she claim s, "told a hea rtbreak-
ing story": its fluctu ation s after 1929 made
"A merica ns doubt them selv es as investor s".
Without mentioning that onl y a small
minorit y of Am erican s in the Depre ssion years
were in any financial position to invest, Shlaes
adds, in a scolding aside, that "the good will
of the New Dealers, and there was enorm ous
goodwill, could not excuse such conse-
quences". Villains abound in the Shlaes ver-
sion of the Depression, chief among them Pres-
ident Roosevelt, but also the group of academ-
ics, union leaders and social activists, many
later destined to join the New Deal in senior
positions, who embarked on a study tour of the
So viet Union in 1927 , a trip she scorns as " the
junket of all junkets". A far from cohesive
group, these men were for the most part
impressed by what they were allowed to
observe in the Soviet Union, though they were
by no means uncritic al, and their political
views remained largely centri st or mildl y
Social Democratic. Man y in the group were,
howe ver, persuaded by Keynesian doctrines,
and both intellectually and temp eramentally
disposed to advocate vigorous use of gove rn-
ment powers to regulate and tax the economy.
Shlaes is consistentl y offended by all taxation ,
deplorin g its effects on corporate as well as
personal profit s, and applauding the steep tax
cut s introduc ed by Andrew Mellon.
Her hero es are an odd ass ortme nt of
indi vidu als, mo st pa ssion ate opp on ents of
Roo sevelt , including Mellon him self , who
Two Poems
I
Someon e moving behind the blind
of the flat where you used to live!
Five or six yea rs ago
that could sure ly have been you?
And where would I have been ?
Standin g, laughin g, in the kitch en , perh aps?
2
Thi s small, stolen photograph
of you sleeping
has gone with me
from room to ca su al room
for several yea rs now.
At least - I ass ume
you we re reall y
fast asleep.
FRANK K UPP NER
TLS NO VEM BE R 9 20 07
while being pro secut ed for alleged tax eva -
sion, a charge of which he was ultim atel y
exonera ted. Anoth er is Samu el Insull , the
Briti sh-born publi c utiliti es financi er whose
vas t electric utilit y empire coll apsed in 1932,
indict ed but subsequently acquitted of fraud
and embezzleme nt charges. She also devotes
admiring attention to the du rabl e therap eutic
formul a propounded by Bill Wil son , the
found er of Alcoh olic s Anon ymou s; and an
entire chapter to Joseph Sch echt er, the
humble kosher butcher from Brookl yn whose
resistance to gove rnment regulati on led to
the case of Schecht er Poultry Co rp. vs United
States which ultimately brou ght down the
might y National Recovery Administration, a
centr epi ece of the New Deal. A biz arre addi-
tion to her gallery, one feels inserted for his
shee r theatricalit y rather than lasting imp act ,
was Father Divine, ne George Baker, a chari s-
matic preacher with so me pretensions to per-
sonal divinity, who forged an Evangel ica l
movement that at its peak attracted ten s of
thou sand s of Afric an Am eric an follo wer s,
man y from the impoveri shed rural South ,
establishing them in produ cti ve lives inde-
pendent of publi c ass ista nce.
In ex pert hand s, revisioni sm , eve n toyin g
with the count er-factu al, may enlighten as
well as entertain. But this tend enti ous and
quirk y, so metimes confu sing account of the
Depr ession , with its curiou sly selective
comp assion, and stride nt glorification of
" self-help" as the cure-all for an unpr ece-
dented economic di saster, gross ly simplifies
the choic es ava ilable in the 1930s to the vast
majority of Am eric ans. Its blith e callous
tone, moreover, is inappropriate for a tragic
time, and its dogmati sm traduc es tho se who,
despit e errors and setbacks, strove with so me
success to restor e Am eri cans' faith in their
gove rn me nt, the capitali st sys te m, a nd, not
least, them sel ves.
 13

Scattering the leaves

The melancholy legacy of Otto F. Ege, book collector
and book destroyer

tto Ege was a successful collec tor , A. S . G. E D WA R D S or co mmen tary. One of the earliest and most duced in forty sets around 1951 , at the time

O ch iefly of medieva l manuscripts,

for nea rly forty years . Yet today
he is remembered not as a co llec-
tor, but rather as the most notorious book
destroyer of his age. There is little in his
evidently considera ble. He bou ght from estab-
lished dealers in No rth Am eric a, England and
Europe, some times from thei r catalog ues, but
in the 1920 s and early 30s he also ma de trip s
famous exa mples is E. G. Duff' s 1905 essay
on Cax ton for the Cax ton Club of Chicago,
copies of which were acc ompan ied by single
lea ves from a fragmentary first edition of
Cax ron's printin g of Canterbury Tal es. Since
of his death , co mprised so lely of medi eval
Western manu script leaves.
This enumeration is not the full extent of
Ege 's activities in the constructi on of manu-
script or leaf books. But it indicates the ways
public life to sugges t his later notoriety. to Euro pe to buy directl y. In 1922 he did so then , the history of the prac tice has involved in which he took the conce pt in new direc-
Ege was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, on in Gra nada and Madrid ; in 1928 in Pari s and the nam es of a number of very distin gui shed tions. No one produ ced more, and no one
Ap ril 14, 1888, and educated at the Phil- Flore nce ; in 1929 he was in England, and scho lars. The leaf-b ook form was already attempted to elabora te the for m in the ways
adelphi a Schoo l of Indu strial Arts. In 1913, aga in in 1931. He always return ed with established when Ege began to sell frag- he did , throu gh the use of multipl e sources,
he received a Master' s degree in Educa tion manu script s and/or leaves. ment s. He was , however , to make a numb er both print and - increasingly - manu script.
fro m New York University. From 1914 -20, The extent of these purchases invites an of distin cti ve contributions to the develop- And Ege 's selling of fragment s was not
he headed the teacher-trainin g departm ent at obvious question: how could he afford to buy ment of the form. limited to the compilation of portfolio s (as
the Phil adelphia Museu m School of Indu s- manu scripts on the sca le he did ? He had been He appears to have pro duced his fir st leaf me ntio ned above, he was selling individual
trial Ar ts. In 1920 , he moved from New York in Cleve land for less than a decade when all book in 1936, when he issued a portfolio leaves by other means). He form ed a commer-
to Cleve land, Ohi o, and embar ked on a new these trips were made and was still a juni or ca lled Orig inal Leaves from Famous Bibles: cia l relationship with the New York dealer
career at the Cleve land School of Art, where acade mic, with a modest salary, mar ried with Nine centu ries 1121-1 925 A.D., in a series of Philip C. Duschnes, who marketed both por t-
he was success ively instructor of Letterin g, a young child. Tra vel to Europe from the 200 sets . Thi s co mprise d thirty-eight lea ves folio s and leaves. And Ege used a letterhead
Layout and Typograph y, cha ir of the Depart- M idwes t was not cheap. He was buying from various books both manuscript and that identifi ed him as a vendor of "O RIG I-
ment of Teac her Training and, for the last o the r m anuscripts, apart from those he print ed . Thi s in itself was highl y unu sual: NA L LEAV ES from I MEDI EV AL M A NU-
seve n years of his life, Dean, guiding the obtained on his travels. And the pace of his most leaf book s hith ert o had co mprised a SCRIPTS I FAMOUS AND RAR E BIBL ES
School to degree-granti ng status in 1947, and co llecting did not slacken in later yea rs. single leaf from a single print ed book. Very I NOTE D & PRIVATE PRESSES" above his
a change of name in 194 8 (it is now Cleve - Where did the money come from ? occas ionally , it might combine a numb er of hom e address . But it is the por tfolios that
land Institut e of Art). He died from diabetes Part of the answe r seems to lie in the large lea ves from a numb er of different printed dem onstrate most starkly that Ege was pre-
in Cleve land on Jun e 17, 1951. numb er of separate manuscript leaves he book s, but never before Eges first leaf book pared to break up manu scri pts to creat e his
Eges professional career in Cleve land was bou ght. By 1931, he had made a collection was there one that includ ed both manu script s sets of leaves.
clearl y a success ful one. His passing was of these, of sufficie nt size for a number of and pri nted leaves. Nor had anyo ne previ- To many, the instincti ve respo nse to such
marked by seve ral obituaries both in local them to appear in a travellin g ex hibition, ously attem pted to combine leaves from destru ction is revul sion. How could Ege ju s-
newspapers and profess ional j ourn als and by Illuminated Manuscripts in Historical seve ral different manuscript s to for m part of tify the sys te matic destruct ion of manu script s
a memori al exhibition at the main Cleve land Seq uence , under the auspices of the Amer - a portfoli o. Ege includ ed three man usc ript for co mme rcial ends? Ege himself was suffi-
public library. He published little, most of it ican Federation of Art s. It is not clear whe- leaves, one fro m an Armenian bibl e and two cie ntly con scious of the ethica l issues
journ alism in Cleve land newspaper s, or in ther this ex hibition had any commerc ial from French Latin bibl es, one dated cl 240, involved in breaking up books to address
education jo urnals, on the teachin g of art his- dim ension, but Ege organi zed a numb er of the other cl3 1O. them directl y. In 1938, in an obsc ure, short-
tory. His was not a caree r that invites much subsequent exhibitions between the 1930s This last point focu ses on the darker lived journal , Avocations: A magazine of
attenti on from posterit y. But it is not the mod- and 50s that clea rly did offer such leaves for dimension of Eges leaf books. By 1936, he hobbi es and leisure, he publi shed a brief
es t traject or y of his aca demic life that makes sale. He was certa inly selling separate leaves was not co ntent to sell individual manu script article that , in the way it blends autobio-
Ege sig nifica nt, but hi s invol vem e nt in an by 1923, when he sold ten to the George W. fragment s that he had bought as fragment s. gra phy and apologia, makes an absor bing
entirely different world. Stevens Ga llery of the Tol edo Mu seum of He was also cutting up co mplete manu script s docum ent. It is titled unab ashedl y " I Am a
Tradit ionall y in Nor th A merica, medieval Art in Ohio. In mone tary term s this was to pro vide uniform lea ves for his 200 port- Bibli ocl ast" . Ege says that he has been col-
man usc ript co llect ing has been the territ ory doubtl ess an unrem arkable tra nsaction. How- folios. It was at this point that Ege clearl y lectin g manu script s for "about twenty-fi ve
of the rich, of the J. P. Mo rgans, of Henry eve r, it was the harbin ger of so mething rather crosse d the line that sepa rated the fragment years" . He bought hi s fir st one in Philadel-
WaIters, of Henr y Huntin gton , all of whom different and more noteworth y. selle r fro m the book destroyer. His activities phia where he outbid the great dealer Rosen-
crea ted libraries that survive in their ow n The sale of single leaves obviously follows equally clea rly show the co mmercia l imp era- bach for a Book of Hour s, for which he paid
names, and who we re serviced by illu strious from some antecedent act of destructi on, for tives that shaped his involvement with the the considerable sum (at the time, 1913) of
dealers from A. S. W. Rosenb ach to H. P. which there is a well-chronicled tradition. leaf book. The title formul a "Original lea ves $ 175. Being in debt (he goes on) he "allowed
Kraus. That an obscure Midwest aca dem ic Motives for breakin g manu script s have from fam ous .. ." was to be standar d for his a well-know n Chicago collector [probably
such as Ege should take his place in such a ranged from the scholarly (as for example portfolios, as was the separate mo unting of the type designer Ernes t Detterer] to tempt
bibli ophili c pantheon is, in itself , remark able. with the collector John Bagford, who in the lea ves and acc ompanying annotation , a state- him to divide the book with him ". From this
But he did. In 1935, when Sey mour de Ricci seve nteenth century collected fragments out ment of limitation , and so me form of box to fateful mom ent, it wou ld appear, Ege was
and W. J. Wil son pub lished their Census of of an interest in palaeograph y) to the personal contain the set. launched on a career in book breaking. He is,
M edieval Manuscripts in the United States (as with John Ruskin, who occasio nally gave Oth er portfolios foll owed . In 1949, he he chee rfully acknow ledges, one of those
and Canada, Ege's coll ection was includ ed. leaves from his large collection of medieval issued Orig inal Leaves from Famo us Books: "strange, ecce ntric hook tearers" .
It record ed seve nty-one manu scri pts, as well manuscript s to friends) to the innocentl y Eight centuries 1240 A.D.- 1923 A.D., co mpris- But, he contends, a principled one. He
as w hat are describ ed as "a g reat many (at de structive (as w ith the mag nifice nt Carme lite ing tw ent y-fi ve leave s in a se ries o f 110 se ts . offe rs vario us defences for the pract ice .
least four hundr ed) single leaves of Latin Missal cut to pieces by the children of Phi lip This included six lea ves, all from Western Some of these are ideological: to make such
man usc ripts, mainl y from Italian and Spa nish Augustus Hanrott in the early nineteenth cen- manu script s: a Domini can Paris bibl e, c 1240 , fragment s "available to schools, libraries,
choir-books of the XIVth, X Vth and XV lt h tury for the purposes of domestic diversion ). Aristotle' s Ethics from an Erfurt manu script collections and individuals" , to "create leaf
centuri es" , togeth er with an unspecifi ed Ege 's interest in manuscript fragments mus t of 1365, an Italian Livy of 1436, a French exhibitions . . . so as to engender an interest in
numb er of other fragment s or leaves fro m the be distinguished from all these: for he saw the Book of Hour s, c 1460 and Aquin as: Commen - fine book s, past and present" and to stimulate
Erik von Scherling catalog ues of the 1920 s comme rcial potential of such fragment s and tary on the Sen tences from Italy, 1470. These "the amateur and private press devotee" .
and 30s, and "thirty vellum deeds and char- devised new strategies for selling them. sa me six leaves rea ppear, together with one There is also an intellectual underpinning of
ters in Latin , Spa nish and English". Eges activities are crucially linked to the from an early twelfth- century Koran, in 1949 a startlingly adva nced kind: such collections
Thi s was a substantial private collection . eme rgence of the leaf book. This is chiefly a in another set, Original Lea ves fro m Famous of fragments are valuable, he claims, since
A nd it is one that Ege continued to add to twenti eth- century phenomenon. Ge nerally a Books: Ni ne centuries 1122 A.D.- 1923 AD ., they "illustrate the History of the Book" from
until shor tly before his death . It is hard to say sing le co py of a rare book, often imperfect, is fifty sets of forty leaves. Finally there is its beginnin gs to the present day. It is worth
with any certa inty how many manu script s he bro ken up, and the indi vidu al leaves sold sep- Eges most famous portfolio , Fifty Original recalling that Ege lectured on the History of
ow ned, but the extent of his co llec ting was arately, often with some acc ompany ing essay Leaves from Medi eval Manuscripts, pro- the Book at Western Reserve Univers ity in

TLS NOVE M BE R 9 2 0 07
14
A page from a northern French Book of'Hours (late fifteenth century); part of Fifty Original Leaves from Medieval Manuscripts,
Western Europe, XII-XVI Century, a selection made by Otto F. Ege to illustrate the art of the manuscript
Cleveland in the 1930s and 40s, when the sub-
ject was scarcely recognized in the academic
world.
There is some cogency - and some sophisti-
catio n - to the se arguments . Few who have
had the opportunity of using fragment collec-
tion s for teachin g purp oses would deny their
usefuln ess. But there is also con siderabl e
sophistry . Ege avoid s, of cour se, the central
ethic al problem: the destructi on of intact man-
uscript s, particul arly rare ones . Th e breakin g
up of already significantly imp erfect or dam-
aged manu scripts might be thou ght to be dif-
ferent , or at least to admit some degree of ethi-
cal flexibility. Ege him self promi ses in hi s
Avocations article "never to take apart a
' museum piece ' book or a unique cop y if it is
complete". But he never defin es hi s term s,
particularly what he means by "complete", a
point of some importance since the majorit y
of surviving medie val manu script s are likel y
to lack some leaves. His car eful imprecision
left him with room for manoeu vre, and he
exploited it.
Ege's article raises a numb er of question s
to do with the marketing of manu script
fragment s. Whil e he offers some ju stific ation s
for his role as "biblioclast" he also avoids any
mention of what was ob viously the most sig-
nificant moti ve: financi al ga in. We can obtain
a little more insight into Ege's role as entrepre-
neur from an und ated letter (prohahl y of the
1940s, now in the Norlin Library, University
of Colorado at Bould er). Ege wrote this letter
to the Chicago calli graph er and fragm ent
coll ector James Haye s (190 7-93). It begin s
with prai se of Hayes' s own calligraphy ("s o
beautifull y written") , encloses a "fairly recent
cat alogue of my material, that was prepared
by Duschnes N. Y." and offers a 10 per cent
discount "on all list ord ers under $ 100 - if
total ove r that, 20 per cent ", befor e conclud-
ing with a discu ssion of reproductions of the
medi eval Corbie script.
One is inclin ed to suspect that, in the way
COMM ENTARY
it mixes the aes thetic, the commerci al and the
scholarly , this letter is probably typical of
much of Eges corr espond enc e. But the com-
mercial aspect is clearly important, and the
numb ers are not insignificant : $ 100 was not a
small sum in the 1940 s. And Eges success
with Hayes was probably quit e typic al.
Hayes did buy manu script leav es from him,
most notabl y five lea ves from a fine Terence ,
copi ed in Florenc e by the hum ani st scribe
Juli anu s Antonii de Prato. Thi s is the same
Terenc e that Ege recorded in his own coll ec-
tion in 1935. At that time it was complete.
Ege enjoy ed con sider able commercial
success as a dealer in manu script fr agm ents .
Cer tainly he seems to have been able to
increa se the number and qualit y of his acqui-
sitions over time. At his death his collection
was estimated as containing more than 1,500
separate manu script lea ves that were
assessed for probate at $45,000 : a lot of
money in the early 1950s. And by this time
he had , of cour se, distributed a numb er of
portfolios, sold other leav es to indi vidu als
and sold others at various exhibitions. Th e
size of the residu e testifi es to the sca le of his
operations.
Wh y should Otto Ege matter, more than
half a century after his death ? He is important
both becau se of what he did and what he por-
tended. What he did was to cre ate for poster-
ity a massi ve int ercontinent al ji gsaw pu zzle,
in which once complete manu script s are scat-
tered acro ss continent s as separate leave s,
many of which cannot now be locat ed. For
example, one of the manu script s Ege brok e
up for his Medieval Leaves portfolio was a
twelfth-century missal, prob ably Au strian
(though Ege thought it was Spani sh). When
he bou ght it in 194 8, it had 173 leav es; about
half are currently to be found as far afield
as Auckl and and Tok yo. A fift eenth-c entury
manu script of Grego ry the Great' s Dialogues
origin ally had 274 leaves; fewer than a third
of the se are now identifiable. One of the most
TLS NO VE M BE R 9 20 07
attractive of the manu script s Ege owned was
the late-thirteenth-century Beau vais missal.
In 1926, this had 339 lea ves. Th e wherea -
bout s of fewer than a quarter can now be
established. Such exa mples can be multi-
plied. They indicate the extent of the damage
Ege did , and the problems he creat ed for later
manu script scholarship.
Eges career is also of very considerabl e
importance in the histor y of twentieth-
centu ry book collectin g. He did more than any-
one else to make the coll ectin g of manu script
fragments both possible and legitimate. And
his death herald ed the beginnin g of a new era
of fragment selling, in part at lea st created by
his success . Less than a month after he died,
on Jul y 3, 1951, Chri sties sold the Tarlet on
Hour s, a French Sarum Hour s, prob ably made
in Rou en cl430. At the time of its sale the
manu script compri sed 168 leaves, of which
thirt y-five were full-pa ge miniatures of con-
siderable qualit y. After its acqui sition by the
Lond on dealer Maggs (from whom Ege had
him self obtained a number of manu script s),
the firm, on the advice of Sir Sydn ey
Cock erell, remov ed the thirty-five miniatures
and sold them separately. Thi s act of comm er-
cial vandali sm mark s the onset of a pha se of
manu script destruction that still continues.
The list of compl ete manu script s that have
passed through the saleroom in the past fifty
years, and are now di sm embered, is a lon g
one, in some instance s involvin g the destruc-
tion of work s of con siderabl e historic al or art-
historical importance. Otto Eges activities
pro vided a model of the commercial
adva ntages of manu script destruction that
some figure s in the book trade have readil y
copied. It is a melancholy legacy but an
important one.
This article is condense d f rom the Nicholls
Lecture, delivered on February 15. 2007 , at
the Fisher Rare Book Library, Unive rsity of
Toronto.
Music in
the House
of Tears
ssilah, a small town of blue and
A whitew ashed hou ses on the Atl antic
coa st of Morocco, was form erl y a
Portuguese port and very briefly, in the
seventee nth century, a Briti sh possession. Its
sixtee nth-century ramp art s protect the
labyrinthine little stree ts of the medina. In
the openin g decad es of the twenti eth century
Moul ay Ahm ed Raisuli , the brigand princ e,
bandit, phil osopher and tyrant , held the town
and spread fear throu ghout the region. Much
of his incom e deri ved from kidnappin g. The
Rai suli' s palac e, where his victims were
held , once known as the Hou se of Tear s,
has since become the Qasr al-Thaqafa, or
Palace of Culture. Together with the Hassan
11 Ce ntre for International Encount ers, the
Palace of Culture was host to a conferenc e on
Mu sic in the World of Islam in Augu st.
Both the annual cultural festival (in its
twent y-ninth incarnation this yea r) and the
look of Assilah today are, more than anything
else, the work of Moh am ed Benaissa. Born in
1936, the son of a farm er, he was succes-
sively Moroccan Mini ster of Culture and
Amba ssador to Washington , before becom-
ing Foreign Mini ster, the position he now
hold s. From 1983 on ward s, this prodi giou sly
energetic man has also been the Ma yor of
Assilah. The thre e-w eek summer festival that
he inaugurated and still supervises started out
as a festival of the visual arts. Later , literature
was added and , as well as polit ician s,
musician s and artists, past litera ry visitors
have includ ed Leopold Sedar Senghor,
Mahmud Dar wish, Adonis, Alb erto Mora via ,
al-Tayyib Salih and Jor ge Am ado. Thi s
summer's ethnom usicologica l conference
was imm ediat ely preceded by one on "Africa
and Europ e: The chall enges of some and the
obligations of others" , and it was succee ded
by another on "The Intell ectu al Elite and
Salafi st Thinking in the Arab World ". (Sal afi
Muslim s dedicate them sel ves to following
the precept s and practic es of the earliest
generations of Mu slim s.) Frescos paint ed
on the walls of the medina as well as nightl y
conc ert s are also part of the festival.
The conference on mu sic was attended by
ethnomusicologi sts from all over the world,
and papers were given on such recondite
topics as "The Migration of Lut e-t yp e Instru-
ment s to the Mu slim Malay World", "The
Art of Bod y Percu ssion and Mo vement as
an Expres sion of Cultural Mem ory and
Social Transformation in Aceh (Sumatra)
and its Link s in Countries around the North-
ern Rim of the Indian Oce an and the Mediter-
rane an" and "Tr ansnational Influ ence s and
National Appropriations: Th e influ ence of
Hindi film music on Mu slim Hausa popul ar
and religious music". About a third of the
way throu gh the narrowl y academic proc eed-
ings at Assilah, a woman in hijab stood up
and demanded of the delegates, first whether
 COMMENTARY 15
The Edwin Mellen Press
Publisher ofScholarly Books
there was one amo ng them who was an ence , co nve ned und er the patron age of King the exo tic sounds . World mu sic (w hich tends
ex pert in the Kor an and the Hadith s (sayi ngs Fouad on the initi ati ve of the mu sicologist to mean all of the wor ld's mu sic exce pt that A History ofDisability
of the Prophet) and, seco ndly, whether mu sic Baro n Rodolphe d'Erlange r, was the first of the West) often has a polit ical dim en sion. in Nineteenth-Century Scotland
was haram (for bidden) or halal (pe rm itted in eve r held on non- Eu ropean mu sic. The King When Kem al Atatiirk ca me to power, Otto-
Islam ). The re was no such ex pert, and no one decl ared that "it is hoped that Arab music will man court mu sic was bann ed for seve ra l lain Hutchison
knew how to reply to her. reach the degree of refin ement an d perfection yea rs, and the hauntingly beaut iful mu sic of University of Stirling
The question of the per missibility of mu sic that Western music has reached". Musicians the Mevlevi der vishes was bann ed for much 978-0-7734-527 1-8
in Islam is a compl ex one. The Kor an never as we ll as musico log ists atten ded. But profes- longer. In A lgeria, Rai po p music with its
menti on s music , yet it fierc ely denou nces sional stree t-cor ner and cafe mu sicians were transgressive lyrics was taken up by yo ung
poetry and poets. Eve n so, there has been no ex cluded , and ind eed one of the aims of the people thorou ghl y disenc hanted with both
The Polemical Force
particular Mus lim animus against poe try . effendis and Ori entalists was to resc ue Arab the FLN (Na tional Liberation Fro nt) and the
ofChekhov's Comedies
Indeed the Aya tollah Khom eini and the mu sic from the guild members and stree t FrS (Islam ic Salvation Fro nt) . At the A ssilah
imm ensely influ ent ial Sunni Islamist think er perform ers, who, they believed, were respon- con fere nce there was a brief clash between a John McKellor Reid
Mawdudi both composed poetry. All fo ur of sible for the decay of Arab mu sic. spea ker who maintained that the almos t com - University of West of England
the gre at Sunni law schoo ls agree in disap - Arab mu sic was thou ght to nee d tidyin g up plete disappearance of maqam music in Iraq
978-0 -7734-5388-3
provin g of mu sic , and some instrum ents, and there were ill-fated attem pts to prov ide it was du e to the effect of Am erican and Briti sh
such as the lute and ree d pipe , we re forbid- with a notation , based on twent y-four qu arter sanctions and warmonge ring and those in the
den. In the 1930s, after the Wahhabis had ton es. Numero us phon ograph reco rdin gs audience who, on the co ntrary, held that it
taken power in the Hejaz, they set abo ut were made - Bela Bart ok was one of those was du e to the earlier brut al purges of the The Miniature and the Gigantic
co nfisca ting mouth organs and gramo pho ne who supervise d the recordings. The Ca iro del- Jewish co mmunity in Iraq. (Mos t of the best in Philadelphia Architecture
needl es. Eve n so , certa in exce ptions are ega tes clashed over whether Western musica l maqam mu sicians had been Jewish, an d Iraqi Gra y Read
wi de ly admitted, such as mu sic at weddings instrum ent s could be integrated into Arab maqam cu rrently flo urishes in Israel. ) Florida International University
and o n pilgrim age, and wa r dances. The co n- mu sic or whether trad ition al music sho uld Out siders at such a co nfe rence must be
978-0-7734-5429-3
feren ce was treated to a lecture on the arda h preser ve its purit y. Att empt s were made to struck by the eerily narrow obje ctivity of
or Saudi war dance (a per for mance art that no pur ge Ar ab music of its Iranian and Ottoman ethnom usico log ists . They are archivists first
longer see ms to need the pretext of war) . Th e Turkish termin olo gy. and theor eticians sec ond. No one eve r paused
Afghan Ta leba n had no do ubts abo ut the ev il Issues about music as an ex press ion of to remark that so me of the dances show n on Thorstein Veblen's Contribution
of mu sic, and once in po wer they set abo ut racial or nation al identit y, the preserva tion of the PowerPoint present ation s we re hardl y to Environmental Sociology
destro ying mus ica l instrument s and closing tradit ion and the no tation of Ori ental mu sic more than ha lf-hea rted shuffles , and that
down shops that sold COs and cassettes . On resurfaced at the Assil ah co nference. Th e some of the sing ing was not up to the sta nd- Edited by Ross E Mitchell
the other ha nd, thanks in very large part to anglopho ne ethnom usicolog ists, coming ard heard in a Briti sh pub late on a Saturday 978-0-7734-5415-6
Sufi order s, music, singing and dancin g have from back groun ds in an thropo logy, tended to night. O n the oth er hand, no one commented
flouri shed throu ghout the Islamic wor ld. stress the soc ial co ntex t and role of mu sic, on the grace and beaut y of a dance perform-
Speakers mad e frequ ent reference back to whi le the francoph ones o n the whole concen- ance by Kuw aiti women.
the Ca iro Co nference on Arab Mu sic, held trated on more abstrac t meth odol ogical An A merican acade mic, Jon athan Shan- Representing the Catastrophic
seven ty-five yea rs ago in 1932 . That co nfer- issues, as we ll as techniques of registerin g non , po inted to the problem of anx iety of
Aaron Kerner
influ enc e regardin g And alu sian mus ic San Francisco State University
(approx imate ly "Arab cl assical mu sic") in
978-0 -7734-5410- I
Voltaire's Allotment Moro cco tod ay. No mu sician wor king in the
Andalusian traditi on wa nts to be see n as an
innovato r. To such an ex tent is this the case
All Paris is a banli eue, as all that Moroccan mu sicians who wa nt to create The American Vice-Presidency in the
Cities everywhere are vile something new go throu gh the charade of Last Half ofthe Nineteenth Century
As writte n to by St Paul. pretending to have learnt the new music from
some co nve nien tly dead or distant mas ter. Edited and compiled by
Therefore what 1 choose to cultiva te, To day musicians in both Morocco and Syria Leonard Schlup & Thomas Sutton
Lik e an attend ant serva nt's sm ile, claim to play And alu sian mus ic, thereb y lay- Baldwin Wallace College
Is the allotmen t of de bate. in g cla im to a glam orous me d ieval legacy. 978-0 -7734-5413-2
But, in the abse nce of a mu sical not ation in
Those small sec tions tucked behind the pre- mod ern Islami c wor ld, there is no tell-
Panth eon s and the Mon arch' s smile ing how much "A ndal usian" mu sic may have
Are death warrants yet unsign ed.
The Norwegian Scots
cha nge d ove r time. O ne of the spea kers cit ed
a venerable mu sici an in Te tuan who held that Michael A Lange
They are not pro perly ga rde ns, innovation in And alu sian mu sic is impossible University of Wisconsin-Madison
Have no reticul atin g tile since its traditional repertoi re His uni mpro va- 978-0- 7734-5362-3
Or Le No tres marchin g margin s. ble", Anoth er cited the philo soph er Al asdair
M acint yres cont ention that traditi on is a
Mean whil e, in the theatre and in pages kind of argum ent.
Of cl assicall y clanking style
Academic Novels As Satire
Delegates at the conferenc e we re dedi cated
1 circ ulate for fame and wages . to preser ving local tradit ion s. But , as man y Edited by
we re we ll awa re, trad ition s are fluid things, Mark Bosco Loyola University
Wh at I sow is Euro pea n opin ion, formed indeed by arg ument as to what the & Kimberly Rae Connor
Shallots to tingle an d beguil e, traditi on should be. In many region s the University of San Francisco
Not the full apoca lyptic onion. esse nce of traditi on lies precisely in the adop- 978-0-7734-5418-7
tion of new instru m ents an d the ada pta tio n of
Sitting at a libera l ruler ' s board, new for ms (as the Hausa have done with
Ta lking hangm an ' s talk the while , Hindi film mu sic). Traditi on s ca n also be
1 strip notes from the common chord. invent ed. Nor th Afri can Gna oua mu sic used We invite proposals for books that
to be prim arily cuItic and litur gical, but tod ay will make a contribution to
Finally, for my bequ est, I leave many music ians have taken up Gnaou a in the scholarship.
A new churc h, "a sum ptuous pile" , hope of ge tting a recordin g co ntrac t. Om ani We reply promptly to all enquiries.
And, duly on Revo lution's eve, trib esmen used to dance wi tho ut music, but
recentl y their gove rnme nt has told them to The Edwin Mellen Press
As the best reliqu ary of Roussea u, add mu sic to their dance, since that is wha t 16 College Street
The tears of Europe in a phi al the touri sts ex pec t. Mu sic cann ot be kept in a
And the allotme nts where they grow . Lampeter SA48 7DY
bell jar. Sad ly, neith er ca n A ssilah .
WalesUK
P E T ER PORT ER Tel: ++ 44 (0) 1570423 356
ROB ER T IRWI N
Fax : ++44 (0) 1570 423 775
emp @mellen.demon .co.uk
www.mellenpress.co.uk
TLS N O V E M B E R 9 2007
16 COMMENTARY

went to Dublin to celebrat e, in my fash- ical device. Eve ntually, the man who doe s

I ion, the annive rsary of the birth of

Vladimir Pec herin (1807- 85), a Russian
emigre writer who has for 150 years been an
icon of politic al and religiou s dissent among
the Russia n intelli gent sia. Alexander Herzen
dedic ated a chapter in his mem oirs to
this "superfl uous man" of Russian history.
Dostoevsky made a parody of his polit ical
views and his ideali stic poetry. For Nabokov ,
he see med an ecce ntric specimen of the Rus-
sian in ex ile. In fact , though of a kind heart
and liberal views , Pecherin was the most argu-
ment ati ve and obstreperou s character to be
found among his imm ediat e emigre circl e. As
a jun ior professor of classical studies at St
Petersbur g University, he was sent to Europe
to further his education, and never return ed .
After a few yea rs of hobn obbing with ama-
teur politi cal conspi rator s, French socialists
and Swiss anarchi sts, Pech erin fell out with
all of them and took the drastic step of dis-
tan cin g him self from Moth er Russia alto-
gether by becomin g a Catholic. Eventually he
took vows, j oined the Redemptorist Ord er
and settled in Ireland . It was here , to his own
surprise, that he ga ined admiration as a hero
of the Republican movement.
Document s show that in 1855 Pecherin
was preaching in Kingstown, now Dun
Laogh aire, where St Patrick preach ed . The
crucial eve nt of this mission , which took
place on Novemb er 5, was to be the burnin g
of some immoral literature (Pecherin ob vi-
ou sly was not lackin g a sense of iron y) . A
local Prot estant clergyman decid ed to use the
occ asion to intl ame sectarian bittern ess by
inc iting a boy to put a copy of the Bib le on to
one of the piles destined for the fire. He then
made an off icial comp laint and Father Petch-
erine (as he was known in Ireland) was tried
FREELANCE
ZI NOVY Z IN I K
at Green Str eet courthouse in Dublin.
In my sea rch, 1 came across an academic
paper on Pech erin written in 1980 by Eoin
MacWhite for the Royal Irish Acad em y. He
quot es fro m the cro ss-examination dur ing the
trial : "Mr Curran: How do you kno w it was a
Tes tament you saw? Witness: I saw the word
'Testament' on the book. Mr Curran: Was it
a New or Old Tes ta ment? Witness : It was
newly bound" .
Ju st before my visit to Dublin, I happened
to di scu ss the subje ct of burning book s with
the Croatian noveli st and critic Slavenk a
Drakulic . In Septemb er, in Sibiu, Rom ania ,
we took part in a conference call ed "Chang-
ing Places (What Is Normal, An yway ?)" . It
was organi sed by Euroz ine - the network of
Europ ean cultural j ourn als. I was invited to
sit on the panel discu ssing literature in ex ile.
Sib iu, a med ieval town built by Germ ans, is
located in Transy lvania, an area notor ious
for its resident vampires - the archetypical
exiles . It was also the town from which Emil
Cioran, an advocate of cre ati ve alienation
and the burnin g of wrong book s (and a fascist
think er at that time ), departed for Pari s. It
used to be that great mind s strove to mo ve
from their little remote town ship s to the capi -
tal cities and centres of ci viliz ation . Nowa-
days, we, the resident s of the decentralized
wor ld of global idea s, are keen to retrac e the
steps of these emigres in time and geo graphy,
to di scover how fascinating their paroch ial
worlds were.
Sla venk a Drakulic has never had any diffi -
culty writing in exile. The rea l probl em of
chan gin g places is that the books which accu-
mul ate in one place are irrelevant in anoth er.
When Slavenk a decided to reloc ate from
Stockholm to her nativ e Zagreb , she wanted
to get rid of many of her Sw edi sh book s,
some of which are rare editions. She found ,
however, that in Sweden many people don't
like second-hand books. The y prefer them to
be brand new. Nobody wanted her old book s,
eve n as a gift. Her colle ction was rejected by
public librari es and char ity organizations. I
sugges ted that she burn the official letter s of
rejection from different institutions that are
supposed to take care of book s, but in fact
deny them asy lum. It wou ld stir some publ ic
debat e.
Despit e the charged atmosphere durin g the
tria l over the Bibl e-burning in Dub lin in
1855 , Pech erin was acqu itted and cheered by
triumphant cro wd s. No wonder he found hi s
restin g plac e in the most ostent atiou s of
Dub lin' s cemeterie s, in Glasneven , along side
some other eminent Repub lican s. I went to
visit his grave but the stone, marked as
GB 77 '12 on the map, was nowh ere to be
found. There were quite a few builders on the
site and 1 thou ght that the stone might acci-
dent ally have been remo ved - the whol e
cem etery is being redev elop ed . I as ked one of
the diggers where grave GB 77Y, was, but he
turned out to be an illegal immi grant from
Russia who refu sed to utter a word about any
nam es or places. In The Grave Diggers pub
next to the Gla sneven cem etery, the pub lican,
with whom I had a chat about Pech erin, also
advocated silence as the most effective polit-
guided tour s around the cem etery told me
that Father Petch erin e' s remains had been
exhumed some time ago and mov ed to
another cem etery. It happ ened at the peak of
pere stroika in Russia, in 199 1. He gave me
the teleph one number of the undert akers
who conducted the move. "Who gave the
instructions?" I asked . They answe red : "The
Redemptori st Order".
The story was that Pech erin fell out eventu-
ally with that mona stic order , too . When he
again changed his mind , his readmittance
was blocked by the Vatican . It took another
hundr ed years to get permi ssion to move his
remains to the Congregation' s plot in Dean s-
grange cem eter y in Dun Laoghaire, where he
once got into troubl e for Bible burning. Dur-
ing his lifetim e, the Russian Govern ment
tried many times to per suad e Pech erin to
com e back , but to no avail. I wouldn't be sur-
prised if the remains were to be moved again
- this time to Russia, by the patr iotic mob
which now rules Pech erin' s moth erl and .
Pech erin never advocated silence as a polit-
ical device, and died disillusioned with social-
ism as well as with the priesthood. Unable to
preach and left without succour, he was lucky
to be appointed chaplain of Mat er Hospital in
Dublin, where he ended hi s days. Once the
abode of a score of patient s, the hospital now
occupies a huge complex of buildin gs on
Eccles Street - on which James Jo yce allo-
cated a hou se for Leopold Bloom. Bloom ' s
house was demoli shed in the 1960s to give
way to the new wing of the hospit al. It was as
if the shadow of a superfluous man of Rus-
sian histor y had made homel ess a Wand erin g
Jew created by the legendary Irish exile in
Pari s. Place s are chang ed. Book s rem ain .
And are be ing burnt.

IN NEXT WEEK'S THEN AND NOW

Theatrical industry , says M . Br isson, wa s

T L S November 14, 1918
never so pro sperou s in Pari s as in the years
War and Stage of blood , 1916, 1917 . His volume clo ses
with April last, when Big Berth a and the
As Rememb rance Day appro aches, we look Gothas were driving Par isian s into the coun-
back to A rthur Bingham Walkley 's review of try and the the atres wer e empty once more.
Le Theatre pend ant la guerre by Adolph e Of course at the present mom ent they are
Ma rgaret Drabble Brisson from the TLS of Novemb er 14, all open aga in and all again prospering
1918. The piece can be read in full at www. excee dingly, and we are aga in bein g told
John Cowper the-tls.co.uk that the theatre was never so decad ent. Ever
since there was a theatre there has been
Powys, facts and here was a mom ent in the autumn of so me one to tell us that.

fictions T 1914 when a deep silence fell upon

the Paris theatres. The enem y was
marching on the capital , and the instinctiv e
cra ving for art had to yield to the brut e
J ane Glover instinct of self-preservation. But the enemy
was thro wn hack, and the ho x-office s we re
Mozart's life in letters once more busy. Before Chri stma s the
Comedi e Francaise reopened with the
Hora ce of Corn eille, the poet whom man y
A. N. Wilson Frenchmen find a venerable bore in peac e
Beyond Biggles but a rallying-point in cri ses of patriotic
exaltation. Mo liere follow ed , because Pari s pla ys advertised, the audiences mark ed and
without Mo liere is unthinkable; and then
Mick Imlah L 'Ami Fri tz; because Fritz was an Alsatian . fortun e of the theatre. It suffers from the
Very soon all the theatres were in full
Tamara Drewe's swing, main ly with revu es and other such
frivol ities, because frivolity in amuse ment
Wessex is the natural reaction of civiliz ed mankind
against the deadly seriousness of war.
Wh y is the theatre always spec ially
selected for this denunciation ? It is qu ite
true that most plays, in war or in peac e, are
rubb ish, but then so are most novels, most
pictures, most statues and most songs .
There has always heen far more had art
than good , more bad taste than good. That
is the way the world wags. But ther e is
more hubbub about bad dram a becau se the
drama happ en s to be the most pub lic of the
art s. The theatr es are fixed and kno wn, the
count ed .... That , we fancy, is the rea l mis-
absolut e rule of the majority. The publi sher
can offer one work for the many , anoth er
for the few ; the theatr e manager cann ot.
And , to be sure, the case is wor se in war
time , for the simple reason that the theatre
French actress Mile Ga umon t, 1915
has been swa mped by the Arm y - that is to
say, hy youth, with the innocent desire of
youth for fun rather than for high art , and
youth will be served. Hence the triumph of
the revue, as noteworthy, by the way , in
Pari s, according to M. Brisson , as in Lon-
don . One hear s loud gro ans over the tri-
umph of revue. Yet ther e is often more gen-
uine art in it - art of invention, art of inter-
pretat ion - than in the machine-made come -
dies and disma l thesis-plays which it has
superseded. Its songs and danc es and paro-
dies have generally the mer it which Hazlitt
found in the Ind ian j ugglers - they do pre-
cisely and easily wh at they set out to do . .. .

TLS N O VE M BER 9 2 0 0 7

Changing tastes andfortunes for Britishart, from VictorianManchester to America today
The recollected works
LI ND S A Y D U G UID
ART T REASU RES I N MA NC HE ST E R
150 yea rs on
ManchesterArtGallery, until January 27, 2008
Tri str am Hunt a n d
Vict o ri a Whitfi eld
ART T REASU RES I N MA NCH E ST E R
150 yea rs on
87pp. Philip Wilson Publishers. Paperback, £7.95.
97809 01673725
A PASSIO N FO R BR ITIS H AR T
Paul Mc llo n' s legac y
Royal Academy, untilJanuary 27, 2008
Joh n Ba sk ett e t a l
A PAS SIO N FO R BRITISH AR T
Paul Mellon's legacy
341pp. Yale University Press. £40 (US $65).
97803 00 117462
wo suits of sixtee nth-century
T armour, positioned between a tele-
vision screen and an information
panel at the entrance to this new
exhibition at Manchester Art Galle ry, are the
guardians of a di splay that leads the visitor
into a doubl e past. Art Treasures in Manches-
ter: 150 years on cont ain s 160 work s of art
from an earlier, grander show, held in 1857
with the plain but ambiti ous title, A rt Treas-
ures of the United Kingdom . What we see
toda y gives some idea of the serious nature
of that ass embly. Italian Old Masters, Dutch
genre paintin gs, portraits by Reynold s and
Lawrenc e , land scapes by Turner
Constable, Pre-R aph aelit e narrati ve pictu res,
watercol our s and art photo graph y are aus-
terely hun g alon gside cabin ets full of a some-
what misce llaneo us selection of medi eval
ivori es, majo lica, Ve netian glass , Chinese
and Sevres porc elain . Obje cts such as
Lucrezi a Borgia' s mirror and the "Cellini
Shield " give the impression of an ecle ctic,
connoisseurial country-house coll ection .
Thi s cannot have been the effect of the orig-
inal show, which was on an indu strial scale:
over 16,000 works hou sed in a 700-foot-Iong
specially designed iron and glass pavilion in
the bot anical gardens on the out skirt s of the
cit y. From Ma y to October, the 1.3 milli on
visitors who arrived at Old Tra fford by train
we re catered for by several cl asse s o f dinin g
room and entertained by a sma ll orches tra
conducted by Charles Halle, The offic ial
openin g was attended by Queen Victoria and
Princ e Alb ert, and there was a good deal of
press cove rage of "The Greatest Sho w on
Earth", ranging from piou s editorials to
facetiou s commentaries written in dialect
(Tom Treddl eho yle' s "A Peep at t'Man-
chi ster Art Treas ures Exhehishan") and comi-
cal cartoon s. Natha niel Hawthorne and Mr s
Gaskell visited often ; Ruskin lectured on
art versus comm erce; Di sraeli comp ared
Manchester to Renaissance Flore nce in The
Times; and Engels wrote enthusiastica lly to
Marx: "y ou and your wife ought to come
up this summer and see the thin g" . Conce ived
as a respon se to the 1851 Great Exhibition
in Hyde Park and the Pari s Exposition
Universelle of 1855, and put together in
and fourt een month s , it was a feat of organiz ation
and a demon stration of civic pride - ju st as
this we ll-curated, unpatronizing show is
perh aps a nod in the direction of Liverpool ,
whose yea r as Europea n City of Culture
begin s in January 2008 .
It acts as a sort of time capsule, providing
evidenc e of its phant om predec essor , which
itself was a dem onstration of a new attitude
to great art. In tod ay' s aesthetic all y spare
galleries, the blown-up photograph s from
1857 show canvases in hea vy frames hun g
three or four deep up to the vaulted ceilin g,
aisles full of marbl e statues, and well-dresse d
gentlefolk in sociable groups . The works
we re origin ally uncaption ed , the catalo gue
merely listin g tit le and artist's name (thou gh
Princ e Alb ert , the exhibition's patron , had
insisted on the inno vati ve, chronological
arra ngeme nt of the exhibits) . The year 1857,
ju st six yea rs after Turner's death , twent y
after Constable 's, saw the start of Co nsta-
ble ' s rise to pre-eminenc e and the height of
veneration for such "Modern Masters" as
Willi am Etty (fourtee n works on displ ay
then , one now), Edw in Land seer (twenty-
three reduc ed to one) and Holman Hunt (five
reduc ed to one). Henr y Wallis' s " Death of
Chatterton", paint ed the previou s yea r, was
voted the most popular modern painting .
Spac e was found for "A n Episode in the
TLS NO VE M BE R 9 20 07
Happi er Da ys of King Charles l" , 185 3, by
Frederick Goodall, still a stirring sight, and
Willi am Mulready' s "The Wolf and the
Lamb " , 1821 , still a puzzl e.
Among the visitors, Te nnyson might have
admired Arthur Hughes' s new work, "April
Love" , the inspir ation for which had been his
1832 poem "The Miller' s Daught er" , and the
subje ct of Thom as Lawrenc e' s "Portrait of
Ge org ina Maria Leic ester, as Hop e" , 1811,
was able as an elderly matron to admire the
im age of her younger self, ju st as that artist
began the long declin e in his posthumou s
reput ation . Some attributions have not stuck;
what was thou ght to be a Giotto is now
firml y assigned to Spin ello Aretino ; the
Duccio is reall y a Sano di Pietro ; the Duke of
New cas tle's Corregg io is now labelled as by
Franc esco Furini. The origin al lend ers -
nearly a thousand of them who sent their
works, unin sured , out of a spirit of patrioti sm
and ph ilanthropy - were in many ca ses pri-
vate individuals, whose treasures are now in
museu ms and art ga lleries (the Royal co llec-
tion s, Christ Church, Oxford, and the Royal
Academ y have been able to hold on to
their s). A map in the final room shows how,
in later yea rs, man y of the origina l exhibits
we re so ld on acro ss the world : a Titian to
Boston , a Rembrandt to New York , Gain sbor-
ough' s " Blue Boy" to San Marino, Ca lifor-
nia , a Rub en s to Colog ne. Not long after the
exhibition clo sed with its profit of £304, and
the pavilion was taken down, the great disper-
sal from Briti sh pri vate coll ecti ons beg an .
Another centenary, and another exa mple
of a lend er ' s genero sity, is bein g celebr ated
17
at the Royal Academ y with a sampling of
works owned by the Am erican coll ector Pau l
Mellon, who was born in 1907 and died in
1999. Elegantl y di splayed in the Sackler
Win g Ga lleries are 150 paintin gs, dra win gs
wa terco lours and print s, pictori al ev idence
of an indi vidual sensibility. Mellon , who was
chri stened in St Geo rges Chapel, Wind sor
and spent two yea rs at Clare College, Ca m-
bridge, had a taste for Briti sh art (unlik e his
fath er Andr ew who favour ed O ld Masters
and Impre ssioni sts). From 1936, when he
bought Ge orge Stubb s' s "Pumpkin with a
Stabl e-lad" , to 1990, when he bou ght
Roubi liac ' s bust of Alexand er Pope, he ass id-
uou sly coll ect ed art which fed his love of
English land scape and English blood stock.
(In the exe rcise of his choic e, he is said to
have asked Alfr ed Munnings to alter a tree
in his 1939 portrait of Mellon on hor seback ;
he was kno wn to dislike windmills and stipu-
lated "not too many cows" - three were
enou gh .) A Passion for British Art: Paul
Me/Ion 's legacy illustrates his likin g for fine
paintin gs of racehorses, famil y groups, moon-
lit scenes and studies of tree s. His ci vili zed
bibliophilia is also on displa y: a selec tion
from his coll ection of ove r 30,000 rare book s
includes Cax ton's Myrrour of the Worlde,
the 1795 edition of William Blake ' s Songs of
Innocence and Exp erience and a present ation
cop y of the Kelm scott Chaucer, with
Swinburnes letter of thanks to Morri s and
Burne-Jones. Sinc e 1977, all these work s
have been in the Yale Center for Briti sh Art.
Mellon ' s car eer as a coll ector , recounted in
detail in the ge nerously illu strat ed catalogue
w hich contain s ess ays by tho se w ho worked
with him , is also a story of the art market, art
advisers and persuadable members of the
English aristocr acy, who so ld fam ily heir -
loom s which then becam e part of a public art
world. As the indi vidu al entri es reveal , many
of the paintings first went on the market in
the ear ly yea rs of the twentieth century, at a
time when English art was not highl y thou ght
of. When Mellon started coll ect ing seriously
in the 1960s, the art market was still quiet;
even so, the dates are surprisingly late for
some of the magisteri al gallery item s -
Srubb s' s "Zebra" (bought in 1960) ; Joshua
Reyno lds' s "Mrs Abin gton as Miss Prue in
William Congr eve ' s ' Love for Love"
(bought in 1972 ); Thom as Gain sborough ' s
"The Graven or Famil y" and Turner's "S taffa,
Fingal's Cave " (both bou ght in 1977). Mor e
endearing, and in some ways more covetabl e,
are the sma ller work s such as the Con stable
cloud study (bou ght 1965), Samuel Palrner ' s
"The Harv est Moon " (bought 1972), and
above all, the po ignant sketchbook belonging
to Turn er , thought to be the last he owned,
whose eighty-eight pages show the penci l
mark s and watercolour smea rs of 181!.
These give the visitor a glimpse of what it
might have been like in the late twenti eth cen -
tury to admire, then negoti ate the purch ase of,
a resonating work from anoth er age.
18 A RTS

n the late 1970s, a young Dutch photogra- Mu sically, Control is excellent. The band

I pher ca me to England and took pictures

of the band Joy Division, then an emerg-
ing forc e on the post-punk sce ne. Ant on
Corbij n found the North to be a gloomy
place, refl ected in the band ' s dark lyric s and
sparse, indu strial sounds behind the brooding
Jim Mo rrison- esque barit one of lead singer
Ian Curtis. "I rem emb er see ing inten se pov-
erty for the first time" , Cor bij n has said. " I
recall it bein g very bleak and grey ." Corb ijns
chi aro scuro phot os ca ptured this mood and
qu ickly became iconic follo win g the suicide
of Curtis in 1980 at the age of twent y-thr ee. It
is the short life of Curtis that Corbij n has
taken as the subje ct for his first feature film.
Though based on the book Touching f rom
Distance (19 95) by Curtis's widow Deborah,
Control is very much lan' s story , with life
often see n from his point of view: the terrify-
ing domesticit y followin g marri age at seve n-
teen, the pram that appears with a black void
at its centre. At one point , baby Natalie seems
to wave her rattle in defen sive recr imin ation
at her parano id fath er. Shado ws play a large
part in this film : parti cul arly evo cative is theevery morning with the word " HATE" embla- a range of medic ation which may have added Hayness new film, I'm Not There. Poet ,
one that falls acro ss lan' s blank face when he
tells Debor ah that he no longer loves her. Con-
trol is beautifu lly shot, throu gh rather too gor- pop impr esario Ton y Wil son as a patron. that thing s were norm al. " I was ju st totally recentl y, the Cadillac Esca lade , Dylan has
geously stylized in its black -and -whit e bleak-
ness (was ther e no litter in the 1970 s? ). We
fir st meet young lan skulking about in a
monochrome Maccl esfield , posing in his bed-
--------------------~
Lonely together look the part and sound it, too. Mo st impres-
sive is Sam Riley as Curti s. Thi s is his first
role andhe j udg es the mood s exactly: the
impetuous romanticism, the withdrawal , the
TOBY LICHTIG times see ms stagey in the film ' s cont ext. Con- sense of oppress ion, the selfishness . As Deb-
trol abov e all stands out for its control: this is bie plead s with him again to com e upstairs to
C ONT R O L rock and roll suicide from excess of discreet bed, he pens the lyrics to "She' s Lost Con-
Various cinemas emotion. There are no dru gs, little drink and tro l", as if willing di sorder on the safe, conju -
in the on ly, brief , sex sce ne, Curti s breaks off ga l environment. But it was lan who chose
I ' M N O T T H E RE
to have a cry. His affa ir with the Belgi an jour- this, his split personalit y emphasized by his
BFI London Film Fes tiva l;
nali st Annik Honore (Alexandra Maria Lara) refu sal to give Debb ie a divorc e. "You love
various cine mas from Decemb er 21
is subtly por trayed. "Tell me about Maccl es- someone else" , she screams at him. "What' s
field" , says Annik in a very sexy voice . " Ian, that got to do with us?", he mutters. His epi -
room and daydre aming at school. He listen s you are so depre ssing " , she fondl y tell s him, lepsy see ms to be an expression of this schizo-
to David Bowie, reads J. G. Ball ard and da ys before he takes his life. phreni a. "Who won the fight - lan or lan?" ,
quot es Word sworth; he meets Debo rah , and a No one seemed to realize the troubl e Curtis one of the band jok es, after Curtis has anoth er
jolly afternoon in the hill s fades to a shot of was in. "I never believed he was writing about fit. Suddenly, the "us" of his best-known, post-
the couple in what Willi am Blake call ed the himself', admitt ed Joy Division ' s drummer humou s song " Love Will Te ar Us Apart "
" marriage hear se", follow ed by a clo se-up of Stephen Morri s afterwa rds. His fello w band see ms to take on individual meaning.
a pulleymaid swaddled in und erp ants. It is the memb ers were cau ght up in Joy Division ' s Managing two per sona s was too much for
device with which Ian will later han g him self. success . Curti s' s increa singly severe epilepsy Curti s; during his rath er lengthier career, Bob
Ian joins the band (ori gin ally called "War- becam e an accepted part of his rout ine, his Dylan has played around with hundreds and
saw" ) and ju ggles gigs with his job at the chari smat ic strangeness reflect ed in his jerk- suffered little wor se than a motorc ycle acci-
Emp loyment Exchange, where he arrives ily robotic stage danc ing. Doctor s prescribed dent - a phenomenon celebrat ed in Todd
zoned on his coat. Joy Division get wise- to the depre ssion . Deborah, superbly rendered proph et, protest singer and endorser of a vari-
crack ing Rob Gretton as their mana ger and by Samantha Morton, ju st wanted to pretend ety of brand s from Starb uck s to, most
Craig Parkin son brin gs amusing melodrama besotted", she has said in interview. Her sense alwa ys enjoyed a myth (and fib) or two; six
to the Wi lson role (previou sly ex plored by of isolation is most painfull y revea led when actor s play him in a variet y of his guises,
Stev e Cooga n in Mich ael Winterbottom ' s she confronts lan about his infidelit y: word- including Wild We st outl aw , spoiled rock
24-Hour Party People), though this some- lessly, he see ms to shrink into the wall. star and born -again Chri stian. " Inspired by
the music and man y lives of Bob Dylan" ,
. --------------------Hayness film is less a biopic than a mont age ,

and his tales of maritim e adventure, and appar- Dylanesque in its playful pilin g up of imag es
Climb not at all ently hear s about the New Wor ld from him and vignettes, its skewe d chronology, its
for the very first time. She is fragil e and essen- diver se techniques, its embracing of legend.
tially timorou s, as lacking in queen ly dignit y Dylan first appears as an eleven -year-old
hekhar Kapur , the directo r of Eliza- as in verba l wit. (A sprinkling of her cele- black Wood y Guthrie (Marcu s Car l Frank-

S
KATH ERIN E DUNCAN-JON ES
beth: The Golden Age, deni es that he brated oaths - "God' s death !" - wou ld have lin) , carrying a guitar on which is written
has "taken libert y with history, because ELI ZABETH injected some much-n eeded racin ess into her "this machine kills fascists". While these
all history is interpr etation ". Likewi se, Guy The Golden Age lines.) When upset, she slouches in her chair sce nes see m uneasily parod ic, those with
Hendri x Dyas, the film ' s director, prai ses Various cinemas like a mood y teenager, and despite her ampl e Richard Gere as a Billy-the-Kid Dylan are
Work ing Titl e ' s plan "to creat e a very bold skirts she often plonk s herself down on the merel y forc ed . Ben Whi shaw ' s earnes t
and mod ern period film" . No doubt "history" stone steps of the variou s great cath edral s Rimbaud Dylan is rather more con vinc ing,
is alway s medi ated , yet the proc ess of med ia- thia" poem s, with their comm andin g myth of which here serve as royal palaces. Her dresses and Christian Bale does fairly well as the
tion sho uld start with hi stor ical record s. A the Queen as vo latile mi stre ss o f her Oc ean blaze in dayglo hues of electric blue and pop- "tro ubado ur o f con sc ienc e". Heath Led ger
scree nplay culminating in the Span ish ("Water" Ralegh). The writers could have star purpl e unknown to the Elizabethans, and presents an intriguing domestic Dylan: provoc-
Armada which figur es neith er Sir Francis found plent y of punchy one-liners read y- thou gh her tremb lingly feathered head-tires ative, faithle ss and affectionate. Despite being
Drak e nor the Duk e of Medina Sidonia is made in the per iod - " We are as near God at and clo se-curl ed wigs are impressive, she a simulacrum (he is a movi e star playing the
absurd . I found myself laughing out loud dur- sea as on land " - "God blew with his winds" doe sn 't wear nearl y enough jewellery. role of Dylan in a film), he is the clo sest we
ing the film' s clos ing scen es, in which Clive - and some conc ise ready-made dialo gue. Mean whi le, in Fotheringay, her cousin get to the "real" person : the detai l of his
Owen ' s Ralegh does a Doug las Fairbanks Jr An example that cou ld have worked well is Ma ry Stuart (Sam antha Mort on), more Scot- arran gements to pick up the kids stands out
impr ession as he leap s bra vely from the deck Ralegh ' s scratching of the words "Fain tish lassie than Frenchified que en , wear s no arresting ly in the cont ext of all this allegory.
of an impl au sibly exploding CG I fire-ship. would I climb, but I fear to fall" on a glass jeweller y at all, perh ap s to show how piou s But it is Cate Blanch ett' s "Judas" Dylan
There is no ev idence that Ralegh played any window, imm ed iately capped by Elizabeth she is. It is crudely ind icated that the political who steals the show. Admittedly, Hayne s had
act ive role in defeatin g the Arm ada. But with " If thy heart fai l thee, climb not at all" - conflicts portrayed deri ve from religious D. A. Penn ebaker ' s 1967 doc ument ary,
that isn 't rea lly the point. As show n by a line that can be con strued eith er as a put - di vision s, but it see ms that only Catholics Don 't Look Back to work from, and many of
Shakespe are in Love, scriptwriters can take do wn or a come-on . But even this would per- reall y belie ve in God and have clerg y. The the monochrome Jud as-Dylan sce nes self-
enormous liberti es in adding fiction s to haps have been too compl ex for the present reform ed religion of Elizab eth' s court is a con sciously borrow from it. But the ca sting is
documented events and situations if they film , visually lavish but conceptually empty. do -it-your self affair, with not a single prelat e inspired: Blanch etts Dylan is wond erfull y
do so with wit and pan ach e. Elizabeth (1998 ) at least boa sted a central or chapl ain to be see n. In spiritual and emo- puckish, ev asiv e, mendacious, so metimes
Unfortunately this film tak es itself terr ibly conce it with some power. It showed the cruel tion al matters Elizabeth's advi ser is Dr John ju st plain rude. " You shouldn' t take it all so
seriou sly . Nor is it in any meanin gful se nse process hy which an independent -minded Dee (Da vid Thr elfall ), and in political ones, person al" , s/he dra wls as another lost love
"bold and modern " , tho ugh we do get a pre- young woman was made to metamorphose Wal singham (Geoffrey Rush) , the sole repre- runs off into the wood s; a striking Alice- in-
dictable rear- view glimp se of a naked Cate into a public icon, cor seted, pa inted, sentative of the Privy Council. Wond erland scen e has Dylan and friend s gig-
Blanchett . Dialogue frequently consi sts of bewigged and imprisoned within her regali a. The film' s ending is osten sibly happ y. Eliz- gling on helium, aga inst the hectic jo llity of
bru squely deli vered single words - "Maj- But far from bein g "bold and modern" , the abeth gets such a sexual buzz from facin g off "Nashville Skyline Rag". Th e switch to elec -
es ty!" - " Leave ! Now !" - with less life in sequel recall s a B-mo vie of the 1950s, cra ssly the Armada that she can even dand le Ralegh tric guit ars and amplification is interpreted as
them than a ten-year-old' s text message s. stereotyped in its presentation of the central and Bess Thro ckmorton ' s newborn baby with a machine-gun mob who jump around and
Young filmgo ers for whom this is a fir st figur e. Blanch ett ' s young-middle-aged Que en appar ent tenderness. But as Dr John son said, fire at the audience. "He ' s j ust chan ged com -
encounter with the Elizab ethan s will never - historic ally in her mid-fifties, but no matter with less ju stice, of Shake speare ' s Cymbeline, pletel y!" , parr ot the aghas t witn esses. "Why
guess that this was a period of brill iant lin- - is shown as an embittered, childless wom an To remark the folly of the fiction, the absurdity don 't you do your early stuff?", Blanch ettl
guistic and literary invention, nor that both who find s it almo st impo ssible to be nice to of the conduct, the confu sion of the names and Dylan later shouts at a statue of Jesu s. If I'm
Elizab eth and Ralegh wer e poets. Elizabeth 's women who have babi es, even when they are manners of diff erent times , and the imp lausibil - Not There suffers from its esotericism, its
favour towards Ra legh is mad e central, but not, like the Queen of Scot s, rival s for her ity of the eve nts in any system of life , we re to success also lies in its refusal to con strain a
no use is mad e of his extraordinary "Cyn- throne . But she is sexually excited by Ralegh waste critici sm upon unresisting imbecillit y. charact er magnificentl y difficult to pin down.

TLS N O VE M BER 9 2 0 0 7

Northwards and westwards
B I L L BRO U N
THE NE W GRANTA BOOK OF T HE
AM ERICAN S HO RT ST O RY
Edited by Richard Ford
736pp. Granta Books. £25.
978 I 862078475
hat exa ctly is A merican about the
W Am erican short story these days?
The question is not addresse d
directl y in this astute, all-new update of
1992' s C rania Book of the American Short
Story but , considering the book ' s title, how
can it be ignor ed ? The gra tifying result here
sugges ts it was n' t - not by a long shot -
despite the editor's insistence, in his fine
introducti on (nea rly worth the purch ase
price alone), that there rem ain s less ev idence
than eve r that Am eric an stories are "fated
to be stylistica lly, them aticall y, generically
different fro m another nationalit y' s".
Richard Ford, the Pulitz er Prizewinnin g
noveli st and short-story writer, brin gs a
decepti vely unassumin g vision to his task of
editing the anthol ogy. His efforts are quietl y
wonderful.
In the origin al, 1992 volume, which he
also edited, Ford recogni zed a distin ct "un-
settleme nt" simmering in the for m ' s practi-
tioners, a fertil e lack of doctrin arianism
whic h emerged as so me of the intense arti stic
battles of the 1970s and 80s reach ed detente.
Tod ay, in a context shape d by recent seismic
shocks (91l 1, Katrin a, Middl e Eas tern wars,
George W. Bush's Presidency) to traditi onal
Ameri can confide nce , Ford says that he
hears "very little aesthetic rucku s" in our
dialogue over fiction, and sugges ts we stand
"distant from any legitim ate and new
aesthetic movement " . Accordingly, his fort y-
four choices for inclu sion in this new edition
(beg inning with Eudora Welt y' s "Ladies in
Sprin g" ) may strike some reader s as offerin g
few risks, despite the fact that Ford often uses
wo rds such as "audacity" , "bravura" and
"daring" to defin e what makes an indi vidual
short story grea t. And it is true enough that
eve n the younges t talent s here, such as Ad am
Haslett and Ne ll Freudenberger , weren' t
exac tly pluck ed from some edgy literar y
underground fill ed with the smoke of clove
cigarettes and the clatter of heroin syringes .
The newer authors are more likely to have
been educated in the Ivy League and to have
appea red first in publications such as the New
Yorker and the Yale Review.
Still , this gathering is never short on bold-
ness or urges to turn over fresh arti stic so il.
Any mainstream anthol ogy of Ameri can
short fict ion fro m the mid-t wenti eth century
onwards which pro ffers the unrepresent ati ve
but marvellous " Errand" as its Raymond
Carve r taster see ms to be wa nting to say
something. Like seve ral of the selections
here, this nineteenth-century-set homa ge to
Chek hov, written by the great minim alist
The all-American story
"The Baron told her that only art m eant anything"; from The Gilded Bat by Edward Gorey . First published in 1966 , Gorey's childlike
tal e ofMaudie, the dedicated ballerina whose brilliant ca r eer progresses through hard work and suffering to apotheosis, is full of dark
allusions and subtle asides. It has been reissued by Pomegranate Communications, PetaIuma, CA (9780764941931).
kno wn for tales of boozed-up working men
in the Pacific Northwes t, comes from a vas t
unexplor ed periph ery of the A merican short-
ficti on canon.
And there is daring to spare : the John
Cheever selection, the brief , brilli ant
" Reunion" , acco mplishes in three pages what
many entire novels strive and fail to capture :
the utter destruction of a father-and- child
rel ationship through insecurity, ego ism and
alco holism, something Cheever expertly
etches in concrete term s. "He put his arm
around me, and I smelled my father the way
m y m othe r sniffs a ro se. It was a rich co m-
pound of whiskey, after-shave lotion , shoe
poli sh, woolens, and the rankness of a mature
male". Whil e the shoe po lish and "woolens"
may be very mid-t wenti eth-c entury, the pain
of loving an imperfect fath er is not. Like
many of the choices here, "Reunion" is one
of those slightly sec reted gems, a nearly but
not quit e for gott en tour de force, perhaps
read ju st once, maybe twice, long ago; it is
not the first story that comes to mind as repre-
sentative of Cheever, but rereadin g it, one is
astonished it hasn 't been anth ologized more
widely.
The sa me pleasurable realization comes
aga in and aga in in The New Cra nta Book of
the American Short Story . In general, Ford's
choices chart , chronol ogic ally, a contrapuntal
movement in Am erican literatur e out of that
hot cauld ron of story, the South , then north-
wa rds and wes twards to urbanit y. "The
Artifi cial Nigge r" by Flannery O ' Connor,
which has und oubt edl y - and unfairl y - suf-
fered from neglect because of its polit ically
incorrect title, is arg uably her finest story;
O ' Connor herself seems to have thought so at
one time. It present s an odyssey in mini atur e
about a racist rural grandfather's attempt to
educate his susce ptible grandson in the ways
of the world durin g a j ourn ey to the big city
(in this case, Atlant a). The poignan cy of the
TLS NO VEMBER 9 2007
old man ' s dreadful efforts to inculc ate a
"wisdom" of the age s clim axes in a typic all y
O ' Connoresque mom ent of spiritual abjec -
tion , all aga inst a pre-Civil-Ri ght s-era
backdrop which defin es the Am eric an South-
ern grotesque. This kind of histori call y
instructi ve and artistically moti vated model
of the form deserves notice today, but the
story (which appeared in the influenti al Best
Am erican Short Stories series in 1955 ) rarely
appears in college literatur e textbo oks, where
the imperati ve to create easily digestibl e
and "representative" pack ages for huge
uni ver sit y survey cl a sse s dri ve s edito ria l
decisions. This is the kind of situation in
which a com manding artist-editor such as
Ford, working with a literar y publi sher , can
make headway: rescuin g tales from marginal-
ity, if not obscurit y, and, as Ford put s it,
hon ourin g es tablished writers "whose work
continu es to renew itself'. In the ca se of
so me of the perp etu ally und erappreci ated
authors Ford favour s, such as Rich ard Yates
("Oh, Jose ph, I'm So Tired" ) and Donald
Barthelme ("Me and Miss Mandible" ) - the
sort of "writer' s writers" often more praised
than read - any appea rance in a new antho-
logy merit s appl ause.
Margin alit y doesn't necessaril y mean
expe rimentalism in this book. Indeed, a
mannered literar y temp eranc e see ms to
und erpin Ford's choices , and it makes goo d
sense : at a tim e when, as he put s it, "our
high- speed sensa tion of event occurs faster
than we can tran sact it ima ginati vely", fiction
need s to be grappled with on well-established
terr ain that honour s traditi on without chokin g
innovation.
One of the small triu mph s of this book is
that it reminds us of the difference betw een
literar y and politic al conservatism. Several
very traditional story types appea r here,
including brui sers such as Rob ert Ston e ' s
" Helping" and Andre Dubu ss " Killings" -
19
which are classic examples of the stripped-
down "tough-guy story" that emerged in
Am eric a in the 1970s and 1980s, and which
remain atavistic, guilty celebr ations of a
fiction-writin g ethos with origins in
Hemin gway and, befor e him , Chekhov.
None of this means the collection lack s
creative energy. The volume dreams its way
improb ably aro und what Ford ca lls the
"noisy, terrifying, and extreme ly plau sible"
world of headlines and news broadc asts.
"The Mana gem ent of Grief' by the Ca lcutta-
born writer Bha rati Mukh erjee, a prescient
tal e centred on the Toronto Ind o- C anadian
community' s reaction to the 1985 bombin g
of Air Indi a Flight 182, pro vides an imagina-
tive scheme for this proce ss, as Ford him self
point s out. The centr al focu s of eve nts is
distant - an exploded airpl ane off the Irish
coa st - but what occur s back in North Am er-
ica warra nts fictional meditati on. The prot a-
gonist, Mr s Bha ve, loses her husband and
two sons in the terrori st strike, yet she find s
herself tendin g calml y to others ' need s and
finally discovers significa nce , if not solace ,
in the rituals of collecti ve anguish. Towa rds
the end of the story, as she wa lks throu gh a
park in To ronto, her unim aginabl e loss see ms
to beckon to her:
something in the bare trees caug ht my atten-
tion. I looked up from the gravel. into the
branches and the clear blue sky beyond. I
thought I heard the rustling of larger forms,
and I waite d a mom ent for voices. Nothing.
Mom ent s later, however , the voices of her
lost family do call to her, one last time: " Your
time has come, they said. Go, be brave." The
"larger for ms" Mukh erjee imagines are the
terribl e and beautiful thin gs that shake and
twist our worlds. Show ing how we need both
to envisage, and to stride beyond , them is
ultim ately what Mukh erjee ' s story and this
book do so we ll.
The selection also thro ws bright new light
20 FICTION

on writers often presented by critic s in an reportorial style: "He pick s up the phon e and
undul y habitu al manner. Mary Gaitskill isn 't
typic all y discu ssed as a political satirist, but
"A Romantic Weekend " , about a sad S&M
The cinematic real put s a call throu gh to Mit ch Rond ell". But
what distingui shes Erickso n's novel from
most co ld mystery stories - remi nding us of
affair takin g place, as it happens, in the controlling presenc e behind the story - is
Wa shin gton DC, read s freshl y here , and the t times durin g the past ten years it its complex struc ture . It is divided into 454

implic ation s seem unmi stakable: as a mal e
figur e vee rs from fanta sies of jamming his
fingers into his lover ' s vag ina, bashin g her
head against the floor , and going hom e to his
wife (who makes him supper), a porno graph y
of violence and goo d, clean Washin gton
values sit in unea sy pro ximit y.
Some of the best pieces are stories by
younger authors, giving the lie to any notion
that Americ an fict ion has grow n compl acent :
Sherman Alexie' s ca rna l tale ("Th e Tou ghest
Indi an in the World " ) of a mot el encounter
bet ween two Native Am eric an men ends on
a dazzlin g note of poetr y; Junot Diazs
clau stroph obic depicti on of two dealer s in
urban New Jersey ("Aurora") reads as if
it drift s out of a narr ative crack pip e, but it
possesses a quirky cogency.
The deci sion to excl ude work by cer tain
key writers mu st have agoniz ed the editor.
Neither Bobbi e Ann Mason nor John Edga r
Wid em an appea rs here, nor does Cy nthia
Ozick, somew hat surprisingly. It may have
been crass for Ford to include one of hi s
own powerful stories of lonesome western
grifters, but their sig nifica nce cannot be ove r-
looked . One also misses a few of Am erica ' s
mor e inventi ve story tellers, such as Allan
Gur ganu s and Da vid Foster Wallace. Ford
tend s also to steer clear of the ficti on of
precocious, self-refere ntial iron y of the
McSweeney 's/Dave Egge rs vein; older
short-fiction pion eer s, Rob ert Coove r and
Willi am Gass, both of whom enriched the
1992 volume, are sad but reasonable
deletions. The New Gra nta Book of the Am er-
ican Shor t Story , as the publi sher says , is
A
has see med that the Am eri can novel
has been dom esticated. Purged of the
excesses and ambiti on s that flouri shed in
the 1970s, it has return ed home to reacquaint
itself with what it ca lls realism, tellin g tidy
stories of famili al tension s and Christmases
togeth er. Steve Erickso n, however , is one of
the writers who has res isted the retreat from
the experime ntal edge of postmod ern innova-
tion. His books probe the bord er s bet ween
dream, fiction and realit y throu gh various
complex and artful, narrat ive form s. In Our
Ecsta tic Days (200 5), a character called
Kristin begin s a se ntence on page 83. The
novel switches to a different narrat or a few
pages later , but Kristin ' s narr ative proceed s
on a single line which, rather than continuing
down the page , extends horizontall y throu gh
more than 200 of the follo win g pages which
are orga nized more or less con ventionally.
The attempt to tell two stories at once
reveals two thin gs about Erick son ' s ambitious
art: first, he is fascinat ed by simultaneity;
second, he likes the form of his fiction to imi-
tate its cont ent. In the earlier novel, the twin
narrative represent s Ericksons attempt to get
clo ser to the novel' s them atic fascin ation with
doublin g; it also reflects his efforts to trace the
imaginative aftermath of the terrori st attacks
on the twin tower s of the World Trade Center.
Simultaneity and doubling are both important
to Erickson's eighth novel, Zerov ille, but the
author seems to be better behaved than he
used to be, more concerned to reward the
dmirers of Elmore Leonard ' s
ST EPHEN B URN
short numb ered sections, which go from I to
St ev e Er ic kso n 227, at which point the sequence reverses and
the sec tions count back to zero as the story
ZER OV IL LE apparently moves back to bibli cal times.
352pp. New York: Europa Editions. Paperback, This is another of Erickson's experiments
$ 14.95. in imitati ve form : the loopin g journey from 1
978 I 933372 39 6
to 227 and back to zero imitates the circul ar
shape of a cinematic reel - Vikar insists that
reader's expe ctations. Zeroville tells some- "time is round , like a reel" . The division of
thin g like a mystery story about an obsess ive this story about a film editor into indi vidual
movie fan,Vikar, who becomes a wonderfully sec tions also dram atizes the proc ess of
intuiti ve film editor. Vikar discovers that an editorial selection. A film editor, we are told ,
image which torment s his dream s has been "chooses which shot to use" for maximum
inserted as a single fram e into the film reels he impact, and one of Erickso n' s most subtle
consults. As the suspense surro unding this effects occurs when a line of dialogue reveals
secret build s, Erickson widens his lens to take that something has happ ened that has not been
in the Am erica of the Manson murd ers in dramatized. When a character tells Vikar that
1969, movin g on to the 1980s, when voters he shouldn' t "have said that thin g about John
cho se a former actor to be President. Vikar is Wayne" at a press co nfere nce, the nervo us
described as a "cineautistic": so meo ne whose reader who flick s back to the conference to
narrow focu s on film leaves him onl y diml y find what Vikar said will do so fruitl essly.
awa re of world eve nts. He is the novel' s cen- There is no evidence of any omi ssion in that
tral consciou sness - until the book' s final sce ne; rather Erickson is drawing our atten-
moment s, when Erickson perfo rms an aston- tion to the way selec tion in art creat es the illu-
ishin g shift that requir es a retrospective revi - sion of a sea mless whole out of fragment s.
sion of almost everything that has gone befor e Though this novel contains a catalog ue of
- and we learn a lot about his obsession with film lore it is Erickson's literary technique
cinema but little of his personal history. As in that impr esses. His manipulation of narrative
a film , we see his actions, but have to guess form is reason alone to read and admire
the rea sons behind his behaviour. his fiction , but Zeroville also has enough
In many of Erickso n' s ea rlier wor ks, his comp ellin g intrigue to keep a reader pleased
pro se reaches tow ard s a poetic density, but in and puzzled , as dream s, imaginati on and film
this book (perhaps to imitate the imm ediac y intersect with histor y and what passes for
of film ) he has settled on an obviously flat, realit y in Holl ywood .
She is a more formidabl e opponent than

meant to compl em ent , not replac e, the older
edition.
At times, the stories' almos t relentl ess
depictions of uniqu e, often subcultura l
communities make s o ne w o nder w he the r
Am erica' s writers have grow n too cellul ar
in their outl ooks, too navel-gazin g. So me of
the selections, such as "Devotion" by the
impressively mature Ad am Haslett and
"Lucky G irls" by Nell Freud enberger , con-
sciously reach beyond that inwardn ess, but
it surfaces as a conc ern elsew here here. Juli e
Orrin gers disturbing "Stars of Moto wn
Shining Bright" , for instan ce , which follo ws
the conflict of two Jewish young wome n who
fall for the sa me bad boy, appear s to take
place in a kind of par allel M idwestern
universe pared do wn to stark, anonymous
suburbs; but instead of depi ctin g a distinctive
teen age milieu in a satisfying way , it comes
across as simply incompl ete. It is true that
Orringer is tryin g to bring narci ssi sti c
teen ager s to life, but portraying narci ssism
ficti onall y does not mean that our vision, as
readers, should be blink ered, yet this is
how her story feels. Eve n a wor k as unim-
peachably stunning as Ge orge Saunders 's
"CivilWarLand in Bad Declin e" posits a
cos mos with little porou sness. Perh aps
all great fiction , on so me level, need s to do
this. But, if nothin g else, now is not a time for
Am erica' s writers to grow overl y self-
involved. By and large, this splendid
anthology not onl y acknow ledges, but
demon strat es that.
A
clipped , natur alistic dial ogue and
terse, for ward-moving narration
may find his new novel oddly pedanti c. Up
in Honey 's Room, a period piece, is loaded
wi th ex pos itio n, as if Leonard we re mo re
worried about his read ers' lack of famili ar-
ity with its era than about his charact ers'
believabilit y. "The Battl e of the Bulge was
Ge rma ny's last full- out assault" , one
character tell s another. "They pushed off
the sixtee nth of Decemb er with a thousand
tank s and by the twenti eth of Janu ary they
had a hundr ed thou sand cas ualties and lost
eight hundred of the tanks." This in a con ver-
sation occurring in April 1945 , a few
month s after the eve nts discu ssed.
Leonard has his charact ers reh ash
Ge rma n history , listen to Father Charles
Co ughlin on the radi o, and di scu ss Life
magazine, whose cove rs featur e phot os of
Nazi lead ers. A principal ch aracte r look s
like Heinri ch Himmler and believes he is
Himml er ' s lost twin . Honey Deal, the title
character , spe nds time listenin g to fact-
fill ed stories of the wa r in the South Pacific,
when she is not flashin g her breasts at
the coupl e of law- enforcement officials
who come into her life. US Marshal Carl
Web ster and FBI age nt Kevin Dean are
in Detroit to track down two escaped
pri soners of wa r. Honey' s ex -husba nd,
WaIter Schoen, the Himml er twin , is a Nazi
sympathizer with a circl e of friend s who
might be hidin g the missing prisoners.
E l m o re L eon ard
U P I N HO NE Y ' S ROOM
292pp . Orion. £ 12.99.
97802978 48 10 3
This unpl easant c ircle, an assem blage o ut
of a Bogart movie, includes a cross-dr essing
butl er, a Poli sh countess-of- sort s, and a
raci st Southern businessm an who is a Grand
Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan. Th ey are Naz i
spies. Bo th of the escaped priso ners pass
throu gh their rather inept hand s. Murd ers
are committed. The wors t of the gang
comes to a bad end. Honey' s ex is foil ed in
his plot to assass inate the President , when
that disobli ging man dies from natural
causes. These larger-th an-life eve nts seem
beside the point.
Leonard' s strong suit has always been the
tracking of alleg iance and power between
men and wo me n. The crime genr e has
pro vided him with a reliable road map - the
ele me nts o f pursuit and confrontati on g uar-
antee suspense and the inevitabl e apotheo sis
of violence , while the more important wor k
of depicting emotional vagaries happen s
quietl y between the burglaries and bull ets.
In Up in Honey 's Room, a failu re of a book
by Leonard' s standards, the sole sustaining
interest is the interpla y between Honey and
US Mar shal Car l Webster . Webster is hap-
pily marri ed but far from home. His wife, a
good-looking gunnery instructor in the
Marin es, is "all the girl he had eve r wa nted",
but Hon ey keeps as king him to bed.
the novel' s Naz is. There is that habit of her s
oftakin g off her top , or makin g the mo st out
of her decolletage . Carl's thou ght s see m
parti cula rly attuned to this part of Honey' s
anatom y, o ften to the detriment of
Leonard ' s prose style: "What Honey' s had
was a look of their own , one he thou ght of
as, you kno w, perky, their pink noses
stuck up in the air" . Honey herself is brave ,
funn y and stro ng in a way that Leonard' s
heroin es often are: cool and capable, up to
anythin g their men see m ga me for. It is
Hon ey who put s her self in the middl e of
the spy ring as this novel' s endga me com-
menc es, and Hone y who places Carl's hand
on the gun she has hidd en in a sofa, when it
looks like there is no hope for the good
guys .
In spite of Leonard ' s emphasis on lean-
ness in his instructi onal book Elmore Leon-
ard 's 10 Rules of Writing, he has always
been capable of cl umsily redundant phr as-
ing: " Honey made highballs in tall glasses " ;
"He pull ed out Ad olf Hitler' s book and
began skipping throu gh pages of dense-look-
ing text full of words" . Yet he can write con-
vincingly abrupt dial ogue ("I' ll get him
talkin g, ask him questions. You watch,
jump in whe n you think he' s lyin g" ) and
di sjuncti ve, resoundi ng narration : "Honey
was hun gry but chose the Mauri ce salad
for now. She saw herself with Carl until he
we nt back to Okl ahom a".
MARK KAMI N E

TLS N O VE M BER 9 2 0 07

"F iction isn 't memory" , says Poll y
Flint , the heroine of Jan e Gardam ' s
1985 no vel Crusoe 's Daughter. "But
memory is ficti on" , repli es Robin son Crus oe;
their relationship , a conv ersation played out
in Po lly 's mind , is a case in point. Jane
Gar dam 's latest coll ection of shor t stor ies
The People on Privilege Hill is, in man y
ways, a recollecti on - of the themes of
childhood, old age and the inn er life which
she has develop ed with wit and tenderness
in her no vel s of the past four decad es. But it
is not simply a qu estion of old character s
reappearin g - thou gh it is good to see Sir
Edw ard Feath ers, QC, the hero of her 2004
novel Old Filth , stumping uphill in the rain
so as not to lose the use of his legs. He , and
her other prot agoni sts (outspoken, elde rly,
unworldl y, or all of the abo ve) are poised
more sharply than eve r betw een the mor al
sentiments of Dick ens and the j abb erin g
on slau ght of the twent y-fir st century.
In her unf ashionable pity for her
character s, and her form al principles (which
include unfailing technical courtesy to the
read er) , Gard am as a writer strides the same
bla st. She rem ain s a gracio us story telle r,
usherin g the read er so deftl y from impression
to person , to dial ogue, to place, that she
rend er s herself technically invisibl e at fir st
readin g. And compari son s with Kath erin e
M ansfield (for wor lds con veyed swi ftly in
vivid detail ) and to Ro ald Dahl (for a
macabr e sense of fun ) are eve n mor e applic-
able to her short stories than they are to her
no vels. In thi s collecti on , "Snap" (the tale of
a woma n who dr ives a hundred miles with
a brok en ankle in ord er to hid e her guilty
con scienc e, only to find her husband has
an injury to match) in the pun gent pun-
turn ed-moral of its title, has something of
Dahl abo ut it. "T he Last Reunion" , an
account of four elde rly ladies at a picni c to
commemor ate their old coll ege, is more remi-
--------------------------~.--------------------------
And thanks to the goddess Isis
li Smith' s contribution to Ca non-
A
gate 's ex panding collecti on of
myth s rem ade turn s to Ovid ' s
Metamorphoses and the story of Iphi s and
Ianth e, a tale perh aps less we ll-know n than
oth ers in the series . Qui ckl y, thou gh , one
recogniz es that Smith ' s cho ice is both acute
and enorm ous ly liberatin g; the skeleton of
the story is itself intri guin g, but the cont em-
por ary flesh that Smith cho oses to give it is
clever, co mp lex and thrill ing.
Ovid told the story of Iphi s, a girl brou ght
up as a boy in order to avo id bein g kill ed
becau se her parents could not afford her ; of
her hearthreak and fur y when she eve ntually
fell in love with anoth er girl, Ianthe ; and of
her miraculous transformation , on the eve of
her wedding and thanks to the inter venti on of
the goddess Isis, into the boy that love had
made her lon g to be. It is a story with a happ y
ending, althoug h it is not witho ut its ob viou s
probl em s. " He' s reall y goo d", says Robin,
Smith ' s Iphi s figu re, of Ovid.
He honours all sorts of love. He hon our s all
sorts of story. But with this story, well, he
can't help being the Roman he is, he can't
help fixating on what it is that girls don't have
under their togas, and it's him who ca n't
FICTION
Handkerchief tales
CAROLI N E MILLER
J an e G ard am
T H E P EO PL E O N PRI VIL E G E HILL
213pp.Chatto and Windus. £ 12.99.
978 0 70 1 17799 7
niscent of Man sfield , in the way the narr ati ve
arra nges bright and devastating fragm ent s of
perc eption - "starling chatte r" and barb ed
wit amo ng the "lupin bord ers" - to echo
the incipi ent Alzheim er ' s of one of its
prot agoni sts.
The pieces are necessaril y miniatures, and
some feel slighter than others . "The Last
Reu nion " succee ds effortless ly in its set-
piece picnic , which min gles ge nerations of
wome n who we re once girls, ran gin g
from their wa spi sh ex-tutor Mi ss Folly (a
sharp-tong ued allegor y in purpl e tight s), to
tho se who are "hump ing children about", and
the on es who are "determinedly dirt y and ill
and scornful and hip ". Oth er stories
straddle the ge nerations with less ease and
mor e prot est. "The Latt er Days of Mr Jon es''
- the tale of an elderly simpleton, who visits
the common eve ry day to remember his
long-d ead moth er and his dogs, until he is
mistak enl y accuse d of paedophilia - is not so
we ll-ro unded, thou gh it is affec ting.
Despit e his simplicity, Mr Jon es retain s
the memory of a different age - throu gh an
imprint of matern al love that go es beyond
the contrast bet ween his infant "buttoned
up boot s" and mod ern fat kid s in track suit s
and train ers. Perh ap s his mental tortu re at
the hands of the polic e - ", I am we ll brou ght
AL EX C L A R K
Ali Smith
G IR L M E E T S B OY
I 64pp. Canongate. £ 12.99.
978 1841958699
imag ine what girls would eve r do witho ut
one.
Smith has made ce ntral to her writing the
determination to honour both love and stories
in all their stra nge and messy and sugges tive
incarn ation s, and her version of Ovid is at
once tend er and affectionate - she ex hibits
a writer's sy mpathy, for exa mple, for Ovi ds
need to find a cheerful story to insert in
amo ng all the puni shin g violence of Metamor-
phoses - at the same tim e as it is committe d
to stretching and reshapin g the or iginal, to
ex posing its we ak link s and to setting it off in
new directions.
Perh aps mos t strikingly, she ex tends its
focu s by making the centre of Girl Meets
Boy Anth ea , her lanthe figur e. We fir st meet
her as a young girl, sitting on her grand-
fath er' s knee, listenin g to him tell a startling
story of ge nder co nfusion. " Let me tell yo u
TLS N OVE MBER 9 20 07
up. 1 am like clock work. There will be an
accid ent ", he prot ests when they refu se to let
him use the WC - tugs too ove rtly at the
handkerchi ef and the heart- strin gs.
Ho wever, it would be a very contemporary
sco rnfulness to dismi ss Gardam 's insistenc e
that go odness and merc y may defend faithful
"Revisited past", a pianist in costume
opposite th e Houses of Parliament; from
Unto London: A photographic essay of
London 's street performers by
Athol Rh eeder (97pp. H aus. £17.99.
9781905791163)
about when 1 was a girl, o ur grandfa ther
says" are the book' s opening wor ds, and
what foll ows is a bewild erin g combination of
radical politi cs, Scotti sh histor y and shape-
shifti ng, topp ed off with her grandfa ther and
grandmo ther's disapp earin g, in epic fashion,
over the hori zon in a trimaran. Anth ea' s
moth er has already done a va nishing act,
leavin g her with o nly a name borro wed
from the television fant asy figur e ("G ive us a
twirl" ) of the Generat ion Game 's Anth ea
Redfern .
In the story 's present day, Anth ea is a
yo ung wo ma n, living in her grandparents'
for sak en hou se in Invern ess w ith her older
sister Mid ge, a dri ven exec utive see ming ly
committed to making her ow n bod y di s-
app ear by never eating. Mid ge wor ks for
Pur e, a corporation atte mpting to make every
part of daily life - from the newspaper s we
read to the television we wa tch to the food we
eat and, in particular, the water we drink - a
Pure ex perience. Midge and Anthea are
alread y on an ideologic al coll ision course,
when Robin swaggers into view, all guerrilla
sabotage, paint ed sloga ns and dir ect action.
Her intru sive truth-telli ng recall s the
character of Amb er in Smith' s novel The
21
peopl e aga inst a corrupt world, no matter
how many revenant Afric an bi shop s or
Christ-child visions are called on to pro ve the
point. Ta les such as "The Virgins of Bruges"
(in which a timid nun rescues a Belgian
pro stitute in time for her son to be born on
Christmas morning), or "Waiting for a
Stranger" (in which a hospitable wo ma n is
reward ed by a vision of her ex pec ted guest,
on the stro ke of midni ght bet ween
Hallo we' en and All So uls) may not spea k so
clearl y to atheists. Th eir situation in the litur-
gica l character, and their simp le but effec tive
compositi on , make them feel more like
occ asion al pieces, in which the spirit of the
near-Vi ctori an short-story writer G . K.
Ches terton wa lks abroa d, witho ut makin g
man y conc ession s to contempor ary dress.
Howe ver , modern dress (or the lack of atte n-
tion to it) does build up to a wo nde rfully
whims ical jok e (full of elderly umbrell as) in
"The People on Pri vilege Hill" , the
collecti on ' s title story.
Gardam' s stor ies wo uld be broader if they
could sympathize with, for exa mple, obese
children in tracksuit s, or the middl e-aged
wo man in hypn oth erap y who falsely accu ses
poor Mr Jones of rape . In "Babette", the
mord ant , bohemi an elde rly lady no veli st
(w ho turn s up like a ca ution on the do orstep
of her unsuspectin g TLS reviewer) is a trifl e
loft y in her perspecti ve ; her ex-neighbours
are "black beetl es" , and a "colourless couple"
who "scuttle" and " scheme" about stea ling
her prop ert y after her death . Th e loftin ess of
the perspecti ve is nothing to the attic reven ge
which strikes them dead whe n Babett e ' s
giant antique bathtub, disturbed by their
excavations, descend s throu gh their ceilin g
like a cast-i ron ave ng ing ange l. And Babett e
wo uld surely arg ue, very vigoro usly, that con-
ventional hypo crit es and peopl e who blam e
others for their ow n inadequacies, get quit e
enoug h sympathy already.
Accidental (2005) ; she carri es with her the
sa me aura of men ac e combined w ith sa lva -
tion , and indeed pro ves to be a sparkling,
prot ean charac ter who liberates the sisters
from their twin prison s of lon elin ess and
misund erstanding. But now we are no longer
in ancient Crete, there is no need for Robin
to turn into a girl in ord er to be betrothed
to Anth ea, eve n if the coupl e mu st first
wor k their tran sformati ve magic on Mid ge,
whose horror at the situation is conveyed
to us by her thou ght s appea ring o nly in
bracket s, as in "(Oh my Go d my sister is A
GA Y)".
At times mor e fairy tale than myth , and
blur ring the boundaries between the two, Girl
Meets Boy deli ght s because it refuses to stop
at a sing le metamo rph osis; despit e its co m-
pactness, it s sto ries multipl y and rebound
ex uberantly, its echoes calling to one ano ther
across the pages. It tell s us abo ut the
perman ence of love, but it is also abo ut its
precari ou sness and the need to grab it eve n
when it app ear s in the mo st inh ospitable
places; to se ize on the merest glimpse of it
and make it substantial and end uring. And it
also tell s us about the malleability of the
stor ies that we continue to use to describ e ou r
ex perie nces , abo ut how they might also
pro ve hospit able to different tim es and differ-
ent situations - or abo ut how they might be
made to be so.
22
olitical book s these days flouri sh or fade
P with the buzz that they can generate, on
the internet, on cable television, on talk
radio and in the press. To succeed, they
increasingly depend on the single shock revela-
tion or quotati on from which a whole media
frenz y can be manufactured , marketed and
banked. In Hilfary Clinton, Her Way, Jetf
Gerth and Don Van Natta claim to have five
such revelatory hooks from which their sub-
ject can swing. Non e is altogether new and
onl y two are even somewhat important. Carl
Bernstein' s A Woman in Charge is a first-rate
biograph y of Hillary Clinton, well written,
imaginati vely research ed, balanced and sensi-
tively conceived. Bem stein also understands
that all marriages are esse ntially private mys-
teries and that the Clintons love and depend on
one anoth er in profound and passionate ways.
Bernstein ' s book is filled with revelation s,
but their import has either been misjudged or
deemed to be lackin g in sensation. The broad
verdict of politic al Washington on these two
book s is that Hillary has emerged largely
unscathed . As for mer President Clinton con-
fided to a group of old friend s recentl y, "They
didn't lay a glove on her".
The y did, howe ver, lay some fresh ones
on him . Bem stein was able to obtain access to
two treasure troves. The first was the co-
operation of Betsey Wright, who was
famou sly in charg e of neutralizing Bill' s
"birnbo eruptions" befor e his success ful cam-
paign in 1992. Some what less famou sly she
confronted him when a 1988 candida cy was
being discussed, with the demand that he
come clean about his infidelities so that she
could jud ge how best to handle them. "And of
cour se I was horrifi ed becau se I thought I
knew everybody. And he came up with all
these people I didn't know about." As a result,
Bernstein recounts that ju st two days befor e
Clinton was to make the form al announce-
ment at Little Rock ' s Exce lsior hotel, Wright
"told him it would be disastrou s to declare his
candid acy, devastating to Chelsea and his
marriage". Wright, who se loyalties were
always to Hillary rather than Bill, had been
installed at Hillary' s insistenc e in the Gover-
nor' s office and "had watched and listened as
Bill made arrangement s for assignations and
slipped out of the office with various women" .
The second treasure trove was unkno wn
outside the innermost circle. Hillary' s closest
friend in Arkansas, Diane Blair , a politic al
scientist whom she had met when she join ed
Bill on the law faculty at the University of
Arkansas in Fayetteville, had planned to write
a book on the 1992 camp aign. She singled out
126 members of the camp aign staff and asked
them to keep detailed notes of their experi-
ences and at the end of the camp aign she inter-
viewed each one. The resultin g transcript s and
notes were kept in four enormous binders, but
Rlair died of lung ca ncer hefore tacklin g the
planned book. Bem stein has had access to this
mine of informati on, which he says "pro-
vide [s] a developin g portr ait of Hillary as
she becam e the chief strategist and sounding
board of her husband ' s presidential campaign,
and contempl ated the kind of first lady she
intended to be". Am ong the insights that
emerge from these interviews are not only Hil-
lary' s role in setting up the famou s war room,
but also her inspiration for the far more secre-
tive "de fense team". This was hidden aw ay
from the rest of the campai gn, to deal with alle-
gations about Clinton's sex life, his avoidance
BIOGRAPHY
Back with Bill
MARTI N WALK ER
J eff G erth a n d Don V an N atta
HILL AR Y C LIN T ON , HER W A Y
The biogra phy
448 pp. John Murr ay. £20 .
978 0 7 195 6892 3
US: Little, Brown. $29.99 . 978 0 3 16 01742 8
C arl B e rn st ein
A WO M A N I N C HA RGE
The life of Hillary Rodham Clinton
640pp. Hutchinson. £25.
978 009 1920784
US: Knopf . $27.95. 978 0 375 40766 6
of the draft in the Vietnam war, and Hillary' s
own possible vulnerabilities throu gh the Rose
law firm, her corpo rate conn ection s, and her
slightly radical past.
If there is one "revelatory" fact that emer-
ges from the se two book s, it is an almo st
casual aside in Bern stein ' s narrative about a
little-kn own publication from the Yale law
school in 1971 called the Yale Review of Law
and Social Action. At the time, Hill ary was
organizin g the rota for memb ers of her class
on civil liberti es law to attend and monitor
the Black Panth er trial in Ne w Haven , where
Bobb y Se ale and others were accused of mur-
derin g a fellow Panther they thought to be an
inform ant. Hillary' s team was monitoring the
case for the Am erican Civil Liberti es Union,
and much of their report was publi shed in an
issue of the Review that carries Hill ary Rod-
ham' s nam e on the masthead as ass ociate edi-
tor. Th e text is legal ese, but the artwork is
devastatin g: images of the polic e depict ed as
pigs. Her opp onent s are likely to mak e good
use of this vicious attack. We may be see ing
that artwork and that Hill ary Rodham bylin e
aga in soon in a television comm erci al. It
mi ght almos t have been fun to wa tch the race
between Hill ary' s defenc e team and the
Republi can "opposition research" squads to
get to Yale libr ary or into the attics of other
Yale alumnae and track do wn any remaining
copi es of the Review.
But the outc ome of that race, if the Repub-
licans got to this visual bomb shell fir st, will
not be prett y. The point is that Am erican
voters, and probabl y interested observers else-
where, have ga ined some immunity to sex ua l
scandal as a result of Clinto n' s failed impeach-
ment. But ideological scandals that can be por-
trayed as a matter of values, in an era when the
police have becom e heroic "first responders"
to terrori st attacks, are likely to be potent.
Hillary' s values are already an election
is sue . Her main e lec to ral adv antage , accord-
ing to the opinion poll s, is her lead over all
other candidates, Dem ocratic or Republican ,
among women. And these days wo men
account for around 54 per cent of voters. But
that lead falters amon g white, married women,
many of whom think she put up with far too
much in her marri age out of sheer ambition. In
her own me moir, Living History (2003) , she
writes of the Monic a Lewinsky affair that as
Bill ' s wife "I wa nted to wring his neck. But
he was not onl y my husband, he was also my
pre sident " . Thi s is intri guin g, but not full y
explained. She was loyal to her marriage and
TLS N OVE MBER 9 2 0 07
to her ow n ambition, loyal to the Clinton
administration she had done so much to brin g
about , and infuriated by the skill and cunning
of the "vast right- win g con spira cy" of think
tank s, medi a, rich conservati ves, Ark ansas
enem ies and politicians who were able to
conduct a drainin g guerrilla war against her
and her husband. They are poised to renew
the strugg le. Dave Bossie, whose Citize ns
United produced ingeniou s conspiracy
theori es about the Clintons, cocain e, Mena
airport, Vinc e Foster's suicide, Whit ewater
and other half-forgott en matters, will later
this yea r release a documentary film on
Hill ary in the style of Micha el Moore.
Mor e reve lations may thu s be confidentl y
expected. But Bossie and his chums are
unlik ely to get much help from Hilfary
Clinton, Her Way , despite the authors'
claim s. Far too much of the book is spe nt
plou ghin g over the barren old ground of
Whit ewater and the Rose law firm . (Ge rth
was the New York Times reporter who first
broke the Whitew ater story .) The first "revela-
tion " is that Bill and Hill ary Clinton sec retly
agreed a twent y-year pact in the early 1970s
"to remak e the Dem ocratic party and capture
HilIary Clinton, November 1,2007
the presidency , revised in 1993 to includ e
eight years in the Whit e Hou se for Hillary".
Unless they mean by "pact" so me sole mn
ritual swo rn at midni ght and signed in blood ,
this referenc e to a marri age that was always
also see n as a politic al alliance between two
like-minded, gifted and ambitious peopl e is
not exa ctly news. Anyone who think s it is,
has been asleep since 1992.
Th e second is that Sen ator Clinton may not
have read the full ninety-page classified
Na tiona l Intelli genc e Estimate on Iraq befor e
castin g her 2002 vote to author ize the use of
force aga inst Sa dda m Hu ssein , and that she
later gav e confu sed messages about this vote
once the war became so unpopular. She cer-
tainl y should have read the NIE, which
contained many more doubt s and conditional
clauses about Sadd am' s alleged wea pons of
ma ss destruction than the shorter, public
version. One who did read it, Senator Bob
Graham, said it persuaded him to vote No .
The classified NIE was kept in a lock ed room
in the Se nate, and only six senators made the
effort to sign in and read it before the vote.
But the Sen ate keep s its secrets and it is not
entirely cert ain that Hill ary was not one of
them . As for her subsequent fancy foot work
aro und her po sition on the wa r, this is ca lled
politi cs and it, too, is hardl y new .
The third is that she brok e a Senat e rule by
not registering some of the unp aid Co ngres-
sional Fellows who worked in her office,
thereby preventin g journalists and others from
findin g out if any of them had conflicts of inter-
est. They cite one such Fellow, an academic at
Co rnell University's facult y of agriculture,
who was given leave by his college in upstate
New York in order to help a new Senator
throu gh the intricacies of a farm bill that could
have serious implic ations for her farm er consti-
tuents. If this is the best that the investigative
report ers of the New York Times can do, then
either Hillar y is above suspicion or they ought
to consider other lines of work.
The fourth is that she set up a "secret"
group of advisers on energy " in an attem pt
to catch up with Al Gore on environme nt
issues" , and then ignor ed some of their
advice, vacillated on seve ral of the polici es,
and fail ed to install high- efficienc y heatin g
and coolin g unit s in her home. Thi s one, too,
fails the " So What?" test.
The fifth and final nugget is interesting,
although its core is not new. Hillary at first
underestimat ed the threat from Senator Barack
Obam a. Her husband , always the better and
more instincti ve politici an, did not make that
mistake, sayi ng after he first saw Obama in
action, "He' s the rea l thing". Thi s quotation
has been in the public prints for month s.
More interesting to insiders is that one of the
Clintons' oldest friends, a very high-powered
lawyer called Greg Craig, has become one of
Obam a' s key supporters. His letter to Hillary
explaining his new allegiance went unan-
swe red. Cra ig had been a friend since first let-
ting the Clintons use his apartment when they
were studying at Yale law school, and he is
best kno wn as leader of the "defe nse team"
against Clinton's impeach ment.
Cra igs defection from the lifelong band
of Clinton loyali sts is therefor e tellin g, and
other friend s of Bill confide privately that
their heart s sink at the thought of yet another
presidenti al campai gn and anoth er great emo-
tional investm ent in yet another Clintonian
bid for power. If Hillary Clinto n fails, then
disapp ointm ent will be bitter. If she wins, the
thou ght of serving in another Clinton admini s-
tration , where poli cy must strug gle to prevail
over the clash of egos and per sonaliti es, is
less than invitin g to tho se who have already
been throu gh the dispiriting proc ess and have
the legal bill s to pro ve it.
Ironic ally, most of the Clinton veterans
think that Hillary would make a rath er good
President , bein g seas oned, wise now to Wash-
ington ways and to dealin g with Congress
after her Se nate experience . They are confi-
dent that she would make health care (again)
her signature reform, but would this time do a
better and more inclu sive job of it. She would
be out of Iraq fast, and would respond to fur-
ther terrori st attacks with mor e cunning and
mercil ess resolve, und erstandin g the need for
wo men politici ans to be able to play the war-
rior queen. After all, she has Bill to go round
and tidy up the brok en crockery . That would
teach him.

few pages into Alex de Waal' s exce l-
A lent introductory chapter to War in
Darfur, he rem ark s in pa ssing on
the dan gers of environmental determinism :
"No scholar who has don e field research in
Sud an subsc ribes to the simple noti on that
drought and eco logica l degradation directl y
cause conflict" . A helpful footnote offers
the supplementary inform ation that one
notori ous "apologist for the Sud an Govern-
ment" has tried to prop agate this exp lanation
of the violence in Darfur. Presum abl y out of
tact , de Waal forb ears to menti on other
exponents of this argum ent : the UN
Secretar y-G eneral , Ban Ki-Moon, is the mo st
prom inent among these, his pron oun cem ent s
echoed by cert ain Guardian j ourn alists
who have labe lled the Darfur confli ct as the
"world ' s fir st clim ate change wa r" .
It see ms unlik ely that Ban Ki-Moon will
tak e time out from his busy schedule to
read either this new coll ection edited by de
Wa al or Martin Daly' s Darfur's Sorrow. This
is a pity, since each reveals the limitation s
of this "climate change" approach . Ne ither
book could be describ ed as conci se, and both
offer a level of detail that the ge neral read er
may find chall enging , though Daly keep s
his eye on a wider audience and avoids the
ca sual referenc es to Thurayas (a type of satel-
lite phon e) and Goronovs (roc ket-prope lled
grenades) which will baffl e non- cognoscenti
who venture deep into the de Waal coll ec -
tion . But both book s expo und very clearly an
understandin g of what Daly call s "the destruc-
tion of Darfur" , in which clim ate chan ge is
a relevant factor but hardl y an explanatory
tool; and both engage in more than a little
of what the Guardian would now call
" Khartoum-bashing" - that is, laying the
fundam ental respon sibility at the door of the
Sudan ese Gove rn ment.
Daly offers the most detailed discu ssion I
have see n yet of the key role of success ive
Sudan ese regim es (the Anglo- Egyptian
Condominium included) in turn ing Darfur,
the remote wes tern dependenc y of Sudan' s
riverain heartland , into an impoverished back-
water. The fina l section of his book , and the
fir st half of the de Wa al collect ion , discu ss
the impact of a more malign polic y, first evi-
dent in the 1980 s, in which elements within
success ive Khartoum regimes have encour-
aged the emergence of Arab militia s inspired
by the po ssib ility of seizing official position s
and land from non-Arab Darfuris. De Wa al
explains this progression from negl ect to out-
right violence as the consequenc e of the
"h yper-dorninance" of Khartoum and its fac-
tion-ridden elite, for whom Darfur's remot e
peop le and land are, at best, resources for the
prosecut ion of endl ess power struggles . The
two book s do not march entirely in step:
while the de Waal coll ect ion evo kes a form er
"Darfur con sen su s" throu gh w hich loc al di s-
pute s were once resolved , Daly offers a
rather more blood y chronicle of conflict and
violence stretching back into a deep past of
slave raidin g (not all by "Arabs") and state
coercion . But both make it cle ar that, in
the past, conflicts could be managed and
violence contained. What has driven the
appa lling violence of recent years has been
the active complicity of memb ers of the go v-
erning elite anxiou s to recru it militi a allies
for their own purposes and willing to reward
them with a free hand again st tho se whose
land or wea lth they desire.
PO LITICS
Inextricable
JUSTlN WILLIS funn y any more. Daly' s sense of out rag e
pours off eve ry page; and while the prob lem s
Al ex de Wa al , editor of eco logical degr adation are a running sub-
them e of his book , he leaves no doubt that
W AR I N DARF UR it was the po licy of the gove rnme nt that
And the se arc h for peace turned multipl e local confl icts into a general-
4 31 pp. Harvard Univ ersity Pre ss . Paperback , ized polic y of violent disp lacem ent and thus
£ 16.95 (US $24.95). into war , as the Fur, Zagha wa and other
978 0674 023673
non-Arabs armed them selves in self-defence .
M. W . D aly The products of that arming - the Sudan
Liberation Arm y, the Justice and Equit y
DARF UR 'S SORROW Mo vem ent , and the multipl ying fact ions and
A history of destructi on and ge noc ide
sub-factions of these - rec eive more detailed
388p p. Cambrid ge Univers ity Press. Paperback,
and critical di scu ssion in War in Darfu r,
£ 14.99 (US $22.99).
where they appear not simply as reluct ant
978 0 52 1 699624
rebels against oppr ession, but also as squab-
blin g rival s, led by ego tists, incompetent s
Daly' s book mark s the tran sition to this and merc ena ries. Governm ental complicity
new period not only in its text, but in pro se in recent years ha s produced new armed
style. As might be expected of a historian gro ups, exa cerbated conflicts over land,
with unr ivall ed know ledge of the English- and further entangled Darfur' s politic s with
language sources for the period of British tho se of neighbouring Chad . But the clarity
domin ance in Sudan , he writes of the follies with which these prob lem s are descr ibed
A Sudanese refugee, To ulou m refugee ca mp, Eastern Chad, 2007
and fai lures of the Angl o-Eg yptian Condo- in the se book s reveals what is perhaps
min ium with a dry, confident style; and his the wors t aspect of Khar toum' s culpability:
discu ssion of post- independ enc e Sudan up to the situation is now such that even if the
the 1980s, while lacking the sense of inti- current regim e tried (a sizeable if, given its
mac y with key player s, mainta ins the acerbi - complex internal politic s), it could not by
ca lly witty tone in its discu ssion of the ambi- itself bring peace to Darfur. Thi s is a gov-
tion s and mistake s of the Sudan ese riverain ernment that can break thin gs, but cann ot
elite. But fro m the 1980 s on, it rea lly isn't fix them .
TLS N O VE M BER 9 2 0 0 7
23
The con sequ enc es of th is are apparent
in the unhappy story of the Darfur Peace
Agreement of Apr illMa y 2006 . Bo ycott ed by
a significant section of the rebel faction s,
undermined by the casual non -compli ance of
the Governm ent, this was doom ed from the
out set; and War in Darfur subje cts its linger-
ing death to careful scrutiny . The agreem ent
was doom ed , de Wa al insists, not because
it was ill-informed or misconceived : it was
a detai led attempt to addr ess the mu ltip le
probl em s of Darfur, drafted by peop le with a
clear under standing of the long-term cau ses
of the violenc e. But the negotiations were
mishandl ed, and in con sequ ence non e of
the signatories - or potential signatories -
believed in a deal that was foi sted on them
in haste by international backers. The US gov-
ernment and , to a lesser extent, the Briti sh
go vernment were stung by dom estic critici sm
from a vocal lobb y which, loudly if not
always coh erently, dem anded action over
Darfur. But the room for action was limited :
the US, busy in Iraq , shrank from outright
confrontation with the Sudanese Govern-
ment , partl y out of conc ern for the recent
peace deal in southern Sudan and partly from
a desire for Sudan ese coop eration with the
"war on terror".
And so the US gra sped desperat ely at
the straw of a peace dea l to be supervised
by a UN forc e, and insisted that negoti ation s
leading to this be concluded rapidl y
(de Waal gives a fascinating description
of the bull yin g of the rebel faction s by
the US and African Union representat ives).
The go vernment of Sud an cheerfully signed
up to the deal , then exp loited the division s
among the rebel s to disregard its term s,
and set about determinedly dela ying the
dep loyment of the blue helmets. Th is is a
regime whose di sregard for "international
opinion" is both practi sed and not without
a cert ain appalling wit : faced with demands
for one individual to be handed over
for trial for war crim es, the go vernm ent
appointed him head of a commission to
inve stigate hum an right s abu se s. Meanwhi le
the rebel groups, distru sting Khart oum ,
either refused to sign by the deadline set
for them or, ha ving signed, found them selves
in forced alliance with the go vernm ent
against their former coll eagues. War in
Darfu r exposes some of the painful ironi es
of all this , juxtapo sing mildl y hagiographical
accounts of the rise of the Darfur lobb y
in the US with de Wa al' s description of the
unintended con sequ enc es of such lobb ying
in helping to creat e a peac e agreement that
cou ld not work.
Both book s end in sombre tone , unsurpri s-
ingly: de Waal suggests that it might be
"many years" before cond ition s are right
for another attempt at negotiated peac e, and
it is hard to see what differenc e the much-
herald ed UN forc e can mak e in the current
political environment. Neith er de Waa l nor
Daly issue s clar ion call s to acti on or demands
for intervention. What is to be done? Noth-
ing, except to wait for better time s, for Darfur
and Sud an are trapp ed beneath the rubb le
of poli tical failure ; pinn ed do wn by the
weight of ruthle ss, egotistica l and incomp e-
tent leaders, who apparent ly cannot be
shifted . One can see the attraction of the cli-
mate change argument; blaming the weather
is less depre ssing than trying to unpick this
sorry me ss.
24
Good enough for the Welsh
PAUL L EVY
Jo an Thirsk
FOOD I N EA R LY MOD ER N
E N GLA ND
Phases, fads, fashions 1500-1 760
396pp. Hambledon Continuum. £30 .
978 1 852855383
he distin gui shed agricultural historian
T Joan Thirsk has brought her know-
led ge and skills to bear on the diffi cult
qu estion of what ordinary peopl e in Eng land
actually ate between, more or less, the Renai s-
sance and the start of the Indu stri al Revolu-
tion. For the histori an of agriculture to turn to
the histor y of food might see m but a sho rt
step, yet Thirsk shows that it is actually a
might y leap. For one thin g the natur e of what
counts as ev ide nce changes - the docum ent s
that tell you what farmers grew and reared do
not tell yo u what they and their neighbours,
let alone urban dwell ers, con sum ed. Spic es,
to take only the mo st ob viou s exa mple, we re
nearl y all imported. Nor we re recip e book s
eve r reli able indic ator s of diet. Th ey we re by
definition aimed at a literate audience , and
most of them were intended for the upp er
cl asses, or eve n for roya l hou sehold s. And , as
Elizabeth David pointed out, cooker y book s
used ge nerally to record the ex perience of the
ge neration before their date of publi cation -
by the tim e a recipe got into print , it was prob-
ably out of fashion . (Thi s has on ly change d
recentl y, when cookery book s often atte mpt
to set the mode, rather than record it.) Dia-
ries, journals and per son al correspondenc e,
norm all y bein g first-h and , are, of course, the
most reli able witnesses to what peopl e ate.
But before the spread of literac y, these were
o nly a guide to the practic e of the top stra ta of
soc iety ; and it is supr is ing how few wr ite rs
thou ght what they ate worthy of rec ording
(or , alterna tively, ho w few accounts of eating
surv ive). So Thirsk has to ma ke the most of
what archi val ev ide nce there is, along with
what can be glea ned from the visual arts -
and she does it triumphantly.
She succee ds because she reads the tat-
tered histori cal record not ju st with care, but
with sympathy, reali zin g what so man y
before her have ignor ed - that hum an natur e
has not much chan ged when it com es to
thin gs like our basic tastin g apparatus. For
ex ample, we tod ay like a varied diet ; if we
have the opportunity, we change what we
eat from da y to day. Wh y, she asks, wo uld
anyo ne assum e that a fourt eenth- or fifteenth-
• FOUR COURTS PRESS
Librarians, poets and scholars:
a festschriJi for D6nall 6 Luanaigh
FELIX LARKIN EDITOR
A coll ection of essays and po ems pr esented by th e
N ational Library ofIreland Society to D 6nall 6 Luanaigh,
Keeper of Coll ections at the N ational Library of Ireland.
ISBN 978-1 -84682 -0 17-5 370 pp ills. £ 50
Published: 9 November
7 M alpas Street, D ublin 8, Ireland
Tel. (Dubli n) 453 4668 www.fourcourtspress.ie
SOCIAL STUDIES
"The End of Dinner" (1913) by JuI es Grun ; from Food: The history oftaste, edited by Paul Freedman (368pp. Thames and Hudson.
century peasant was cont ent to consume
nothin g but pott age? Tru e, John Harvey' s list
of the main vege tables eaten in the fifteenth
century in the south-eas tern qu arter of the
country detailed food s grow n for the we ll-
to-d o - these included "onions, leek s, garlics,
worts and some cabbage, sometimes broad
beans and peas, always parsley and hyssop
for furth er fla vouring" . But , she point s out,
these modest vege tables could not have been
culti vated in isolation , and eve n without fur-
ther document atio n, "it wo uld be reason able
to ass ume that in sca ttered places some bett er
and mor e varied ga rde n veget ables were
en tering into the diet of ordin ar y people in a
mod est way because rich men locall y had set
the ex ample" . Thi s is merely the application
of co mm on se nse , as it is only com mon se nse
to think that people in the fifteenth ce ntury
appreciated interestin g and varied flavours as
much as we do toda y.
All food histori ans now accept that earlier
ge nerations valued spices and other flavour-
ings for the sa me reason we do - we like their
taste - and no one now think s they were used
to disgui se the "off ' flavours of meat or fish.
They were onc e ex pensive , and were used to
show off wea lth, but they were chi efl y prized
for the sa me reason s that we tod ay like
Indi an , Thai or Chinese food . Mor eover , until
the developm ent of food preser vation wen t
beyond heavy salting, and pickling becam e
practi cal , all unsalted food was eate n
ex tremely fresh.
What sets Thir sk apart from most of her
predecessors, thou gh, is her attenti on to her
ow n subtitle - the fact that she recogni zes that
tastes change; she is alert, in turn , to how
flavour s change as well. She uses her long
experience of agricultural history to note some-
thin g elusive - that the cultivated garde n vari-
ety of a vege table or fruit often loses the
strength of flavour of the wild spec imen. It is
easy to recogni ze the truth of this if you think
•
of instanc es famili ar to us today - the
decreased pepp erin ess of cultivated rock et or
TLS N OVE MBER 9 2 0 07
£24.95.9780500251355)
sourness of sorrel, the more inten se flavour of
wild straw berries , the larger differenc es in
taste of wild mu shroom s. So thou gh in the ear-
liest part of her period "the basic daily dish of
cooked food for plain folk was pottage", this
doesn't reveal that " it was a most nourishin g
dish of cereals, pulses, gree ns and herbs, with
sufficient meat to give a satisfying, mea ty fla-
vour", greatly enhanced by the much stro nger
"flavours of wild plant s of the past" . Thir sk is
so awa re of changes of flavour that I believe
her eve n when she says that, after 1700 , dairy
farm ers were enco uraged not to feed their
cows on clo ver, "for it made cheese that was
distinctl y inferior in taste to that from natural
grasses, and we mu st humbl y acce pt the fact
that our forebears knew what they were talk-
ing about; we have lost the abilit y to judge" .
Changes of fashion there we re aplenty, but
the most notable of these was the pan-
Europea n chan ge after the Renaissance when
the basic palate chan ged from swee t and sour
to savo ury . Thi s coin cid ed with the Co lum-
bian exc ha nge, when Europe acquired so
man y novel food s, from beans and potatoes,
to maize, tom ato es, sq uashes , chillies and
chocolate. The mes that emerge fro m her sur-
vey include the relati ve rankin gs of the taste
for different sorts of meat - usually beef was
supreme, but some times mutt on was pre-
ferred , thou gh pork was usually in third
plac e . She mak es a strong plea for veal,
which I wish we re heeded more toda y .
Because of vea l's clo se association with
dairyin g, the English have always, until very
recentl y, priz ed and eaten a goo d deal of veal.
Now farm ers kill un wanted bull calves at
birth - ho w much bett er to rear them for rosy
Eng lish vea l, for which there are now very
high we lfare sta nda rds . Sup risingly, cheese
was a low-statu s food throu gh most of the
period co vered by Thirsk, and the ass ociation
of toasted cheese with Wa les was a negative
one. Pig-k eepin g got a fillip from the dair y
indu stry when farm ers began feedin g
un wanted whey to pigs; but thi s had unfortu-
nate dietar y repercu ssion s for the rur al poor ,
to who m thi s nouri shin g drink (along with
butt er milk ) was once give n gratis. It is impor-
tant to rememb er that in thi s peri od there was
very little actually kno wn about the nut ri-
tion al value of any food stuffs. We meet recur-
rent prejudices, too, and these will surp rise
no one - the Eng lish at vario us tim es dislik ed
sauces and garlic ; by contrast, they accept ed
rapeseed oil for cooking and seas o ning as
early as 1660 .
One of the charm s of Food in Early Modern
England is that when confronted with a miss-
ing link in her argument, Thir sk does what
most of us wo uld do , saying , for example, "per-
haps we ca n reasonably po sit a Euro pean
circl e of foodies, gradually merging their food
conventio ns and learnin g co ntinuously from
eac h other in the early modern period", or,
when Sir WaIter Raleg h and Samu el King,
incarcerated in the Tower, experimented with
distillin g and flavour s, that it was because they
"and probably all opinionated foodi es at this
time, linked the distill ation of esse nces with
cooking". On the other hand , a good editor
would have reduc ed the size of this book con-
sidera bly, by rem oving some of the repetition.
Eve n this is excusable, thou gh , as Thir sk is
wor king with a limited repertory of docu-
mentary sources - Gervase Markh am, Robert
May, Samuel Hartlib , William Harri son ,
Richard Bradley, And rew Boord e - these
nam es recur ; and it is a rel ief as we ll as a
delight when she has recourse to Gilli an
Riley's hand somely illustrated edition of
Cas telve tro to argue that its Italian and Nether-
landi sh paintin gs show truthfully that "around
1600 fruit was becomin g a qualitatively differ-
ent food from what it had been" in the 1540s.
And how refreshin g it is to read her conclu-
sion that "food snobbery was a powerful
factor shaping the food scene, but it did not
necessaril y always adva ntage the rich". Th e
superior flavour s and better nourishm ent of
the wild food the poor got for free somet imes
tipped the balanc e in their fa vour.
 PHIL O S OPHY 25

Satisfyingly irrational
nalytic philosop hers are often BAR T ST REU ME R that could ju stif y this choice, and that we could only stop holding others responsi-

A accused of ignoring the large ques-

tions that philosophy shou ld be abo ut
and of conce ntra ting instead on sma ll tech-
nical questio ns that no one else is interested
in. This acc usat ion is not ent irely unfou nded.
However, in orde r to answe r large phil o-
soph ical ques tio ns, we often need to answer
ma ny sma ller and more techni cal ones first,
whether or not anyo ne is interested in the
answers to them. In his exce llent new book
The Retreat of Reason: A dilemma in the
philosophy of life, the Swe dish philosop her
Ingmar Persson does exac tly that.
The large philoso phica l question Persson
tries to answe r is: how should we lead our
lives? His answer emerges slow ly via a large
number of sma ller and more techn ical ques-
tions. But Pe rsso n always does his best to
explain how his answers to the sma ller ques-
tions co ntribute to his answer to the large
one, and anyo ne who makes the effor t to read
this book is likely to be rewarded with many
new insight s. Acc ording to Persson, how we
should lead our lives depends on what our
overall aim in life is. He argues that we are
rationally permitted to have two different
kinds of aim: a cog nitively rationalist aim,
acc ording to which we sho uld try to lead our
lives in acco rda nce with true beliefs about
the wor ld, and a satisfact ional ist aim , accord-
ing to which we should try to lead lives that
are as fulfilling as poss ible. Of course, it
wo uld be nice if we co uld live in accordance
with both of these aims, but Persson think s
we ca nnot: he arg ues that there is a deep
co nflict between the cog nitively rationalist
aim and the satisfactionalist aim, and that we
ca n only live in accord ance with one of these
aims if we do not live in accorda nce with the
othe r.
The conflic t between these two aims
ma nifes ts itself, Persson thi nks, w hen we try
to answe r three sma ller philoso phical
questions. The first is whether we should be
tempo rall y neut ral: that is, whether we
should value similar experiences equally whe-
ther they have occurr ed in the pas t or will
occ ur in the futur e and whether they will
Backpacker
She steps over frogs defended with poi son
in the forest of Bastimentos.
Asleep above her, a sloth suddenly dro ps
onto orc hids. She walks the water fall.
After her ride ove r a neckl ace of islands,
whoa : the boatm an hold s her horse,
spea ks guar i guari to ca lm him.
Rice sac k sails nose past grey retirees
in Parque Simon Boli var. She's not with them
In g m ar P e r s s on
THE RETREAT OF REAS ON
A dilemma in the philosophy of life
494pp. Oxford University Press.£55 (US$99).
9780 19 9276905
occ ur in the near futu re or in the distant
future. It see ms clear that human beings are
not temporally neutr al in this sense: for exa m-
ple, if we were given a choice between di s-
covering that we had a good experie nce in the
pas t that we had temporaril y forgotten about
and discovering that we are going to have a
slightly less goo d expe rience in the fut ure,
almost all of us would prefer to disco ver that
we are going to have the slightly less good
expe rience in the future . Persson arg ues that
there is no difference bet ween experiences
that occ ur at different times that could ju stif y
this choice, and that cogniti ve rationalit y
therefor e requi res us to be temporall y neutral.
But he also arg ues that being temporally neu-
tral would make us rea lize how insignificant
our lives are in comparison to every thing
that has happened in the pas t and every thing
that will happen in the futur e, and that this
wo uld make our lives much less fulfilling
than they wo uld otherw ise be. Therefore, he
concludes, whereas the cog nitively rationalist
aim requires us to be temporally neutral,
the satisfac tiona list aim requires us not to be
temp orall y neutral.
The seco nd question is whether we should
be perso nally neut ral: that is, whether we
should value all experiences equally whether
they are our ow n expe riences or someo ne
else's experiences. Again , it seems clear that
hum an beings are not personally neutra l in
this se nse : if we faced a cho ice between
giving a good ex pe rience to o urse lves and
a slightly better exper ience to an equally
deserving stra nger, almos t all of us would
cho ose to give the good expe rie nce to our-
selves . Persson argues that there are no facts
about what makes us the persons we are and
what makes us di stinct from other perso ns
cogn itive rationality therefore requires us to
be personally neutral. But he then goes on
to argue that being personally neutral is so dif-
ble in this way if we gave up ma ny emo tions
toward s others that are central to our lives,
and that giving up these emo tions is so
ficult that, if we tried to be personally neutral, diffi cu lt that tryin g to give them up would
our lives wo uld be much less fulfill ing than make our lives much less fulfill ing than
they wo uld otherw ise be. Aga in, therefore, they wo uld otherwise be. His conclusion is
he concludes that while the cog nitively therefore, once aga in, that the cog nitive ly
rationalist aim requi res us to be perso nally rationalist aim requi res that we stop holdi ng
neutral, the satisfactionalist aim requires the others responsibl e in this sense, but that
opposite. the satisfac tionalist aim requires that we
The th ird question is whether we should continue to do so.
hold others respo nsi ble for what they do: that If Persso n is right, then , there are two
is, whether we should praise other people incomp atibl e answers to his central question:
for what we think they have done right and we ca n live in accorda nce with the cog ni-
blame them for what we thi nk they have done tivel y rationalist aim or in accorda nce with
wro ng . Persso n argues that we are partly the satisfact ionalist aim, but we cannot live
ju stified in do ing this, since by praising or in acc ordance with both - that is, we cann ot
blaming other peop le we ca n influ ence what lead lives that are both in accorda nce with
they will do in the future. But he think s that true beliefs about the wor ld and that are also
our idea of res ponsibility involves the idea of as fulfill ing as possible. Of course, it would
desert: that is, when we praise or blame some- have been much nicer if we could have done
one, we take this perso n to deserve the pra ise this. But Persson does not draw this concl u-
or blame that they get. This idea of desert , sion because he thin ks it is nice: rather, he
Persson arg ues, presupp oses that people are draws it becau se it emerges out of his
ultimately responsible for their ow n charac - answers to the large numb er of sma ller and
ter s in a way they ca nnot be, and cognitive more techn ical questions he discusses. Eve n
rationality therefor e requires that we stop if Per sson ' s concl usion is not very nice, The
holdin g other peopl e responsible in a way Retreat ofReason makes a very goo d case for
that involves desert. But he also arg ues that thinking that it is true.
. wed in tile
"s revle
All bOo" a m\l\\on otll er
lLS, and ~verare ava\lable from
titles in prInt, S BookshoP
tile TL d prices wltll
at discOunte 'n tile UK.
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Ass\stan ce an pping, gift
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reco m, ,, ,."
voucllerS, est\onS fro",
and sugg d lIelpful
able an
Knowledge bOOKsellers.

ea ting Johnn y cakes but , rare as an egg

laid by a leatherb ack turtl e, she smiles
throu gh the bars of a waterfro nt j ail in Bocas.

C LA I RE C R O WT HE R

TLS NO VE M BE R 9 2007
26
Subjonctif
lus c« Change is a bri sk, oft en wince -
P making survey of the past, present and
futu re of the French langu age at a tim e
when, word has it, Eng lish is the new Latin.
Th e authors chronicle the ev olution of
Fre nch fro m its beginnings in 842 to the
franc oph one diaspora of our modern , global
Babel. Billed as a story rath er than a hi stor y,
the book is appropriately mor e journalisti c
than scholarly . A Roundhead devotion to a
serious thesis is mirrored by a breezy reduc-
tiven ess of sty le (Volt aire was "the rock star
of salon cultu re") and a cavalier way with the
historic al record: Mont aign e' s father was
mayor of Bord eau x, not a fishmon ger; Pierre
Bay le was a pion eer of the Enlightenme nt not
"a publi sher based in Holland " ; Victor Hugo
hardl y "reinve nted" French po etry after
1851 , and so on. The Montreal-b ased Jean-
Be noit and Juli e Barlow ("p artn er s in life and
writing") ex plained, in Sixty Mill ion French-
men Can 't Be Wrong (2003 ), why they love
France but not the French. In their new and
eq ually pro voc ati ve book , they arg ue that
French stands high er in globa l term s than
France itself. France as a world power has
declin ed since 1945 , but her langu age has
grown into a free- standing geo political and
geocultura l forc e which has con sider able
imp act on significant areas of the wor ld -
often ind epend entl y of French foreign polic y
and econo mic outreach.
Of cour se, the news is not all good. French ,
wea kened in the EU, the UN and form er colo-
nies like Vietnam, is judged by some to be
a spent forc e. On the positive side, though
French, with an estimated 175 million native
speakers, rank s only ninth in the world, it is
the second most important official, inter-
national language after English. It is also the
seco nd mos t popul ar choi ce of the wor ld's
language-learners, a resounding endorsement.
Thi s high profil e is partly the result of
cann y cultu ral diplom acy. The statistics are
tellin g. French is enco urage d by 1,074 out-
posts of the Alli anc e Franca ise, 153 Instituts
Franca is, and 430 lycees worldw ide . French is
an official langu age of organi zation s as
diverse as the EU , the Postal Union and the
Olymp ic Mo vement. TV5 Monde rank s at no
3 in the world after MTV and CNN , but ahead
of BBC World and Al Jazeera . By diggin g her
heels in at the GATT settlement of 1993,
France established the "cultural exception"
from which many non- French- speakin g coun-
tries have gratefully benefited. And represent-
ing French to the world, La Francoph onie, a
large organiz ation with fift y-three member
states, hold s regul ar summits and prom otes
econom ic and diplomati c coope ra tion.
But the langu age has also piggyb ack ed on
France 's intell ectual and cultural contribu-
tion s to the gaiety of nation s. It is the lan-
g uage not onl y of gastronomy , haute co uture
and sophisticated chic, but also of revolution,
hum an rights, radical art and ideas . It has
help ed sha pe the political con sciou sness of
eme rging Afri can nati on s and has con soli-
dated the cultural identity of more settled
ex tra-metro politan communities. Its streng th
is to proj ect a certain idea of the world which
not only opposes An glo-Saxon capit ali sm
but sometimes the attitudes and actions of
LANGUAGE
DA VlD COWARD
J ean-B eno lt Na dea u a n d
Juli e B arl ow
P LU S <;: A C HANGE
The story of French - from Charlemagne to the
C irq ue du So leiI
368pp . Robson Books. £ 17.99.
978 186 1059 178
Franc e, such as her stance on immi gration.
Thus far , Nadea u and Barlo w make a good
fist of selling French as a wor ld lan gua ge.
But their idea for what sho uld happ en next
is much less con vincing. They exe cra te
Fran ce ' s hand s-off stance to the francophone
dim en sion , and roundl y denoun ce the snooty
con ser vati sm which still dominates dom estic
attitudes to langu age. Unive rsities, the press,
intell ectu als, Pari sian snobbishness (though
not the Ac ademi c francaise, which ge ts a
good press) have always oppose d the dem o-
cratic tend enc y which, since the seve ntee nth
century, has been sidelined in favour of the
grammar, vocabulary and accent of the rulin g
caste. Wh at the French see as going down-
mark et is reall y a refus al to allo w French to
mod erni ze and go global. Modern puri sts are
simply repeatin g mi stakes mad e in the eight-
eenth century when France surrendered her
imp erial ambition (and lin gui stic future) to
Brit ain on the gro und that if the French had
Pari s, who could possibl y wa nt mor e?
nglo-Nor man (the term An glo-
A
French is now ofte n preferr ed ) is
the Fre nch langu age as it was
spo ken and writte n in Brit ain bet ween the
Norman Co nques t of 1066 and the fifteent h
century, durin g which Eng lish becam e pre-
domin ant. The much-n eeded dicti onary of
thi s form of Fren ch first appea red in seven
parts ove r the period 1977-92 and we now
have two volumes of a new edition.
Unusua lly, as seco nd editions of aca de mic
publi cati on s norm all y invol ve the co rrec -
tion of a few erro rs and perh aps the addition
of a small amount of new information , the
cont ent has ex pa nded from 138 and 151
pages respectively in the first edition
(AND I) to 624 and 4 83 pages in the seco nd
(AND2) . Thi s huge ex pansion deri ves partl y
from a mor e readabl e and pleasin g layout
for the entries, but es pecially from the use
of a mu ch wide r ran ge of source materi al,
the study of which has produced additional
meanin gs and spellings , and also from a sig-
nific ant incr ea se in the numb er of support-
ing qu otati on s. Alr ead y in AND I , the
largely literar y sources were pro gressively
enriched by non-literary materi al , and
A ND2 now draws on a wide range of legal,
scie ntific and medi cal wor ks, togeth er with
a variety of admini strati ve and co mmercial
record s, including those relatin g to the
Church and to Parli ament. Oth er so urces ,
such as pri vate correspond enc e, con versa-
tion manu al s and the glosses used by scribes
for tran slatin g Latin texts, ha ve also been
min ed for exa mples .
TLS N OVE MBER 9 2 0 07
"Portrait de Felix Feneon. Opus 217" (1890-91) by Paul Signac ; from
Nineteenth-Century French Art by Sebastien Allard and L aurence Des Cars
(464pp. Flammarion. £60. 978 2 08 030532 9)
Ju st as the Revoluti on of 1789 wage d war
on region al patoi s and made the ability to
speak French the basic requirement for partic-
ipation in the life of Fra nce's new republic,
so French no w need s better management if
it is to play a similar unifyin g role on the
world stage . Th e dislik e of "purism" does not
excl ude other form s of lingui stic enginee ring
as a way of defending French aga inst the
threat of urb ani zation, co nsumeris m and
Am eric an popul ar culture . Th e authors see no
contradiction in denoun cin g toffee-n osed
Willi am Roth w ell , St e w a r t
G regory and Da vid Trott er ,
e d i t o rs
ANG L O-N O R MAN DI CTIO N AR Y
Seco nd edition, Volumes One (A-C) and
Two (D-E)
624pp and 483p p. Lond on : M aney Publishing I
Modern Humanities Research Assoc iation.
£ 160 (US $336).
978 I 90435 0 39 2
Head word s are acco mpa nied by an ofte n
remarkable number of variant spe llings -
the noun bosoigne, "need, business" ,
has sixty variants ; the eq uiva lent adje ctive ,
bosoignous, "indigent, necessary", sixtee n;
bretache, "brattice , tower" , has twent y-one,
and enfundrer, " sink, eng ulf ', twent y-four.
Th ese variants sometimes produce a spe ll-
ing close to the Eng lish eq uivalent. The
entry enhaucer, for instance, has thirt y-t wo
variants (AN D I had twent y-fi ve), including
such widely differin g form s as enanser and
ahau ter ; on e va riant is enha ncer, th ou gh
Englis h diction aries state that the Eng lis h
enhance com es from the An glo-Norman
enhauncer, or eve n dir ectl y from the Old
French enhaucier. The numb er of variants
pro vid ed also raises the qu esti on of cross-
referen ces. Thi s is on the who le goo d, but
wo uld user s encountering ena lcer , ena ncer,
esa ncer, echalcier , eschalcier, etc, be able
to find their way to enhauce r?
M any entries in AND2 pro vid e meanin gs
not found in ANDI . The term eschecker
(there are thirt y-on e variant spe llings , non e
French beau po rter (w hich permits eve n
socialist mayor s occas ional use of the imper-
fect subj unctive) and laudin g the effective -
ness of the legislation enacted by Quebec in
1977 to enfo rce the public use of French.
Th ey also dan gle the ultim ate threat: lingui s-
tic Dar wini sm . France has ado pted much of
the langu age of IT devised by Fre nch Ca nadi-
ans, so maybe the res t will foll ow natu rally.
But one thin g is clear : for our two authors the
grea tes t ob stacl e to the diffu sion of Frenc h is
not Eng lis h, but Ga llic con ser vati sm.
of which is the Eng lish spelling Exchequer)
has no w two new meanin gs in additi on to
"chessboard" : "table with a chequered top"
and "party-coloured sweetmea t". Al so
added are the locution s Esc hec ke r Cha mbre
("Exchequ er Chamber") and a(s) esche ke rs
("of chec k pattern "). En tries in A ND 2 are
also often much len gth ier than in AND I.
The entry for the ve rb chacer (E ng lish
"chase" ) occupied sixtee n lines in ANDI ,
whereas in AND2 it has 110 lines. A signifi-
cant numb er of new meanings are listed ,
and there are more locution s, such as chace r
apres "pursue" (cf Eng lish "chase after")
and chacer la fo lie (" to act fooli shl y").
Th e revised edition of the Anglo-Norman
Dictionary pro vides the user with an
astounding amo unt of inform ation . It would
have been helpful to have the date of the
first attes ted ex ample of eac h word, eve n of
each meanin g, wh ich wo uld give the Dic-
tionary a grea ter histori cal dim en sion . In
some cases the first attested exa mple is
cited, hut not always. Th e Voyage of St
Brendan by Benedeit, which is dated in the
List of Tex ts Cited to the first qu arter of the
twelfth century, cont ain s a numb er of term s
for which later exa mples are give n (cline r,
claret, eglise, ether; etc) . In the lon ger term ,
a combined dictionary of Eng lish, An glo-
Nor man and Latin is requi red. But the
present Dictionary is a hu ge step for ward
since the project was first sugges ted in the
mid-1 940 s by Loui se Ston e.
GLY N B URG ESS
 TRANSLATION PRIZES 27

land of scrap iron and thi stles, the parc hed

The rough and the smooth hill sides of o ur Jeru salem , suffoca ting under
the we ight of white-hot summe r" . In his
review in the TLS of September 17, 2004 ,
he Schlegel-Tieck Prize for translation The Vo nde l Prize for translation from cences, eac h with its own distinctive voice - Ga briel Jo sipovici com ments : " It is a uni ver-

T from German has this year been

awarde d to Sally-Ann Spencer for The
Swarm by Fra nz Schatzing (~~ Ipp. Hodder
and Stoug hton. £7.99 . 978 0 340 89523 5) . A
thriller based on an eco log ica l disas ter, this
novel, first published in 2004 , dominated the
best-sell er lists in Ger ma ny for over two
years and has bee n wi dely translated . At over
800 pages, it rep resents a for mid abl e task for
a translator - one en tailing precise sc ien tific
ter min ology and detailed description s of labo-
ratory wor k, as an intern ation al team of scien-
tists try to establish what exactly is happen-
ing in the ocean depth s to ca use the chaos in
the wor ld aro und them.
Sara h Ad am s, winner of thi s year's Scott
M oncrieff Prize for translation from Fre nch,
faced a very different task. Just Like Tomor-
row by Faiz a Guene, published in Fra nce in
2004 (I 84pp. Chatto and Windus. £5.99. 978
o 70 I 17910 6), is a sho rt, hum orou s first
novel by a yo ung wo man of Alge rian descent
who lives in the suburbs of Par is. Her heroi ne
is fo urteen , go ing on fiftee n, sharp ly and wit-
til y obse rva nt of her fell ow immigrant neigh-
bour s an d pesky soc ial wo rke rs in the tower
block estate where she lives with her moth er.
Tee nage slang is deftl y dealt with, as we
learn of her anxie ties abo ut identity, despair
about schoo l, and dreams of the futur e.
the Dutch or Flemish has gone to Susan
Massotty for My Father's Notebook by Kader
Abdolah (323p p. Ca nongate. £7 .99. 97~ I
84 195 927 6). Of Iranian origin, Abd olah
arrive d in the Netherlan ds as a political refu-
gee in the late 1990 s, and now writes in Dutch.
In the TLS of May 5, 2006, Nora Mahony
writes, "A storyteller of the utm ost subtlety
and natural ease , Abdol ah evokes with great
affec tion and sadness the land and the people
of his home co untry, interleaving sufficient his-
tory to give a sense of the fear and bewilder-
ment felt by rural Iran at the rise of the Aya tol-
lah Khomei ni, the grow th of Islam ist extrem-
ism , violence and revolt". She comments on
Massotty' s "smooth" translation and the
author 's "light touch", as he deals with the
traum as of the past and his narrator ' s adj ust-
ment to a new life in Holland.
The Premia Va lle Inclan for translation
from Spani sh has gone to Nic k Ca istor for
The Sleep ing Voice by Duke Chac6 n (304pp.
Har vill Seeker. £ 11.99. 978 1 843 432098) .
Firs t publi shed in 200 2 to critical and popu lar
accla im, the novel gives voice to the wo men
who fou ght on, or sympathized with, the
losing side in the Spa nish Civil War, as they
awa it sente nce in j ail in 1939. Based o n the
author 's ow n interviews with survivo rs, narr a-
tives are wove n out of indi vidu al rem inis-
another challenge for the translator. Unfo rtu-
nately, the Eng lish vers ion is at present o ut of
pri nt.
The Sa if Ghobas h-Banipal Prize for tran s-
lation from Ara bic has been awa rded to
Faro uk Abde l Wahab for The Lodging House
by the Egyp tian noveli st Khairy Sha laby
(43 4pp. Th e Am erican Univer sity in Ca iro
Press . £24 .50 . 978 977 42 4944 0). The novel
was first publi shed in 1999, and was awarded
the Nag uib M ahfou z medal for literatur e in
2003. The narrat or is a down- and-out young
studen t, thrown o ut of his institute for assa ult-
ing a teacher, who find s him self living ro ugh
with a motl ey crew of characters on the
fringe of soc iety . Maya Jaggi, one of the
judges, speaks of the "zest" of the translation
of a "wise, anarchic , ribald , co mpas sionate
compendium of life at its mo st precarious
and mos t ebullient".
The Risa Domb/Porje s Prize for tran slation
from Heb rew has been give n to Nicho las de
Lan ge for A Tale of Love and Darkness by
Amos Oz (5 17pp. Vintage . £7 .99 .978 0 099
450030). Ozs memoir evo kes his childho od,
his pare nts and hi s forebears, as he grows up
in Jeru salem in the I940s. The Euro pe his
parents have left behind becom es a "forbid-
den promised land " , a "genuine, cosy wor ld,
far from the dusty tin roo fs, the urb an was te -
sal hum an story, but it is also a very Jewi sh
story , and in tell ing it Oz has writte n his best
book so far" . He also remar ks o n de Langes
"splendidly resourc eful translation".
The Rossic a Prize for translati on from the
Russian has been won by Joa nne Turnbull for
Seven Stor ies by Sigiz mund Krzhizha novs ky
(208 pp. Mosco w: Glas; distributed by
Inpr ess. £8.88 . 978 5 7 172 00738) . These are
the fir st stor ies by Krzhi zhano vsky to appear
in Eng lis h, a wri ter from the 1920 s who has
only recen tly been rediscovered in Ru ssia.
O live r Read y in his TLS review of October
13, 200 6, com ments : " It is the play of lan-
guage rather than plot that dri ves Krzhi zh-
anov sky's writing . Neo log isms , wordp lay
and rapid shifts in register ach ieve a
dyn ami c, pol yphonic effect, whic h is admira-
bly captured here in Joann e T urnbull's exce l-
lent tran slation".
At an even t organized by the Briti sh
Ce ntre for Literary Tra nslation, the prizes
were present ed by the Editor of the TLS,
Sir Peter Stothar d, in Lond on , on Thursday ,
November 8. This was followed by the 2007
Sebald Lectur e, given by M arina Wa rner
with the title " Stranger M agic: True stor ies
and translated se lves".
E L IZA BE T H WI NT ER

Translation Prizes 2007

The Times Literary Supplement, together with the Translators Association of the Society of Authors,
is pleased to announce the winners of this year's Translation Prizes

ARABl C TRAN SLA TION : FRE NCH TRANSLATI O N: GERMAN TRANSLATIO N: SPA NISH TRANSLATI ON : UUTCIl/FL EMISH HEBREW RUSSIA N TR ANSLATION:
Th e Saif Ghoba sh-Banipa l The Seen Moncrieff Prize The Schlegel-T ieck Prize Th e Premio Valle lncl an TR ANSLATION : TRAN SLATION : Th e Rossica Prize
Prize Prize: £2,000 Prize: £2,000 P rize : £2,000 Th e Vondel Prize The Risa Domb /Porj es Prize P rize : £3,000
Priz e: £2,000 Pr ize : £2,000 Prize: £2,000

Sponsor s: Oma r Saif Ghoba sh
and the Ghnbash family
Judges: Saadi You ssef
(Chair), Roger Alien , Mor is
Fa rhi and Maya Jaggi
Winner : Faro uk Abdel Waha b
for The Lodging House by
Khairy Shalaby (Am erican
University in Cairo Press)
Runner up : Ma rilyn Booth
for Thie ves in Retir eme nt
by Hamdi Abu Golayyel
(Syracuse University Press)
C ornmended : Peter Thero ux
for Sara ya, The Ogre 's
Daughter by Emile Habiby
(Ibi s Editions)
Sponsors: Th e French
Ministry of Cu lture,
The Frenc h Emba ssy,
Art s Coun cil England
Jud ges: Stephen Blanchard,
Dinah Cann ell and
Martin Sorrell
Winner: Sara h Adam s for
Ju st Like Tomorro w by
Fa'lza Gu ene (Chauo
Paperback O riginal)
Runner up : Geo ffrey
Stracha n for The Woman Who
Waited by Andr ei Makine
(Sce ptre)
Sponsors: The German
Emba ssy, the Goethe -Institut,
the Frankfurt Boo k Fair and
Art s Co uncil England
Judges: Stefan Berger ,
Patricia Dunek er and
Chri stine Lo
Winner : Sall y-Ann Spencer
for The Swarm by Frank
Scha tzing (Hodder )
Runner up : Anthea Bell
for Vienna by Eva Mena sse
(Or ion)
Sponso r s: The Cu ltural Of fice
of the Span ish Embas sy, the
Institu te Cervantes in London.
Art s Co uncil Engla nd
Judges: Margaret Ju ll
Costa , Isabel Quigly and
Ja son Wilson
Winner : Nick Caisto r for
The Sleepin g Voice by Duk e
Chaco n (Harvill Seeker)
Runner up : John Cullen
for Lies by Enr ique de Heriz
(Weiden feld)
Sponsors: The Foundati on for
the Prod uction and Translation
of Dutch Literature and the
Flemish Literature Fund
Ju dges: Paul Bindi ng, Ina
Rilke and Diane Webb
Winner: Susan Ma ssou y for
My Fath er' s Notebook by
Kader Abdola h (Canongate)
Sponsors: The Porjes Tru st Sponsors: The Foundati on of
Judges: Or Tsila Ratner, the First Preside nt of Russia ,
Tami Israe li and Gabriel Bori s Ye ltsin.
Josipovici Judges: Elaine Fein stein . Peter
Fran ce and Cat riona Ke lly
Wi nn er : Dr Nicholas de
Lange for A Tale of Lov e Winner : Joanne Turnb ull for
and Dar kness by Amo s Oz Seven Stori es by Sigizmund
(Vinta ge) Krzhi zh anovsky (Glas)
C ornmended : Robert
Chand ler for Th e Rai lwa....,
by Hamid lsmailov (Harvill
Seek er)
The leadin g paper in the
worldfor literary culture

TLS N O VE M B E R 9 2007
28
cience' s finest colle ction of turtles occu-
S pies a two- stor ey hou se , a stor age
shack, and some thatch ed hut s in an old
or ange grove . Th e prop ert y, in a rur al per-
iphery of Orlando, Flor ida, belongs to Peter
C. H. Pritchard, who a deca de ago chri stened
it the Chelonian Research Institute. Pritchard,
a scientist kno wn for his work with sea turtl es
and the giant tortoises of Gal apagos, had
never tau ght a college cla ss, nor affi xed him-
self to a major mu seum . Instead, he made his
name throu gh gra nts, collaboration s and his
ow n writings, which used to bear matter-of-
fact titles like "E ncyclo pedia of Turtl es" , but
in recent yea rs have taken a cont empl ative
turn . His Institut e hark s back less to the nine-
teenth ce ntury - for by then natur al history
mu seum s were already go ing big and public -
than to the eighteenth, when nobl es lovin gly
tend ed coll ections on a favourite theme.
Pritch ard ' s turtle collecti on boasts some
12,000 spec ime ns and counting (compared to,
say, the Briti sh Mu seu m' s 4,000) , repr esent-
ing all the living species plus some fo ssils.
Why ind eed does o ne accrue 12,000 speci-
mens of turtl e, in j ars, in boxes, labell ed in
minut e script? "1have taken to giving increas-
ingly rambling and philo sophical answer s to
the eterna l qu estion of ' why turtles :" , writes
Pritchard in Tales f rom the Thebatde: Refl ec-
tions of a turtleman. This is a coll ecti on of
essays that combine sc ience, mem oir and a
defence of the author 's pri vate mu seum.
Pritchard lament s from the start that his
mentor, Archi e Ca rr, was mor e succinct o n
the turtl e qu estion. Ca rr, the scientist and
writer who first popul arized the plight of sea
turtl es in the 1950 s, "was quit e fran k about
his emo tional attachment to his crea tures
when qu estioned by a newspaper report er a
month before he died in 1987: Ijust liked the
look s of their faces, he repli ed" .
In 1964 , Pritchard, a chemi stry stude nt at
Oxford, was o n summer vacation in Briti sh
Guiana (now Guya na), a gues t of its Gover-
nor , when he discovered the skulls of some
olive ridley turtl es on an isolated north ern
beach . Th e skulls offered ev ide nce that the
species nested there ; until then, their nestin g
gro unds were a mys tery that Ca rr had chewe d
ove r in his book The Windward Road (1957).
Prit chard sent him a lett er. Soon after ward s,
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NATURAL SCIENCE
Under the shell
VIRGI NIA SMI TH
P e te r C. H. Prit ch a rd
T AL E S FR O M T HE TH EBA I OE
Reflections of a turtleman
340pp. Melbourne, FL: Robert E. Krieger.$44.50.
978 I 57524277 4
Pritchard emigra ted to Florida to study under
Ca rr. Th ey had plent y in com mon , bein g
well-born and writerly. Both began their
careers as scho lars of turtl es and emerge d
poet s of turtl es - Ca rr in a dir ect , folk sy style;
Pritchard in a droll , starchy one. Over their
two decades ' friend ship , Pritchard observed
Giant tortoises on Alcedo Volcano, IsIa Isahela, in th e Galapagos Islands
the pro gress of Ca rr' s "emotional attac hment
to his creatures" with wo nder. On ce an eater
of sea-turtle meat and pr op on ent of sea-turt le
far min g as a conservation measure, CUlT
found he co uld not abide their killin g for any
reason , an d broke off relationship s with those
who felt oth er wise. Pritch ard chalk s it up to
TLS NOVE MBER 9 20 07
age: "As one ge ts older, thou ght s of one's
own mort alit y start to intrude, and one may
hesitate to hasten other bein gs to their
deaths" .
Pritchar d knows the feelin g. He cont inu es
to mana ge a sea-turtle con servation prog ra m
he founded in Guya na but , with sea -turtle
sc ience now a we ll-funded and high-t ech
affair , his atte ntions lean toward the tortoi ses
and freshwater turtl es that might die out any
da y. Th ere are man y of these to choose from ,
but Prit chard' s favourites are a mamm oth
softshe ll that sw ims alon e in a Hanoi park
pond , the last of its spec ies in anything rese m-
blin g the wild, and Lonesome Geor ge, the
so le surv ivor of a race of Ga lapagos tort oise.
In 200 3, und er the Institute' s bann er ,
Pritchar d led an ex pedition to Pinta Island in
the Galapagos, where wha lers had loaded so
many giant tort oises on to their ships for food
that , after the mid-ninetee nth centu ry, no
more than six we re eve r see n there alive. By
1972 , onl y one male rem ained. Prit chard met
Lonesom e Ge orge on Pint a then , and wit-
nessed his remo val to safety on anoth er
island , but afte r later reports of a fresh-
loo kin g skeleton and a piece of tort oise dun g
on Pinta, it nagged him that there might still
be more. The story of this ex pedition, and its
pa inful co ncl usio n, make for one of thi s
boo k' s stan dout ch apt ers, which beck on s like
a Fro mme r's guide to the imp assibl e Pint a:
If you wander inland and uphill through the
lava- strewn cact us dese rts for a few kilom-
ete rs, and int o the lich en-festo oned pa lo sa nto
fores ts, and finally co me to rest und er one of
the few good shade trees, the loudest sounds
will be your own breathing and heartbeat. The
land is silent as the grave. Yet pause a while ,
and finches and flycatchers will land a few feet
away, then hop on to yo ur foo t or knee, head
cocked to one side as they eva luate the bi zarre
visitor from all ang les; bird-watch ing in
reverse. A lava lizard, of a species fo und
no where else in the wo rld, has settled down to
ca tch the flies attrac ted by yo ur swea t.
The journey ends in a face-to-face with
Geo rge:
We spoke very quietly and respectfully, and
moved slow ly, as if visiting a bedridden cente n-
aria n frie nd. There before us, relaxe d with his
long neck draped on the lava, was George, the
most famous tortoise in the wor ld. I knew him
we ll. For more tha n three decades he had been
in ex ile from Pinta, the island of his birth , and
was spendi ng his days and years at the Darwin
St ation . He had cha nged somew hat since I firs t
saw him in 1972; having been a sprightly
young adult of perhaps 30 then, he was now a
middle-aged 60 or so, the same as myself. His
shell was sm oother now, witho ut the tex tured
growth lines of his youth; his ga it slowe r and
more creaky; his "Q uasimodo hump" was some-
what more pronoun ced, and he had put on a lit-
tle weight. Apart from the smooth shell and
(dare I flatter myself") the hump, I could empa-
thize with all these changes. I hope he has many
mo re yea rs ahea d, because as far as we and any-
one else have been able to tell, he is absolutely
the last of hi s kind , wa iting for ex tinction.
Wh en Pritchard addresses the reader
dir ectl y, as in the Pint a chapter and oth ers
eq ually we ll reali zed, the effec ts mak e it
worth the slog through eve n his bone-b y-
bone descriptions of specime ns and occ asion-
ally indul gent wordplay (" borboryg mic eruc-
tation s" , "institutional floccin aucinihilipilifi-
cat ion " ). Unfortunately, so me of these cha p-
ters are spee ches , rebuttals to fellow sc ien-
tists' polemic s, and eulog ies, reprinted with-
o ut much alteration. A read er might rather
not know, for exa mple, that a cha pter about
con ser vation ' s greates t dilemm as ori gin ated
as an address to the Soka Gakkai Buddhists
of cent ral Florida. Oth er cha pters have noth-
ing to do with turtl es but are vignettes of
Pritchard' s we ll-lived life (recollections of
boardin g-scho ol headm asters, dowager aunts,
Oxford ex peditions to Persia, etc) . These
are agreea ble enou gh detour s en rout e to a
point ed and rewarding conclusion .
In a chapter ca lled "T he Che lonian
Research Institute" , written with the force of
a ma nifes to, Prit chard introduces a line-up of
natural histor y' s acq uisitive ecce ntrics
(Pritchard, who dri ves to the Wal-M art in a
195 7 Roll s- Royce Silve r Clo ud, might con-
side r him self amo ng them ). With out their
pri vate co llections , the product s of wea lth
and passion and a so metimes sca ry single-
mind edn ess, he arg ues , mod ern mu seum s
wo uld have littl e to bu ild on . WaIter Roth-
schild's bird coll ection bec ame the American
Mu seum of Na tura l Hi stor y' s; a denti st ' s
turtl e collecti on form ed the nucl eus of
Oxford Unive rsity's ; recentl y an obsess ive
Minn esota co uple donated their 30,000 butt er-
flies, plu s $ 12 milli on , for a smart new Lepi-
dopt era centre at the Unive rsity of Florida .
Pritchard hopes his Institut e will surv ive
him more or less as it is, quirk s intact.
Currently, visiting research ers bunk upstairs
when they need to, and borro w specimens
without much paperwor k or fuss. Mor e
rem arkabl y, and this is a real departu re from
standard mu seum policy, Pritch ard acce pts
only specimens that are already dea d. Thi s has
cost his little "thebaide" some big gra nts in
recent yea rs. In his final chapter, likely con-
ceived as a retort to the US National Science
Foundation, he lists about a dozen reason s
why killing specimens is less necess ary and
more wasteful than the old guard think s. "I per-
sonally regard the killin g of a tortoi se in hand
as the moral equivalent of fatally beating some-
one in a whee lchair", Peter Pritch ard writes.
Why turtles? He likes the look s of their faces.

he mo st famous of Roman literary
T gardens is the garden of the old man of
Tarentum, wh ich Virgil has no time to
de scr ibe in the Fourth Book of his agr icul-
tural poem , the Georgics. In a classic exam-
ple of praeteritio (l hav e no time to tell how
... and how .. .), Virg il leav es it to others to
wri te of gardens as he sweeps on to the com -
pletion of his work. The old man' s gar de n,
from whic h the am bitio us Virgi l tears him-
self away, is a place of bea uty and self-
sufficiency, whose ow ner is ab le to "equal
the riches of kings in his mind" . 250 yea rs
before Virgil, Ep icurus, a philosop her of
pleasur e and equan imity, had set up his
school in a gar de n in Athens, whic h seemed
sufficiently co nso nant wi th hi s phil osoph y
for his sect to be know n as "The Gar den" in
later times. One of Epicurus' mottoes wa s
"Live w itho ut bein g noticed ", and in Rom e
of the late Re public a number of import ant
figur es, including Maecenas, Lu cullu s and
Sa llust, signa lled their retireme nt from public
life by bu ilding lavish gar de ns, whe re they
consp icuo usly lived without bein g no ticed .
One might ex pec t a book abo ut gardens in
Ancient Ro me to focus on the values of retire-
ment, self-suffic iency and co ntentme nt, but in
Victor ia Em ma Pagan' s Rome and the Litera-
ture ofGardens you will find witches, adulter-
ous empresses, mu rder, religiou s co nversion,
the atom bomb and an author who is "fucked
by a dahl ia" . As Pagan point s out, the etymo-
logical mean ing of the Latin word for garden ,
hortus, is "enclosure" , and with enclosure
....................................................................................................-t-----------------------------------------------------------~
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CLAS S rcs
Rusin urbe
WILLI AM FITZGE RA L D
Vic to r ia E mma P a g an
ROME AND THE LI T ER A T U R E O F
G A R DENS
160pp. Duckwo rth. Paperba ck, £ 12.99.
978 07 156 3506 3
co me bou ndaries, transformation , exclusion
and transgression , which give the gar den a
more dynamic range of associations. In addi-
tion , the principl e that mai ntains the garden is
that some thin gs be allowe d to flour ish at the
expense of others. Garde ns must be claimed
from a wilder nature, into which they always
threaten to regress. The Garden s of Maecenas,
for instance , were built on the site of a cem e-
tery, and a satire of Horace, spoken in the per-
sona of a statue of Priapu s, guar dian deity of
garde ns, tells how two witches came search-
ing the garde n for bones and magical herb s,
only to be scare d off by a loud fart from the
woo den Priapus. The cemetery-turned-garden
is an apt metaphor for the regime of Maece-
nas' boss, Augustus, which was established at
the end of a long and bloody C ivil War.
Pagan ' s treatm ent of Horaces satire is
paralleled by her discu ssion , in another
cha pter , of Carolyn Forche ' s poem "The
IDeli very direct to your
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TL S N O V E M B E R 9 2007
29
tion of Love) rub shoulders with cl assical
authors in thi s boo k, which appea rs in the
series Class ica l Interfaces, whose brief is to
"show ho w Clas sical ideas and materi al have
helped to shape the mo dern world". Pagan
begin s wi th a chapter on Co lume lla , the
Tenth Book of whose On Agriculture sup-
plies the poem on gar dens that Virgil had
left for writer s who ca me after him , and
Co lume lla sw itches fro m prose to verse at
thi s point in hon our of (or competition with)
the earl ier mas ter. Su bse q uen t chap ters deal
with Hor ace Satires 1. 8; passages in Tac itus '
Annals on Claud ius ' wive s (two of whom
coveted famou s ga rde ns, and one of whom
was murdered in the Ga rde ns of Lucullus) ;
Aug ustine's Confess ions, whose traj ectory
leads fro m the theft of some pears to co nver -
sio n in a garde n; and Stoppa rd's A rcadia,
set in a roo m off a ga rden , which featur es
pro min entl y in the plot.
Pagan writes that " Something abo ut ga r-
dens tran sform s those who write abo ut them,
indu cin g a trance-like mode that abando ns
rationa l ana lysis and rev els in the beaut y and
pleasur e of the mom ent ". So metimes one
wishes that she wo uld reve l mor e in her sub-
ject, for this book deals wi th the broader
Fi r st- century AD wall painting, Pompeii aspec ts and co ntexts of the wo rks discusse d
as much as with their gar dens. As a result ,
Garden Shukklei-en", on a seventee nth- one is no t always co nvi nced that the them es
cen tury gar den in Hirosh ima, rebuilt afte r its Victor ia Pag an identifi es are spec ific to the
destru ction by the atom bomb. Forche, J. M . literatur e of gar dens. But , as she point s out , it
Coetzee (The Life and Times of Michael K) is in the natur e of garde ns, from Ede n
and Tom Stoppa rd (Arcad ia and The Inven- onwa rds , not to leave one full y satisfied .
,
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30 RELIGION

here have been two grea t Western mis- than Britain and favoured a more democrati c

T sionary endea vour s in China. The

first, led by the Jesuit Matt eo Ricci,
ended with the pro scription of Christianity by
the Yongzheng Emperor in 1724. The second
was undert aken by Eva nge lica l Prot estant
organizations, chi ef among them the China
Inland Mission, founded by James Hud son
Taylor in 1865 . The ClM ' s activities were
brut ally curt ailed by the Boxer Uprising of
1900 and terminated by the Communist Revo-
lution half a century later.
The dates in the title of Alvyn Austin' s
book are those of Hud son Tay lor's life. But,
rather than simply add anoth er Life to the
huge biograph y produ ced by the missionar y' s
grea t-nephew in the 1980 s, Austin look s also
at the Protestant renewal movement s in
Britain and North America, at the men and
women who made up the CIM, the outstand-
ing figure being Pastor Hsi Shengmo, and at
the society within which they worked.
However pure their moti ves, the Chinese
missions of both the seven tee nth and nine-
teenth centuri es were influ enc ed by the pre-
vailing geo-political situation. Thus Matteo
Ricci and his follo wer s benefit ed from the
imperi al ambitions of Portu gal, with its Eas t
Asian outpost in M acau. And Briti sh victo-
ries in the Opiu m Wars of 1839--42 and
1857- 9 led to the openin g to for eigners first
of five cities, then of the country as a whole.
Hud son Taylor, a Yorkshir em an, arrived in
China in 1854, a yea r after the Taipin g rebels
had captured the old southern capital,
Na nj ing . The ir leader , Hong Xiuquan,
believed him self to be the younger broth er of
Jesus Christ. Landin g in Shanghai, Tay lor
saw some of the devastati on wro ught by this
might y insurr ection aga ins t Ma nchu rule,
which is es timated to have cost 20 milli on
lives. Durin g six yea rs on the eas tern sea-
Show of heads
SIMO N S CO TT PL UMM ER
Al v yn Au stin
CH INA 'S M[LLIO N S
The China Inland Mission and late Qing society,
[832-1 905
537pp. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdrnans. Paperback,
$45.
978 0802829757
board , he marri ed Maria Dyer and ope ned the
first opium asy lum for addi cts, a facet of mis-
sionary activity which was to ass ume grea t
import ance once the CIM had been found ed .
That ca me about in 1865 , after Hud son Tay-
lor had had a vision on Brighton beach of "a
milli on a month in China dying without
Go d" . The foll owin g year, he return ed to the
Far Eas t with hi s famil y and the fir st batch of
missionari es. By the time of his death , the
CIM was staffed by 800 missionaries operat-
ing in fifteen of China's eightee n pro vinces.
One of the peculiarities of the mission is
clear from its title. Although based in Shang-
hai, its main field of operations was the inte-
rior. Wearing Chinese dress and the queue, or
pigtail, memb ers undertook prodi gious "itiner-
ations" on foot, preachin g the gospe l and,
where conditions were not propiti ous, shaking
the dust from their feet and moving on.
Among their numb er were single women,
whose wanderings, generally more circum-
scribed, were directed at Chinese homes. They
used the wordless book of four colours (black
for sin, red for Jesus' sacrifice, white for sancti-
fication, gold for heaven), a mnemoni c device
which was famili ar to the peasants through
their own ancient colour cosmology; also, the
five-fin ger mantra, which enumerated the
attributes of God. Such work was sometimes
called "gossiping the gospel".
The mos t remarkabl e of the CIM conv ert s
was Hsi Liao-chih , who took the religious
nam e of Pastor Hsi Shengmo, or "Overco mer
of Dem ons" . Introdu ced to the CIM throu gh
a literary competition on Christian them es, in
which he wrote, und er different pseudonym s,
three of the four prize-winnin g essays, this
"broken-down scholar" and "opium sot given
to hallucinations" (A ustin's words) overcame
his addict ion and set up anti-opium refu ges in
Sha nxi pro vinc e, where morphine pills, con-
cocted by him, we re dispensed with prayer
and singing. The pastor claim ed to have
treated 300,000 addicts and his refu ges made
the CIM fam ous.
Amon g his helpers were the "Cambridge
Seven" , a group of graduates - one of them ,
Charlie Studd , was a member of the All-Eng-
land cricket team - who j oined the CIM in
1885. Au stin writes that their decision to work
under Hsi was "virtually unprecedented in mis-
sion history" , although by 1890 only three of
them remained in full communion with him.
By that time, Hudson Tay lor had found ed the
Nor th American branch of the CIM, based in
Toronto. The transatlantic interaction within
the mission is one of the most interesting
aspects of Au stin' s book. The London gove rn-
ing council consisted predomin antly of Ply-
mouth Brethren, that in Toronto of Presbyteri-
ans. In term s of social background and theo-
logy, North A merica was less homogeneous
structure than the autocratically led "family"
created by Hudson Tay lor. At the same time, it
was theologically less liberal; Au stin assesses
the decision of its leader, Henry Frost, to move
CIM headqu arters to Philadelphia in 190 I as
"a decisive eve nt in the history of Am erican
fund amentalism".
A yea r before, the mission' s operations in
China had been crippled by the last act of the
Boxe r Upr ising, which targeted the late
Pastor Hsi' s followers (he had died in 1896)
in Shanxi. On one day in Taiyuan, the provin-
cial capital, fort y-five foreign men, wome n
and children we re killed in front of the gove r-
nor and their heads displ ayed on the city
gates. By the time Hudson Ta ylor died (in
Changsa , Hunan pro vince), reparations had
been made and mission ary work resumed , but
it was no w le ss itinerant and more institu-
tion al. Au stin describes this period as "the
birth pangs of an independent , indigenous
churc h". Lookin g ahead to our ow n day, that
body has displayed an extraordinary elan
since the liberalization which foll owed M ao' s
death in 1976. A recent study of Church-state
relations in China estimated that the Prot es-
tant popul ation had risen from 1 milli on in
1949 to possibl y 60 million today, makin g
China the seco nd-larges t ce ntre of Eva nge li-
cal Christianity after the United States. In its
fun dament alist fervour , it is not difficult to
discern the legacy of the "Middle Eden"
created by Pastor Hsi in Shanxi.
After its expulsion from China in 1950, the
CIM cha nged its name to the Overseas
Mi ssionary Fellows hip. Tod ay , that orga niza-
tion, based in Singa pore, rem ain s the largest
Prot estant mission in Eas t and South- East
Asia. It is active in thirt een countri es, and
has an unoffi cial presenc e in China. Hud son
Taylor ' s vision has been kept alive .

--------------------------~.--------------------------

lose your eyes and try to imag ine a He has read widely - both in histor y and The heyday of druid ry was - as Hutton

C druid. For some people, this might

mean the sinister priests desc ribed by
Tacitu s or Julius C aesa r. For pe rhaps fe wer
TLS reader s, it might mean the comic figures
who appea r in Terr y Pratch ett ' s fantasy nov-
els or the pump ed-u p shape-shifters of the
World of Warcraft role-playing game. For
many - and certainly for me - it will mea n the
druid who help s Asterix; named Pan ora mix
in French, he is Ge tafix in the UK, Sjoo rfk ur
in Iceland, and Hakeem Vaidhix whereve r
Hindi is spoken. But eve n this doesn 't
exhaust our possibil ities. As Ronald Hutton
shows in this wo nderfully illu strated book,
other famou s druid s include the Queen , who
was indu cted in 1946, and the Archbishop of
Ca nterbury, who was enrolled in 2002 - and
who does at least look the part. Dig deep and
dozens of different druid s can be found . It is
those imag e s - o f the vario us ly patrioti c,
wise, green, dem onic, fratern al and rebellious
druid s - that Hutt on' s study explores .
For over a decade, he has been engage d in a
rem arkably imaginati ve project, seeking, often
single-handedly, to rescue modern shamans
and witches, druid s and pagans from the enor-
mou s conde scension o f thei r co ntemporaries .
His publications includ e The Triumph of the
Moon (1999), Shamans: Siberian spirituality
and the Western imaginatio n (200 1), and
Witches, Druids and King Arthur (2003). The
Druids is the first instalment of a two-volume
work. Readers of this ever-grow ing oeuvre
Ancient
order
WILLI AM WHYT E
Ron ald Hutt on
TH E DRU IDS
A history
240pp. Hambledon Continuum. £ 19.99
(US $29.95).
978 1 852855338
will be familiar with Hutton' s approac h. He
argues that contem pora ry pagan religions are a
creation of the modern world - a sort of
invented tradition - which, despite their cl aim
to a conn ection with the belief systems of the
ancient past, can nonetheless be traced back
only to the Reformati on.
This does not , in Huttons eye s, make the
witches and pagan s of twent y-fir st-century
Brit ain who lly bogus. Instead, for him , they
represe nt a quintessenti ally Romanti c and
actua lly rath er admirable attempt to dea l
with the challenges of modernity. Druid s and
sha mans are present ed as serious spiritua l
see kers who are constructing a new and
enriching religion for post-Chri stian Britain .
Hutt on' s conclu sion s rest on real scho larship.
archaeo logy - and is also an accomp lished
amateur anthropo logist, conducting field-
shows - the ear ly nineteenth century, when the
Anci ent Order of Druid s had a membership of
w ork and ex ten sive intervie w s. In The ove r 200 ,000. By contrast, modern druid ry
Triumph of the Moon, he acknow ledged possessed only 6,000 adherents when Hutton
clo se acquaintance with twent y-one cove ns last count ed in 1996, and shows very little sign
and 213 witches. of grow ing. But it would be wrong to see this
The Druids pushes some of Hutt ons as a decline: the druids of the 1830s were mem-
ea rlier arguments furth er. He now contend s bers of a club analogous to Freemasonry;
that virtually nothin g can be kno wn about the those of today are devotees of a pretty well-
religiou s life of anci ent England, and there- defined religion. This sugges ts surely that the
fore that the onl y authentic druid s are the con- druid is a less salient, less powerful image or
temporary ones. Th e traditi on that began at inspirati on than he once was. Nor does there
the Reform atio n and was develop ed in the seem to be any reason to believe that druid ry
eightee nth ce ntury by figur es like the fant a- as an ideal is becomin g much more popul ar.
sist and fraud Edwa rd Willi am s (alias 1010 For all Hutton' s encourag ing talk of an "explo-
Morganwg) is thu s the only one about which sion in Druidr y" , it remains the case that in the
anything can be known. Thi s is a radic al and 200 I census many more people described
delib erat ely icon ocl astic thesis. It will no themselves as a Jedi than as a druid.
doubt be as provocati ve to ancient histori ans But it would be wrong to end on a negati ve
as it has already pro ved irritating to so me note, either about druidry or about The Dru-
modern druid s. Certa inly, it is an argument ids. There rem ain several vibra nt stra nds of
that awa its furth er fleshing out in the next vol- the tradition - from the conservative, national-
ume, which will, it seems, be the full y foot- ist druids of the Welsh Gorse dd, to the delib-
noted version that scho lars will wa nt to con- era tely count er-cultural SOD , or Sec ular
sult. In the meantim e, read ers might wa nt to Order of Druid s. Ronald Hutt on ' s book too,
ask whether the author 's ce rtainties about is frequentl y fascin atin g. Even when it
our ignoranc e are ju stifiabl e. After all, eve n doesn 't quit e convince, it is still ofte n intrigu-
Hutton him self seems to acce pt that quit e a ing. Hutt on shows the multipl e ways in
lot ca n be addu ced from the archaeologi cal which a single image can be reim agined and
ev idence alone, while it seems odd to ca st rein vented. For some , druid s are heroes; for
doubt on ancient authorities on one page but others, they are villains. In English, Ge tafix
to rel y on them on the next. In general, then, is a dru g dealer; in Icel andi c, he is one who
that case see ms unp roven so far. boil s; in Hindi , he is the village doct or.

TLS N OVE MBER 9 2 0 07


Better at goodbyes
he Parthians were famou s for their
T parting sho ts, firin g arr ows over their
sho ulders while retreating from battl e.
In the funn y and felin e "Maledictions" sca t-
tered throu gh The Parthian Stations , John
As h, too, pre fers the Parthian over the polite
farewell: "May your ass ho le shrivel and close
ove r", he wishes for one of his enemies, while
of two others he decl ares, " It wo uld be a
mercy to wis h them dead". Such offha nd hex-
ing has the sa me gra tify ing aesthetic tension
as a Bo nd villain stro king a cat: tom orr ow ' s
wo rld domin ation put on hold for a glass of
wine, the "complete qu artet s of Ze mlinsky"
and a book of Byzantine architecture.
Th e poe t prefers departur es to arrivals,
goo dbyes to gree tings,
for a farewe ll is an entire landscape w ith tombs
and a sunset , while a gree ting is mere ly
a door opening o nto an uncertain hall way.
Th emes of di stance, dep arture and decline
make thi s an unshrinkingly wistful collec-
tion. Cru mbling citi es do min ate the sky line,
and for gott en nam es and ritu als haunt the
poems like "an obliq ue mu sic" . Ancient or
modern , these doom ed cities infli ct on the
poet "a contradictory nostalgia I for thin gs I
had never known" , and eac h cit y' s do wnfall
mirror s another's : " Persepolis burn ed , and
Fa lluja h is em ptied". Alth ough " Neither
Al exander nor Traja n com bined I such arrog -
ance wi th ignorance" as the politi cians of
today, wa r is the sa me now as it always was:
"Every stree t is the same I if you live on it" .
Ash' s poetry is straight-ta lking, playful
and yet oddiy sage, savo uring the fin er thin gs
in life while "watching em pires declin e" . A
co nversation al , impromptu style sugges ts
New York School influ ences, and Ash' s
philo sophi cal whimsy is reminiscent of the
Sco ttish poet Fran k Kuppn er: both know the
The Way Down
Forget the path .
Hack throu gh gorse and blackth orn
and walk into the stream .
Th e thin g abo ut a strea m is
it knows where it' s going , has a gift
for findin g the shortes t rout e.
A path ca n lose its ner ve,
peter out into a bog or bracken , divide
inscrut abl y in two. I've stood at that place
and we ighed the cho ices , we ighed
and check ed again, whi le mist craw ls
ove r the mountain like shee p.
Wh en the stream divid es
both strea mlets are eq ually sure .
Eac h plays its ow n ga me - the slick of moss,
the sudde n race over a sill of roc k -
and each, if yo u let it,
will carry you down.
JE A N SPR A CKL A ND
POETRY
A I NGEA L C LA RE
J ohn As h
THE P AR T HI A N STAT IONS
106pp. Manchester: Carcunet. Paperback, £9.95.
978 I 85754872 3
value of comedy in the face of ca lamity, and
both ponde r life ' s minut iae again st a vas t,
cosmic backd rop of sadness , "patience and
kno wledge" . The philosoph y in A sh, as in
Kuppner, has a di stin ct flavour of the Eas t.
As h now lives in Istanbul, a move driven by a
desire "to imagine I was not Western, not
Christian and free" . In so many of his lyrical,
Ori ent ali st poems, he labou rs und er the sa me
illu sions: "My eyes we re sore , were weeping
I like those of a person in a Ch inese poem" ,
one begins, in strained earnestness . We sense
that the spea ker wo uld rather be in that
Chinese poe m than trapp ed inside his ow n
spikier model. He co mes close to co nfess ing
as much in another poem , which as ks,
"Would yo u want to be in a po em like thi s? I
It is a sha mbles . It has puk ed in its shoes " .
In "Ararat", the poet curses the langu age
in which the word for pain
is also the name of a to wn
in the remote east o f the co untry
w here sno w must now be falling .
I have nothing to regret, reme mbering
Ossia in ex ile dreaming o f Ararat.
Such loft y emo tio ns are compromi sed by the
hollow ring at the end, for elsew here we see
the poet witho ut the pro tec tive cover of his
Eastern philosoph y and findin g much to
reg ret. Writin g to a sister who died in a car
acc iden t, for instance , he rem emb ers how he
"resented the fact that I yo u never once sa id a
wor d pro or co n 11 my poetry" :
TLS NOVE MBER 9 20 07
The dog survived, but you did not,
and no w I comp lain mere ly because
your silence bruised my se lf-es teem.
Ash ' s zigzagging between cultures affords an
enjoyable fri ction whereve r his Western cy ni-
cism mixes unexpectedl y with his finely culti-
vated Eas tern lyrici sm. Sudde nly the wine is
corked, but the result , if less smoo th, makes
for piquant, entertaining poetry, and a flavou r
that belongs to As h alone .
In this co llec tion, A sh has spurne d the
ra ngy struc tures and snaking lines of thought
that charac terized his earlier work in favour
of a cleaner mini malism. Three "Short
Poe ms " pun ctu ate The Parthian Stations, and
act as exe rcises in their ow n justification: "I
always wan ted to wr ite short poe ms I but
never could " . Thi s is a risky confess ion to
bur y in a collection whose vignettes rarely fill
-----------'~,-----------
Bladed farms
t is perh aps unfair to ass ume that a poet
I
brou ght up in Zimbabwe will write abo ut
that cou ntr y' s difficulties, but while
turm oil continually threaten s in the langu age
of Spirit Brides (the mob in "The Armc hair" ;
the bodi es in "The Craft" ; the mo unds and
buryin g and blood- colour of "Leaves" ; the
"guillotine changeover" in "The Slide") , this
young wr iter's concerns are ostens ibly mor e
pe rsona l, more oblique . The real sense of
uph eaval comes from his first collection's
ma ny roa ds, train s, boats and plan es, and
from his ow n multi cultural back ground.
Togara Mu zanenh amo (born in Za mbia, in
1975, to Zimbabwea n parents) writes in
English, but studied in France and the
Nethe rlands - both of which, together with
Belgium and England - provide identifi able
settings for poems in Spirit Brides. Others
(such as "Den Haag" or "The Dawn Chorus")
wande r into an Ishiguro-lik e dream zo ne,
co njured occas ionally throu gh sonnet or
sestina, more often in relaxed, loosely bundl ed
stanzas, and frequ entl y in prose . Curiously,
the Or kney poet, and tran slator of Kafk a,
Edw in Muir , came to this reader ' s mind - not
so much because Mui r' s poetr y app arently
ignored the mom ent ous eve nts he lived
through in post-war Prag ue, but because there
is a similar reachin g for the facelessly allego ri-
cal ("T he Craft"), the mysteriou sly heraldic
("The Spirit Brides" ), the Kafk aesque ("T he
Small Room" ), perhaps as a way of suppress -
ing some thing more painful.
Zimhahwe itself features in the op enin g
poe m, where Muzanenh amo rememb ers how
an anthill became a make-b eli eve lighthouse,
ca lled "Land 's End", the pirate langu age not
entirely con vin cin g as he playfull y shifts it
into "Aye, methinks, me miss my broth er".
Such witty ju gglin g wi th ton es and dialect s is
not the poet ' s stro ng point: he ca n be "cool"
but se ldo m "light" . His best writing makes no
refe rence to itself, does not allow itself to
be da mage d by overexub erant met aph or.
He is a tactil e poet , a ge ntly erotic poet in
"The Lau ghi ng Woo d" , tend erl y lyric al in
"Pine Thicket" and "Roads" . Th e mos t power-
31
half a page ; but is he right ? The sho rt poems
are not necessaril y tight er or pithi er than their
mor e full-b odi ed count erp art s, but they do
offe r a pleasin g spo ntaneity to Ash ' s writing :
they are co nceptual doodl es in the margin s of
his we ightier seq uences . For a poet so
en thra lled by Rom ant ic rui ns, perh aps the
o nly unu sual thin g abo ut his tli rtatio n wi th
the poe tic fragm ent is how delayed it has
been: "deserted cities" an d the "frail bones"
of shor t poem s complem ent each other
because, as As h obse rves, 'T here is a mys-
tery. I There is something unsaid" . Th is
"unsaid" he co mpares to a circle of monu-
ments lookin g in towards the centr e of the
poem, "crushed but defi ant, I in its absolut e
refu sal to acknow led ge I the grea t news of the
world" . A short poem , he adds som bre ly,
"should be short enough to fit I in chi selled
letters on a tomb stone". Epigrams or epitaphs,
John Ash' s short poems promi se a co ntrad ic-
tor y rege nera tion of his always comp ellin g
poetic enterprise. I hope there are more
to follow.
JOH N GR E E NI NG
Toga ra Mu z an enh am o
SP IR IT B RIDES
7 1pp. Manchester: Carcanet. Paperback, £7 .95.
978 I 857548523
ful exp lora tion of Z imbabwean landscape,
and the book' s most susta ined achieve me nt,
is the concluding seq uence, the eleg iac pro se-
poem , "G umiguru" ("October"). Mu zanen-
hamo j uxtaposes an acco unt of his father ' s
dying hour s with memo ries of their farm ,
including a dr amatic fire in the vas t orange
orch ard: " It crept with the silence of light -
then, with the speed of the wind ca me rush-
ing through the night with the sound of bones
snapp ing clea n an d j oint s popping" .
To gar a Mu zan enh am os is und oubt edl y an
unusual voice, if an immature one as yet.
Some of the apparently expe rime ntal poems
in Spirit Brides we aken the overall effec t (the
"Nationalist A rchives " pro se sequence really
slows thin gs do wn) and distrac t fro m the ge n-
uine successes, which are mo stly tho se co n-
cern ed with person al me mor ies, part icul arl y
of childhood (sliding on a fro sty lawn on "the
worn out so les of our schoo l shoes", rushin g
to catch fallin g leaves) and of love: " Helpless
Good byes " , wi th its po tent image of staring
thou gh his own palm print on a train window
to "a field where a rui ned I Ch urch fo sters
a tree"; a charming ses tina, "Six Francs
Sevent y-fi ve" , which cas ually avo ids all
that for m' s pitfalls; or the simple record of a
day wa lking in the Ca lder Valley in "Tea and
Sand wich es" , whose culm inating imagery
makes one wo nde r whether Zimbabwe had
been in the poet' s mind all alon g:
A flask of tea and sandwiches; all day the
wa lk; no w I take cover
In a bird hide where the heather claws the
wood. The swollen clouds
In the distance, dark gatherings of fluid,
pressing their weight over
The bladed farm; the black winds splitting
and sp itting o ut this way.
32
Music
Helen Wallace
BOOSEY & HAWKES
The publishing story
243pp. Boosey and Hawkes. £ 12.99.
9780851625140
T he da y after the triumphant premiere of
The Rake 's Progress at La Fenic e,
Stra vin sky was honoured with a civic recep-
tion. Veneti an pageantry did not distract him
from mor e imm edi ate concerns: "Have yo u
got the chequ e?" , he whispered as he passed
Ernst Roth , his publi sher. Th e anecdote
encaps ulates both Stra vin skys legend ar y
finan cial acumen and the peculi ar intimacy
that oft en ex ists bet ween composer and pub-
lisher. Boosey and Hawkes was arguably the
twenti eth century' s most influ enti al mu sic
publi sher, as Helen Wall aces lively and
richl y illu strated histor y reveals. It was the
sa me Roth , for exa mple, who gro upe d
togeth er and ordered Rich ard Str ausss "Four
Last Son gs" , now his best-lov ed work. Mor e
recentl y, the G6re cki phenom enon, which
saw a symphony by a hith erto unkno wn
Poli sh di ssident rise to No 3 in the Briti sh
pop chart s, wo uld not have happ ened without
the skilful contrivanc e of Boo sey and
Ha wkes' s Da vid Drew; nor would the 1980s
revival of interest in Berth old Goldschrni dt,
ostraci zed successively by Na zi German y
and by the post-war avant-ga rde.
Th e company 's mo st compl ex relation ship
was with Bc njam in Brittcn , who be cam e so
dominant that he could virtually hand-pick
staff to deal with his particular need s. The
eve ntua l and inevitable fallin g out was of
grea t significance to Briti sh mu sic , leadin g to
the es tablishment of Faber Mu sic ; Boo sey
and Hawkes' s eo-founder, the patern ali stic ,
lon g- sufferin g Leslie Boo sey, nurtured a life-
lon g grieva nce abo ut Britt ens bet rayal. The
acrimony was sympto matic of the atmo s-
phere within the firm in the post-war years -
Boosey was heard to complain of a "genera-
tion of vipers" - and Wall ace frankl y dissect s
the ofte n unpl easant and sho rt-s ighted behav-
iour of the principal prot agoni sts. More
recent uph eavals, including a major fraud in
the company 's instrument di stribution offic es
in C hicago, a man ag em ent bu y- out returning
the publi shin g operation to pri vate owner-
ship, and the vacation of the comp an y' s
historic base at 295 Regent Street , are dealt
with much mor e briefl y - perh aps inevitabl y,
give n their continuing sensitivity . Non ethe-
less, Wall ace achieves the trick y balance of
con veyin g the comp any ' s continuing commit-
ment to serious new mu sic - comp osers such
as Harri son Birt wistle, Ma gnu s Lindberg,
Loui s Andri essen and Mark-Anthon y T ur-
nage are amo ng its recent recruit s - without
eve r sounding like a corp or ate mouthpiece.
MI CH AEL DO WN ES
IN BRIEF
On th e set ofthe film version of MeI Brooks's The Producers; taken from Sylvia Plachy: Goings 011 about tOWII:
Photographs for the "N ew Yorker", by Sylvia Plachy (104pp. Ap erture. £14.95. 978 1 59711 051 8)
London
Julian Wolfreys
WRITI NG LONDO N
Volum e Three: Invent ions of the City
262pp. Palgrave Macm illan. £50.
978 0 230 00985 3
n Writing London : Inventions of the City,
I Julian Wolfreys focu ses on a re latively
small numb er of literar y works, some late
Victori an and Edw ardian and so me recent
and cont emporar y. A lthoug h Wolfreys has
interestin g thin gs to say about works by Am y
Levy, Arnold Bennett , Rich ard Marsh, John
Berger and lain Sincl air , and offers a readi ng
of The Waste Land, his main focu s is on offer-
ing elabor ate, not to say showy , mu sin gs in
the style of the theor etic al writings of Derrida
and Deleuz e, with WaIt er Benjamin, Paul de
Man , Lacan , Husserl , Ric oeur and oth er
mod ern cultural theori sts invok ed. Th ere is
much wordplay on "invention/invenient" ,
"l ocuti on/lo cation " , "dis-covery" , and so on,
and a large part of the book consists of a dis-
cussion wi th other cultural critic s from the
same interest group, rath er than direct engage-
ment with literary texts themselves. Wh en
Wolfr eys does engage, he acknowledges that
his main interest is not in anything that might
be called literar y about them. Hi s chapter on
Th e Waste Land c o nce ntrates on th e poem as
it was before Ezra Pound persuaded Eliot to
excise the passages Pound "had the poetic
sense to rem ove" . This is because Wolfreys
is " not interested", he tell s us, "in the
relative aes thetic merit s of what mak es the
'better' po em " , but rather in " seeking to
unfold how The Waste Land works as a
London text".
This is not unre ason able, but the discu s-
sion is so bedevilled by phraseology, so
cluttered with cultura l cli che, so full of bossy
inten sifier s such as " It has to be sa id", " It
may be ave rred", " We wo uld do we ll to
TLS NOVE MBER 9 20 07
attend " , "Reflect, if yo u will" and the like,
that the non-aligned reader feels kept at a dis-
tanc e from the topi c rather than enlightened .
For exa mple, what is learn ed abo ut the
fam ou s passage early in Heart of Darkness
describi ng the sun setting on the Thames and
Marlowes sudde n rem ark "A nd thi s also has
been one of the dark places of the earth" by
the follo win g comment by Wolfreys, "The
night world as mnem otechnic device thu s
ge nerates narrati ves, or noctu aries dem and-
ing that we bear witness"?
ROSEMARY ASHTO N
Travel
Paul Richardson
A LAT E DI NN ER
320pp. Bloomsbury. £ 16.99.
978 07475 8803 0
M ore than any oth er Western country,
Spain has been wilfully misrepr esented
by for eign writers. Rom antic ingr edient s
such as the Moorish past, bullfi ghtin g, and
flamenc o have overlaid the lon g- standing
Prot estant image of a cru ell y colonial Spain
epitomized by the Inqui sition. Th e result has
been a ludic rou s Ori entali sm see n in rem arks
about "Africa beginning at the Pyrenees" and
accounts of nin eteenth-century writers in
sea rc h of authe nticity hirin g "bandits" to
assault their stagec oaches as they ve ntured
into the mythi call y dan gerou s South .
But the rise of ma ss touri sm has mad e
Spain a mor e familiar place. Now a hack-
neyed image of a literar y Medit erranean idy ll
has taken its place alon gside escapist middl e-
cl ass immi gr ation from urban No rthern
Europe into relati ve affl uence amid st rural
pove rty . As Spa niards have becom e we alth-
ier than their neighb our s by dint of hard
work, ingenu ity and EU investment, we
might ex pect the rise of more rea listic, more
comprehe nding travel writing abo ut Spa in.
A Late Dinner is o ne of the few recent book s
to meet that ex pec tation, and it does so by
makin g Spani sh food the cent ral them e.
Thi s is a di sord erl y tour of farm s, market s,
cheap eating hou ses, and restaurant s, in the
compan y of ga rlic-growers, fisherm en, hum-
ble cook s, and famou s restaur ateur s. App ar-
ently logical sec tions ca lled "coast", "land"
and "city" - possibl y a publi sher' s inter ven-
tion - fortun ately fail to brin g ord er to a
whims ica l nar rati ve which describ es a jo ur-
ney to rival Do n Qui xotes and which is
dri ven by an enthus iasm for gas trotourism
wor thy of Sanch o Pa nza.
Th e book does not pretend to be a compre-
hensi ve tou r, and while destinatio n restau-
rants such as El Bulli and San Seb asti an are
included , Paul Richardson ge nerally ignores
the obv ious in his we lco me, glee ful prefer-
ence for the unexp ected , such as his deli ght at
M urcia ' s love of vege tables.
Thi s is a very enjoyable acco unt of Paul
Richard son ' s adve nture, an exce llent compan-
ion for anyone hoping to visit the Spa in that
other authors have not reached.
RO BERT G OODWIN
Literary History
Rustom Bharucha
AN OT HE R AS IA
Rabindr anath Tagore and Okakura Tenshin
236pp. Oxford University Press. £19.99.
978 0 19 568285 4
T his book , par ado xicall y for one that ends
on a tran scend ent Rom anti c note, is
stro ng ly locat ed in the present. Its last lines
on the friend ship between Ok akura Te nshin
and Rabindranath Tagor e at the turn of the
twenti eth century quote Montai gn e (" If you
press me to tell why I loved him, I feel thi s
cann ot be ex presse d, exce pt by answe ring :
becau se it was he, becau se it was I"), but
in the pages leadin g up to it, many different

registers are explored , from postcolonialit y
to co smopolit ani sm , from homo socialit y to
con stru ction s of masculinity, and from histor-
icalit y to definitions of mod erni sm s. The pen-
dulum-like mo vement in Montaigne ' s sen-
tenc e between articulation and analysis is
thu s beautifully reali zed in the methodology
used in Another Asia: Rabindranath Tagore
and Okakura Tenshin, which intercuts narra-
tive and personal testim on y with theoretical
argument and inci sive analys is.
Ok akura Te nshin (1862 -1 9 13) and Rabind-
ranath Tagore (1861 -1 941 ) had a relation-
ship that was based on onl y two meetin gs,
one in Ca lcutta in 1902 and the other in Bos-
ton in 1913. No photogr aph s were eve r taken
of the two togeth er , and no record s of any
con versation s surv ive . It would be fair to say
that thi s celebr ated friend ship was mor e
imp ort ant to intell ectu als in Indi a and Japan
as a sym bo l of Asian har mon y than it was to
the two me n them selves. Both led full lives -
Okakura was a cu rator at the Bo ston Muse um
of Fine Art s, and the author of the aggr es-
sive ly nationali st The Ideals of the East
(190 3) (w hich Rustom Bharucha intelli gentl y
read s against Ta gor e' s famou s lectures in
Japan , publi shed as Na tionalism, which
und ercut the imp eri ali st and xe nopho bic
impul ses und erlying nation ali st feelin g).
Both were indefati gable soc ia l bein gs, mu ch
in dem and both amo ng the Bo ston Brahmins
and the Ca lcutta elite. Th e story of their inter-
actions, layered with obse rvations on ho w
their intell ectu al positions affec ted their per-
sona l lives (Okakuras largely episto lary love
affair with Rabindranath ' s relation, Pri yam-
bada Devi, is docum ented ) makes for fascinat-
ing readin g. Thi s argu mentative book sus-
tain s an inform ed engagement with co ntem-
por ar y issues that pushes the bord er s of we ll-
entrenched acad emi c positi on s, introdu cin g
"the complication of beaut y" as one of the
"least interr ogated dim en sion s in postcolo-
nial discour se". Rustom Bharucha also dis-
crimi nates between the different discour ses
on mod erni sm ge nerated by Okakura and
Tagore, and read s Tagor e' s po siti on on
nation ali sm and histor y throu gh rece nt com-
ment aries by Ranajit Guha and Parth a Chat-
terj ee.
RO SI NKA CHAU DHU RI
Essays
Umber to Eco
TURN ING BA C K T HE C LOC K
Hot wars and media popu lism
369 pp. Harvill Seeker. £ 17.99.
978 1 846 55035 5
mberto Eco, the Italian nove list, aca -
U demic and man of letter s, once made a
useful distin ction bet ween two kind s of intel-
lectu al. The "apoca lyp tic" so rt, on the on e
hand, can be recogni zed by his Strau ssian hys-
teri a in the face of rap mu sic, video games
and all such indi cato rs of our intermin able
decline ; embattled, lon g-sufferin g, he contin-
ues to trade in the debased coin of what is
known on Am erican college campuses as
"Wes. Civ ." . The "integrated" philosophe,
converse ly - in whose camp Eco proudly situ-
ates himself - is more wi lling to engage with
the dy namic forces of trivializati on at wor k
in our culture, and wo uld have no qu alms
ab out the co mparison of, say, Milton' s God
with Optimus Prim e.
IN BRIEF
Ecos latest book , Turning Back the Clock,
a coll ection of articles and speec hes writte n
between 2000 and 200 5, proposes that for a
numb er of reason s (our dolti sh inf atuation
with techn ology bein g perhaps the forem ost
culprit) we are witness ing the reg ress ion to
an earlier stage of history. The "ho t" wars cur-
rently eng ulfing Iraq an d Afgh ani stan, for
exa mple, are cont rasted with the altoge ther
more fri gid "balance of terror " that per sisted
for the seco nd half of the twenti eth cen tury,
altho ugh, as Eco makes clear, these do not
represe nt a straightforward return to the lost
inn ocence of ear lier co nflic ts. Rather , thank s
to dem ographic shifts , globa l capit ali sm and
the intern et , we now don 't know who we' re
fightin g, where they are, or if our ex pensive
belli gerence is havin g the desired effect.
Ecos grea tes t virtue might be said to lie in
hi s ability to clarify the exac t natur e of our
present perpl exities.
Perpl exit y, ind eed, is Ecos element. Sil vio
Berlu sconi eme rges as the chi ef villain of the
bo ok , precisely for his atte mpts (largely
success ful) to imp ose a tend entiou s simp lic-
ity on our co ntem porary ch aos. The many
straw men that Berlu sconi spent his time in
power ev iscerating are patiently ex humed by
Eco , who lays bare the rhetori cal chica nery
that was at wor k in the Italian gove rn ment's
atte mpts to qu ash dissent. Such efforts, he
says , redu ce to the principl e: "Bec ause terr or-
ists ex ist, anyo ne who attac ks the gove rn-
ment is encourag ing them " . If the more obv i-
o usly occas ional pieces sometimes test the
reader's threshold for arca ne trivia, Eco , on
the whole, is lucid , logical and always firml y
on the side of civ iliza tion.
G ILES H ARVEY
Memoirs
Michael Whitehall
S HA RK- IN FE STED W AT ER S
Tales of an actors' agent
277pp. Timewe ll. £ 16.99.
978 185725215 6
L ike the Scarlet Pimpern el in the old Les -
lie Howard movie, the two fou nders of
Leadin g Ar tists, the actors ' agency, had a fop-
pish mann er which belied their stee ly tou gh-
ness whe n fighting for their cli ents. Michael
Whit eh all and the late Juli an Belfr age - two
elega nt, laid-back, publi c-scho ol men - we re
a forceful featur e of the theatri cal scene in the
1970s. Whit ehall has now writte n a most
enterta ining memoi r, wittily illu strat ed by his
son, Jack. We follo w his pro gress from a
soc ial-cl im bing middl e-cl ass back ground to
schoo ldays at Arn plefort h; then fro m a vari-
ety of profession s - including schoolmas ter-
ing, the law and adve rtising - to his positi on
as age nt of distin gui shed actors . On the way
we meet so me richl y co mic peopl e. Whit e-
ha ll's gen teel mother tried des pera tely to
"kee p up appea rances ", serving yo ung
Michael' s grande r schoo l friend cooked
breakfast in a silve r ciga rette bo x. To her
grea t embarrass ment, Micha el' s grandfather,
Arthur, enjoyed dressing as a wo man in
public while smoking his pip e and fiddling
with his mou stache. Oth er Whit eh all rela-
tion s are, in their way, as col ourful.
Th e sad, see dy misfit s he enco unters at
pre p schoo l an d in ad verti sing are worthy of
an Eve lyn Wau gh novel. So is his raki sh
age ncy partn er Juli an Belfrage, a hard- drink-
TLS NOVE MBER 9 20 07
ing habitue of the T urf Club yet a surp ris-
ingly gifted agen t. He could terrify castin g
dir ectors: " Bisto? John Hurt doesn't adve r-
tise gravy. Don 't yo u kno w who he is?".
Whiteha ll offer s more or less indi screet
vignettes of many actors : bibul ou s, ge nero us
Kenneth More, dandifi ed Peter Bowles, outra-
geo us Elaine Stritch, and a host of others . On
the who le, thou gh myse lf an actor, I found
them less intri guin g than Whiteha ll's rel a-
tives.
The book has a mel anc holy streak. Bowin g
out to becom e a produc er, Whit eh all writes,
"T he bu siness has cha nged, a . . . cliche, but
neverth eless true". Tod ay there is less work
for actors and they mu st beha ve imp ecc abl y.
Go ne are the days when television casts
dr ank with their director at lun chtime and
rehearsals fini shed by 3pm . 1 don 't think the
res ults were artistically inferior, although
actors prob abl y died younge r.
JO NAT H A N CECIL
Cultural Studie s
Sherry Turkle, editor
EVOCATI VE O BJECTS
Things we think with
39 1pp. MIT Press. £15.95 (US $24.95).
9780 262 20 1681 I
"N0 ideas but in thin gs", said the poet
Will iam Ca rlos Willi am s. Evoca tive
Objects is a collecti on of autobiog raphica l
essays by aca dem ics and writers describing
the co ncrete "things" that have an imp act
upon their lives and ideas. Asked to cho ose
an obje ct and foll ow its ass ociatio ns, the con-
tributors to thi s antho logy - mostly American
research ers in medi a or techn ology - write
intriguin gly about items including an Egyp -
tian mummy, an antid epr essant pill , a per-
sonal organi zer and a slime mould. Th e co n-
ce it of aca de mics reve aling their inn er feel-
ings is novel. We ga in fascinatin g insight s
into the obsess ions and drives that lurk
behind cerebral minds, often influ encin g
intellectual prac tices . A childhood preoccup a-
tion with a ye llow rainc oat sheds light on a
later interest in the bound ary between self
and world; an enco unter with a Durb an boy
carry ing a mute radio made of woo d leads to
refl ection s on instrument alism.
Tra ditionally we have appreciated obje cts
for their use or aes thetic va lue, claim s Sherry
Turkle, Professor of the Social Studies of
Techno logy at MIT and ed itor of Evoca tive
Objects . Turk le wa nts to disru pt thi s trend
and "consider objects as comp anio ns to our
emotional lives or as provocatio ns to
thou ght". Th e coll ection opens with the
them e of discovery and learning, moves to
des ire and mo urn ing and concludes with
spiritua lity and the sublime . A resear cher in
design , on ce kno wn as "T he Knot Lad y" ,
reveals her peculiar identifi cation with string:
" Knots make me think abo ut continuity and
separation, combination and deviation ". A
professor in the histor y of art is disturbed by
a famil y portrait she paint ed in her teen s: her
ret ard ed sister's abse nce reveal s repr essed
fantasies.
Tha t the co ncrete sho uld not be subs ume d
to the abstrac t is Turkle's repeated claim . But
on thi s front her book falls short. Una ble to
let the objec ts sta nd for themselves, Tur kle
glosses eac h narr ati ve with a theor etic al text.
And while the nego tiation between the liter-
33
ary and the theo retic al could be insightful,
the theor y is never engaged with any rigou r;
the approac hes are too diverse (rang ing hap-
hazardl y from Freud to Barth es to Fouca ult
to Marx), precludi ng a coherent criti cal fram e-
wor k.
CATHE RINE H U M BLE
German Literature
Julian Preece
THE REDIS COV ER ED WRITI NGS OF
VEZA CAN ET TI
Out of the shadows of a husband
185pp. Camden House. £45 (US $75).
978 I 57 1133533
O ne of the mo st exc iting eve nts in
Ge rman literatur e of the last few years
has been the reappearanc e of Veza Canetti
(1897- 1963). Th e shor t stor ies she published
in the 1930s had lon g been forgotten when
five of them, link ed into a coh erent who le by
a shared setting and rec urrin g charac ters,
we re publis hed in boo k form as Die Ge lbe
Straj3e (Yell ow Stree t) in 1990 . Veza Ca n-
etti's co ntrolled artistry, her injection of
subtle, sometimes bitt er iron y into her infor-
mal narr ative tone, and her unfu ssy confronta-
tion of painful topi cs - dom estic vio lence, dis-
ability, the co mmercial ex ploitation of yo ung
women - made this a new and disturbing liter-
ary ex perience. It was foll owed in 1999 by
a novel, Die Schildkriiten (The Tort oises),
depicting the harried lives of Vien nese Jews
awa iting permi ssion to emigra te in 1938.
With its rich poeti c textur e, co mbined
with satire and fantasy, thi s is among the
fin est works of Ge rma n-language ex ile
literatur e .
Wh y did Veza Ca netti's wor k rem ain in
ob scu rit y, and mo stly in manu script , for so
lon g? No t onl y femin ists have suspe cted her
husband, Elias Ca netti, of smo ther ing her lit-
erary talent. In thi s, the fir st book -leng th
study of Veza Ca netti in Englis h, Juli an
Preece is scru pulously fair to both parti es,
but doesn 't entirely dispe l one 's doubts abo ut
Eliass co nduct. Elias necessarily figur es
prominently here, bec ause the strains of their
marriage pro vid ed both with material for fic-
tion , and because of the close intertextu al rela-
tion s between their works . Thu s the brut al
concierge Benedikt Pfaff from Eliass Auto
da Fe recalls the abu sive husband in Veza ' s
"The Ogre" and Herr Tige r in "The Tige r"
(bo th fro m Die Gelhe Straj3e), while the Kain
broth ers in Die Schildkrii ten evo ke Vez a's
com plex relations hip with her husba nd and
his broth er Ge orges, recentl y revealed in
their asto nishing corres po nde nce (Brief e an
Georges, reviewed in the TLS, September 29,
2006) .
In thi s biogr aphi cal and them atic study,
Preece se ns itive ly in ve stigate s the co ntradic -
tion s in Veza Canetti's life and work. A femi-
nist and socialist, Ca netti identifi ed with the
plight of teenage girls forc ed to hire them-
selves o ut as maid s, and herself used the pseu-
don ym "Veza M agd" (M aid) . Yet she also
subordinated her self, to some ex tent will-
ingly, to her husband, abandoning her own
writing and naggin g him to fini sh Crowds
and Powe r. There is much more to be said
about this fascin atin g writer, but The Redis-
covered Writings of Veza Canetti is an indis-
pen sabl e starting point.
R IT CHI E RO BERTSO N
 AWARDS &
FELLOWSHIPS

YALE UNIVERSITY
BEINECKE
Rare Book & Manuscript Library

2008-2009
JAMES M. OSBORN POST-DOCTORAL
RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP
IN BRITISH STUDIES
The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University invites
applications for a newly defined James M. Osbom Post-doctoral Research Fellowship
in British Studies . The fellowship , for the academic year 2008-2009, is open to
scholars of British history , literature, society or culture in any period from the
Middle Ages through the end of the Twentieth Century who will devote the term of
the fellowship to research in the Beinecke Library's extensive collection of books ,
manuscripts, prints , and original art conceming the literature, history , and culture of
the British Isles .
The ten month fellowship provides a stipend of $42,500 and a residential apartment
within walking distance of the Library . The Osbom Fellow will be expected to take up
residence in New Haven by Augu st I , 2008, to conduct research in Beinecke Library
on a consi stent basis, and to participate in the intellectual life of the Yale community
through May 31, 2009 .
Applicants must have received their Ph.D. (or equivalent degree) between September
1,2001 and January 14,2008.
Con sideration is guaranteed for applications received by January 15.2008.
All materials should be postmarked by that date .
The Fellowship will be awarded on the basis of the applicant's scholarly qualifications
and promise as well as the merits and significance of the research to be undertaken at
Beinecke Library .
Applications consist of a cover sheet (available at the Osbom Fellowship on the
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Rosemary Ashton ' s most recent book, 142 yea r. His Histo ry of French Literature Rob ert Ir win ' s For Lust of Knowin g: The the Cambridge Companion to Thomas Mann ,
Strand: A radical address in Victo rian Lon- appear ed in 2002 , and he is formerly Orientalists and their enemies was publi shed 2002 .
don , will be publi shed in paperb ack next Research Professor in French at the Univer- last year , and Islamic Art appeared in 1997.
year. She is Professor of English at Univer- sity of Leed s. He is the M idd le East editor of the TLS. Simon Scott Plummer is a journalist who
sity Coll ege London . work s for the Daily Telegraph.
Simon Ditchfield teach es at the University Mark Kamine wa s Assistant Production
Uina h Bir ch is Professor of English Litera- of York , where he is a Reader in History. His Manag er on The Sop ranos. He recently line- A. J. Sherman is the auth or of Mand ate
ture at the University of Liverpool. She is the book Liturgy, Sanctity and History in Triden- produced Interview, a movie starring Steve Days: British lives in Palestine, 1918-1948,
General Editor of a forthcoming edition of tine Italy was pub lished in 1995 . Buscemi and Sienna M iller. second edition 2001 , and Island Refuge: Brit-
the Oxford Companion to English Literature, ain and refugees from the Third Reich,
and her new book , Our Victorian Education, M ichael Dow nes is Mu sic Director at Fitz- Frank Ku pp n er ' s seventh collection of 1933- 193 9, second edition 1994 .
will be publi shed this year. willi am Coll ege, Cambridge. He is writing a poem s, A God 's Breakfa st, was publ ished in
study of mu sic by Jonathan Harve y. 2004 . He lives in Glasgow . Virgin ia Smi th is a freelance science
Bill Br oun is Assistant Professor of English reporter in Florida. Her book about rept ile
at East Stroudsburg University of Penn syl- Li ndsay Duguid is Fict ion editor of the TLS. Paul Levy was for some years restaurant smuggling will be publi shed next year.
vania . He is comp leting a novel. critic of the Observe r, as well as of the Amer-
Katherine Dun can-Jones is the co -editor ican magazine Travel & Leisure . Jean Sprackland ' s third co llection of
Stephen Brown is Emeritus Profe ssor of of the Ard en (Third Serie s) Shakespeare 's poem s, Tilt , is publi shed this month.
Mu sic at Southern lll inoi s University. He is Poems, to be publi shed later this year. Her Toby L ich tig is an assistant editor at the
the author of The Sense of Music, 1988. biograph y Ungentle Shakespeare: Scenes TLS. Ba rt Streumer is a lecturer in Philosoph y at
from his life was pub lished in 2001. She is the University of Reading.
G lynn S. Burgess is Eme ritus Profe ssor of writin g a book about Shakespeare ' s reput a- W m . Ro ger Louis was the Editor-in-Chief
the University of Liverp ool. His books tion in his own lifet ime. of the Oxford History of the Brit ish Empire. Martin Walker is the Editor of United Press
include Two Medieval Outlaws : Eustace the His recent book s are Ends ofBritish Imperial- Internationa l. His novel , The Caves of Phi-
monk and Fouke Fit; Waryn , 1997. A. S. G . Edwards is Profe ssor of Tex tual ism, publi shed last year, and , as editor, Penul- go rd, appeared in 2002.
Studies at De Montfort University. His timate Adv entur es with Britannia, publi shed
Stephen Burn is the author of David Foster book s incl ude The Life of St Edmund King this month . W illiam W hyte is a Fellow and Tutor in
wallace 's Inf inite Jest: A reader 's guide, and Martyr , 2004, and , as editor, Decoration Modern Histor y at St John' s College,
200 3. He teach es English at Northern Michi - and Illustration in Medieval English Manu- Hu gh Macdonald' s Beethove n 's Century: Oxford . His most recent book is Oxford Jack-
gan Unive rsity. scripts, 2002 . Essays on composers and themesis will be son: Architecture, education, status and
publi shed next year. style, 1835- 1924, publi shed last year.
Rosi nka Chaudh uri is the author of Gentle- W iIliam Fi tzgerald is a Fellow of Gon ville
man Poets in Colonial Bengal: Emergent and Caiu s College, Cambridge. His most Caroline M iller is a freelanc e writer living Pet er W illiams is form er Dean of Mu sic,
nation alism and the orientalist proj ect, 2002. recent book is Slavery and the Roman in Lond on . University of Edinburg h. His book s includ e a
Literary Imagination, 2000 . His Martial: Life of Bach , 2004 , The Chromatic Fourth
Aingeal Clare' s writing on poetry has The epigrammatic world is publi shed this l an Pind a r is the author of a biograph y of durin g Four Centuri es of Musi c, 1998, and
appe ared in Metre. year. James Joyce , 2004 . His most recent book is The King of Instruments: How churches
The Folio Book of Histori c Speeches, pub- came to have organs, 1993.
Alex Clark is deput y Literary Editor at the J ohn Greening is editing an anth ology of lished earlier this year.
Observer. poem s about composers. His most recent col- Justin W illis is a Reader in Hist ory at
lection is The Home Key , 2003 . Nightfli ghts: Pe ter Po r ter' s most recent collection of the University of Durh am , and has publi shed
Claire Crowt her' s fir st book of poem s, New and selected poems appeared in 1998. poem s is Aft erburn er , 2004. His Saving wid ely on eas tern African history. He is
Stretch of Closures, was publi shed this year from the Wreck: Essays on poetry app eared curr entl y seconded to Nairobi as Director of
and has been shortlisted for the Jerwood l G iles Harvey is on the staff of the New York in 2001. the Briti sh Institute in Eas tern Africa.
Ald eburgh First Collection prize . Review of Books.
Ritch ie Rob ertson is a Fellow of St John' s Z inovy Z ini k ' s collection of comic stories
Da vid Coward' s tran slat ion of Hed i Catherine H umble is a freelanc e writ er College, Oxford. His book s includ e Kafka: A a nd sketches on life outsid e Ru ssi a, A t Hom e
Kaddour' s Waltenber g will by publi shed this living in London . very short introduction, 2004 , and , as edi tor, Abro ad , is soon to be publi shed in Mo scow .

TLS C ROSSWORD 717 s

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C R O W N S C R E W T A P E
5 Dornford Vales was in commerce, to hear more of it ju st now" (Funny
H N T M 0 R L
reall y (6) Burney, Cecilia) (6) D [ V [ N A C OM M E D [ A
9 Guid e to Dant e - and inspir ation to
Br ownin g (8)
10 Co unt Nikolai in Ru ssian port (6)
2 Scour a new edition for operatic tenor (6)
3 Be swift in all of it, recommended
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12 Sitas Kinsman' s favo urite writers 4 Suffering American model with share T A N Q u E R A Y L U T E R
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includ e thi s novel ist (5) of book adornment ( 12)
o M B R E P R 0 V [ N C E S
13 Fur appears on time, neverthel ess 6 First Emily Bronte opus - all right to
N E R E 0 N E E
acco mpanying a gloomy message from provide computer readin g (5) S [ L E S [ A K E E L D A R
Lowell (5, 4) 7 Some of the very rich , tho' nicely
14 Prelimin ary matter from new doctor in treated, may be of the underworld (8) SOL UTION TO CROSSWORD 713
unit (12) 8 Howler in Domb ey and Son thus worthy The win ner of Crossword 713 is
18 General describ es war on France with of respect (8) Dr Jac k Nelson, Lexingt on, KY.
remark on ram (12) 11 Red Rum upset is a pushover in Th e se nde r of the first correc t
2 1 Unlike Kingsley' s, were Kenn edy' s Christie'x work (6, 2, 4) solution ope ne d on Nove m be r 30
apprec iated by one similar? (3, 6) 15 Ballet at end of play (9) will recei ve a cas h pri ze of £40.
23 "And he and they together 1- down 16 Injured by Whisky Galo re? (8) Entries should be addresse d to
with angry prayers" (Ralph Hodgson) (5) 17 Napoleon III took it on the chin (8) TLS C rossword 7 17,
24 Soul of Japanese poetic wit? (6) 19 Give me some row over a native quarter Tim es Hou se, I Pennington Str eet ,
25 West Australian custom (or Eastern") of Mary McCal1hy (6) London E98 1BS .
of eighteenth-century sectarian (8) 20 Minerva contributes to heathen enter- Th e requ ested dat es for entries for the
26 First man in ruined olde n structure, tainment (6) pa st few crosswords ha ve gone awr y.
possibly a tomb (6) 22 "Co urt him, - him, reel and pass, 1 We will be ope ning solutions to
27 Possibly elite - or e ven a para gon (8) And let him hate you through the glass" pu zzle 7 15 (and to the A ut um n
(Edmund Blunden, Masks of Time) (5) Acro sti c) on Nov e mbe r 16, and to
puzzle 7 16 on Novembe r 23.

TLS N O VE M BE R 9 20 07
36
T he read er about to embark on War and
Peace is advised to pau se before select-
ing a suitable tran slation. Until recentl y, the
standard choic e was between Loui se and
Aylm er Maudes 1923 rendition and the
1957 version by Rosem ary Edmonds. How-
ever, two new versions have appeared in suc-
cession: the first, in 2005 , by Anth on y
Brig gs; and now the much-heralded tran sla-
tion by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokh on-
sky, who have already produced a bestsellin g
Ann a Karenina.
Brig gs gav e us an ordin ary blok e' s War
and Peace, dispen sing with the French
(To lstoy 's story is rich in French con versa-
tion) and makin g the lower-rank soldiers
speak in a typical-Tomm y, dropp ed-aitch
cockn ey : "One shows up, so I grab s ' im. He
starts yellin' 'i s 'ead off' etc. The soldier
Deni sov, with a minor speech impediment,
was given to saying thin gs like, "We don 't
get them by tom owwow they'll gwab the lot
fwom under our noses". Then there is Kutu-
zo v' s cur sing. As we point ed out at the time
(NB, August 12, 2005 ), Briggs put into the
refined General' s mouth at the battl e of
Krasnoye the words, "They asked for it, the
fuckin g bastard s", where previou s tran slators
had foll owed Tol stoy and opted for dashes.
The unpr epared reader comparing Pevear
and Volokhonsky (P&V) with Briggs might
think they are readin g a different book alto-
gether. On the French question , P& V do not
just retain the famou s opening, "E h bien,
The Bugle
The new comedy podcast from Times Online
John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman present their comedicosatirical
views on Britain, the USA and the world, and on matters of great,
small and no political importance, neatly packaged into one
manageable podcast.
Available free every Monday at timesonline.co.ukjthebugle
newsplus v i e w s - - - - - - - - -
Tommy in Moscow
mon princ e, Gene s et Lucqu es ne sont plu s
que des apanages" , but allow Anna Pavlovn a
to carry on for pages, with English translati on
in footnotes. Briggs' s Dad' s Arm y types
wouldn' t be und erstood by P&V ' s soldiers,
who speak in standard English: "One of them
came along. I grabbed him like this. He
started jabbering". Deni sov ' s spee ch impedi-
ment is sugges ted by a Russian guttural " gh" :
" If we don't take it tom oghrro w, they 'll
snatch it fghrom under our noses".
In the vexe d matter of General Kutuzov' s
swea ring, P& V stick clo se to the original.
Tolstoy has the Genera l say, "M ... ee ...
v g" , an old-fashioned cur se which (we are
told) refer s to the mothers of the unfortunates
in question , and for which "fucking bastard s"
is a poor subs titute. P&V lea ve it as "It' s
their ow n doin g, f ... th ... in the f ..."
which is vague (like the Russian) and leaves
the unspeakable properl y unspok en.
TIMESONLINE
timesonline.co.uk
TLS NO VE MBER 9 2007
comment ator s. But disappointment is modi-
fied by the discovery that the anonymous
reviewer of The Old Huntsman was that TLS
stalwa rt, Virgini a Woolf. Issued when the
war had a year and a half to run , her praise
applies equally to Sassoons poetry today:
As these jaunty matter-of-fact statements suc-
ceed eac h other such loath ing, such hatred accu-
mulates behind them that we say to ourselves
"Yes, this is going on; and we are sitting here
watching it", with a new shoc k of surprise.
War and Peace is often thou ght by unfamil-
iars to be a "heavy" book. On the contrary -
P erambulatory Christmas Book s, Part VII.
Sen sitive perambulator s find few rea son s
for bein g in the area of Camden Mark et on a
it skips alon g. However , P&V' s War and Sunday afternoon, but a good one would be
Peace (Vintage, £20) is hea vy in another the opportunity to duck into Harmood Street
sense : it weighs 3'4 Ibs. For that reason , to visit Walden Book s. Well-ordered shelves
among others, we are sticking with the exce l- of first editions greet the connoi sseur inside,
lent Rosem ary Edmonds, ava ilable in two while carts loaded with treasure nouri sh the
volumes from Penguin Cla ssics. man in the street. There we once found Vol-
ume II of the Edinburg h edition of the Work s
I n advance of Rem embrance Sund ay, we
found our selves wond erin g how the poets
of the First World War were recei ved by the
of Robert Loui s Steven son (1895 ), in which
The Amateur Emigrant mad e its first appear-
ance . Our numb ered cop y, for which we paid
TLS. The war was ju st two month s old when £ 1, ca me with a publi sher ' s letter bearing "tid-
a review er felt moved to announce "the finest ings of Mr Steven son ' s untimely death " and
poem which the war has so far produced". It new s of the departure for Samoa of the editor
was "Thou Careless Awak e !" by Robert of the Edinburgh edition, Charles Baxter.
Brid ges, the Poet Laureate. The occ asion was RLS does not qualify as a Perambulatory
the public ation of Poems of the Grea t War, choice, of cour se. We seek an overlo oked
consistin g of work written since the outbr eak: work by a notable writer, purch ased at one of
Thy mirth lay aside Lond on ' s second-hand book shop s for £5 or
Thy cavil and play: less. In Wald en we picked up a cop y of
The foe is upon thee Catherine Carswell's book about D. H. Law-
And grave is the day. renc e, The Savage Pilgrimage. Carswe ll's
The ge neral tone of the coll ection was of subtitle, "A narrati ve of D. H. Lawrenc e" , is
patrioti sm and duty. Within a yea r, the first more appropriate than the modern "mernoir";
discrete volumes of war poetr y had appe ared for the story of their friend ship moves with
and the mood had darkened. Battle by W. W. novelistic pace toward s Lawr enc e' s death in
Gibson (October 14, 1915) "speaks for the 1930. She was moved to write the book in
perpl exed soldier und er order s, and, doing respon se to an earlier one by John Middl eton
so, illustrates the other side of the medal ". It Murr y, to which she took exception. There
is possible that Gib sons short, plain- speak- are prob ably books which go more deeply
ing verses mark the birth of the modern pro- into the detail of Lawrence ' s life, but non e
test poem . Battle was "a monum ent to the that see ms to catch so well the atmos phere of
wa ntonness of it all ... the disregard alike his presenc e. Our cop y of The Savage Pil-
of prom ise and perform anc e". Our re vie wer gri mage is the "revise d edition" publ ished in
(E. V. Lucas) quot ed "Hill-Born": 1932 (the original , from the previou s yea r,
I sometimes wonder if it' s really true was withdraw n after objections by Mur ry).
I eve r knew There is no du st jacket, but a pleasing extra is
Another life the fronti spiece phot ograph of DHL, dat ed
Than this unendin g strife "Florence, Septemb er 1921". It is uncredit ed
With unseen enemies in lowland mud but surely by Carswe ll or her husband , who
And wonder if my blood were with him at the time. All this for £4 .
Thrilled ever to the tune
Of clean winds blowing through an April noon.
By the time of Siegfri ed Sassoon's first
reports, the notion that young men should
W hile notin g the inaugur al issue of the
Mailer Review (NB, October 26), we
wondered if this was the only academic jour-
put aside mirth and " Die gladly for thee" nal devoted to a living writer. Word com es
(Bridg es) was tarni shed. "What Mr Sassoo n
has felt to be the most sordid and horribl e
experiences in the world he mak es us feel to
be so in a measure which no other poet of the
fro m New York of "a peer-r evi ewed j ourn al
called Philip Roth Studies" , and from Canada
of Doris Lessing Studies, "published by the
Dori s Lessing Society, at present in its thirt y-
wa r ha s ach ieve d" - so wrote our re view er of first year of public ation ". The Saul Bellow
The Old Huntsman and Other Poems in 1917. Journal of West Bloomfi eld, MI, began in
Several stanzas are quot ed, which we dar e 1981 when the novelist was still alive , and
not repeat, for fear of the litigiou s Sassoo n last produced an issue in 2002.
estate which habitually guns do wn innoc ent J .C.
© The Tim es Literary Sup plement Limited. 2007. Publis hed and licensed for dis tribution in elec tronic and all other deriva-
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