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Among the Intellectualoids
Taken to Task at the TLS
When the stakes are this small, duck for cover.
(Page 2 of 2)
Another wounded author took a deep breath and set things straight. “Shlomo Sand’s response to my review of the parody of historical scholarship he presents in his book illustrates perfectly the accuracy of my critique. In his letter, he substitutes belligerence for argument, and misrepresents the research by others which he quarries. His letter is replete with irrelevance, innuendo and inaccuracy.”
Another letter notes that an author was unhappy being caught out in an argument over the meaning of “prime mover” as used by Latin Aristoteleans. “I called the confusion ‘a howler’. Professor Hart now pleads guilty to the lesser charge of laziness in failing to make the distinction clear. But it is good to learn that he is very much better informed on these matters than is evident from a reading of his book.”
The surprise ending category includes this letter, worth quoting in its entirety:
I have just read Jon Garvie’s review of Jan Morris’s book ‘Contact!’ and I found the review to be so rude, disdainful and ill-considered that it was with great pleasure that I ordered the book immediately.”
Scott Lahti | 5.17.10 @ 7:29AM
Mr. Johnson does well to sketch the enduring fascinations of the TLS letters page. My own contribution to that page from 1998, on the sources for Stanley Kubrick's film Full Metal Jacket is here (I knew nothing whatever of the subject, and retrieved all the necessary information from Leonard Maltin's TV movie guide and five minutes' web-browsing),
http://docs.google.com/View?id.....63hkqxbbhr
as is a 1986 essay from National Review in which I discussed the periodical at length - the TLS is a sort of weekly mailbox update to the great Eleventh Edition from 1910 of the Encyclopædia Britannica (see also my two-part review at Amazon.com of Critical Times, the official centenary history of the paper, from 2001, by Derwent May; and Dwight Macdonald's famous essay on London weeklies, "Amateur Journalism", reprinted in his collection Against the American Grain). I was pleased last month to score, via a Craigslist "free stuff" posting sent me by Google Alerts, a 200+ issue stack of recent back numbers of the paper.
Mr. Johnson might have noted that the author of "another letter" in the recent Dostoevsky dust-up in the TLS was none other than the nonagenarian Joseph Frank of Stanford University, one of our most distinguished literary humanists, whose five-volume life of the great Russian, condensed last year as Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time, and published over the years 1976-2002, is one of the truly great literary biographies of the last fifty years.
Finally, the last letter quoted, from a reader so turned off by the carping TLS reviewer of the latest book by Jan Morris he was moved to buy a copy of it, reminded me of Eric Idle's "Professor" from the panel judging the contestants in the Most Awful Family in Britain Awards (sponsored by Heart-Attack-O margarine), in the sketch of that name on Monty Python's Flying Circus; of the father from one such family, his opinion was that "he was rude, smelly and distasteful - and I liked him very much."
Bob K.| 5.17.10 @ 8:18AM
It serves a purpose. At least it confirms that some people, although likely very few, are reading what they have written!
I'm sending this to my nephew who just received his PhD in English Literature from an Ivy League University! But I suspect by now that he is well acquainted with these literary hissy fits!
Petronius| 5.17.10 @ 8:18PM
Oh joy! Much ado over who has the upper of the upper. It seems the only thing better than the autographed photo is personal involvement in the minutia of a famous authors life. It's the box seats for game 7 of the World Series for bookworms. But the overhead smash for me was the invitation to subscribe to the New York Times Review of Books with the insulting remark in the refusal box, (no thank you. I refuse to think.) of such effrontery towards me as a prospective customer. How dare I refuse, as the NYT Review of Books is the only literary publication worth looking at. I checked the refusal and told them that I was taking The Spectator of London, (which I dropped when Lord Black lost it and Mark Steyne was sacked and Boris Johnson forced from the editors chair.) Those were the heady days when Jonathan Franzen p-o'd his publisher for refusing to appear on Oprah's Book Club as he didn't want the vacuum heads who watch her reading his stuff; he being a serious author. It must be true as the Speccie critic who reviewed Changes said Mr. Franzen had written "literature". Which takes me to TLS . It is one of the few constants in this world of crumbling values whence I hied to my local library for a copy of Wm. Makepeace Thackery's Book of English Snobs. Who isn't? So let's have some fun and compare the review of the next Koogler winner with that in the TLS.
wouldee5150| 5.18.10 @ 12:23AM
"A long-running debate over Dostoevsky's state of mind while writing The Brothers Karamazov is one of the more exhaustive cases of viciousness over small stakes."
But that is Alinsky as he imparts spurious motive to a man of character nothing like Alinsky's vacuity. Saul Alinksky fancied himself having the definitve premise for veiling Dostoevski's messages. The "alleged" state of mind is misplaced. lol.
David Jack Smith | 5.18.10 @ 11:14AM
Even though they no longer have an Empire, it is encouraging to read that they remain heart-warmingly vicious.
If only the pen was indeed mightier than the sword
Scott Lahti | 5.20.10 @ 9:01PM
"the famous anecdote about Piero Sraffa brushing his chin with his fingertips, in a familiar Neopolitan gesture of skepticism...I can no longer remember how you do it."
As luck would have it three weeks on, a correspondent to this week's Letters page fills the gap in the literature:
"Should there still be sufficient interest, I would offer the following description of that gesture: Cup the fingers of your right hand together and raise it under your chin so that the fingernails touch its roof; then with a rapid motion, as with a snap, brush your chin with your fingertips as at the same time you stretch your hand and move it decidedly towards your interlocutor."
Bookmark the TLS letters page, fresh each Friday, here,
http://entertainment.timesonli.....s_letters/
and prospective subscribers check the display ads each fall in the NYTBR and the NYRoB - as well as your own direct mail if you subscribe to cognate periodicals - the better at $49.95 to save over 70% off the annual $169 rate.