Distinctive Cologne

I liked Cologne. It is compact, yet it has one of the largest cathedrals in the world, and the city makes the most of that contrast. Since the central square outside the Cathedral is so small, and the main station just a few yards from the Cathedral, there is a sense of crowding that is very distinctive, and which makes the vast height of the Cathedral all the more imposing. The Cathedral is the centre, even more so than, say, Amiens, or Rouen (or Canterbury, which as a result of the Cathedral Close is quite separate to the town). The main buildings of the historic centre are all within walking distance, even if, as with many northern German cities, the buildings display that kind of 1950s and 60s anonymity, immediately forgettable replacements for whatever was there before World War II.  

What else makes Cologne distinctive?

Cologne Station has a very distinctive roof, which, surprisingly, does not seem to feature in the architectural top-ten lists for Cologne. It was constructed as recently as 1957, and has a shape unlike any other railway arch I know, with very flattened arch shapes repeated everywhere, and yet it appears satisfyingly like a railway arch.

There are two major museums right next to the Cathedral, both of them impressive buildings. Unfortunately the Roman museum was closed when I visited, but the Museum Ludwig (by Busmann & Haberer), more than compensates with its stunning foyer and large spaces for the display of contemporary art. Unusually, it has a few rooms with glass covering floor to ceiling to take advantage of its proximity to the train station and the Hohenzollern Bridge. You can see from outside the museum the jagged roof pattern, providing indirect light in the galleries.

Cologne is a city with local associations. By this I mean the local art gallery, the Wallraf-Richartz, has rooms full of medieval paintings, created just a few yards away from the museum in the aptly named Schildergasse (Painter Street). Over 290 medieval paintings from Cologne survive. These paintings are often narrative, strip-cartoon style, with multiple scenes of a saint’s life.  You would be hard pressed to find any work by painters born in Cambridge in the Fitzwilliam Museum.

Being Cologne, it has a local saint, and not just any saint, but one of the best-known medieval figures. Saint Ursula was murdered in Cologne together with the 10,000 virgins that had accompanied her to Rome to meet the Pope. Apparently there was a healthy trade in relics from the supposed burial ground of the virgins, just outside the city. Most other cities would have one or two relics; looks like Cologne wins in terms of sheer numbers of relics. From the number of depictions of St Ursula’s life, it must have been one of the most popular religious themes of the day.

Image by Rolf Heinrich, Köln, CC BY 3.0

In the short time I had available, I wasn't able to see any of the several modern buildings around the city. Unmissable were some impressive cantilever-based office blocks on the banks of the Rhine, which I just managed to see from the train. I reckon, though, the users of the building must always be looking nervously around to make sure everyone wasn't standing on the wrong side of the building, in case it toppled over.

Why be a book reviewer if you don’t enjoy it

Anthony Burgess seems a man with a permanent chip on his shoulder. Despite being a successful novelist, he survived for many years by working as a freelance writer, supplementing his royalty income with book reviews.

In a fascinating article published in 1972 in the TLS (and reprinted on December 232016), he discusses his attitude to writing reviews. According to Burgess,

“people never set out to be reviewers. They have to be writers first … Having published a novel or so, they are invited to review novels … A deadline is a fine substitute for a genuine literary urge. But sooner or later the self-disgust sets in. It has to do … with the whipping up a factitious emotion about the book or books reviewed.”

My first problem with this view of reviewing is that it is based entirely around the view of the reviewer. Burgess saw himself as a novelist, of course, and for him, reviews were sidelines; if you just wrote reviews, self-disgust sets in. Not all reviewers are novelists, however, and not al reviewers are afflicted by self-disgust by every review they write. Burgess misses here the reader’s point of view. The reader is expecting to learn something about the book, in an entertaining yet informative way. They don’t have time to have read the book, but the reviewer has. You could say this is the application of capitalism to reading books. I cannot read all the books I would like to read, so I pay someone, in the form of a periodical or a newspaper, to read them for me, assuming that I respect the opinions of the reviewer. Had I known when I read all those reviews by Burgess how much he dislike the task of reviewing, I would never have read him.  

Come to think of it, I abandoned Burgess’ autobiography, Little Wilson and Big God (1986) after the first several pages, occupied entirely by Burgess explaining how he, rather than any other biographer, was the best person to write an account of his life. Most autobiographers do not start with an elaborate justification of their suitability for the task over anyone else.  

It’s a shame, because Burgess, in the same article, makes some genuine points. Short reviews are a waste of time: “Ask for five hundred words on any new book, and you at once absolve the reviewer from reading it … When the wordage of a review gets into the thousands … one trusts such a review – because the reviewer dare not be too careless.”. “Not even the most saintly reviewer can avoid showing off (“As a mere amateur of Dutch painting I must wonder why Professor Bullshop could not … find room for a brief reference to that lovely painter Piet Voedstoppung).” If authors reviewed their own books, Burgess claims, “the personality of the writer would not come in for a trouncing.” One wonders what Jean Rhys would have said of her own novels.

But then Burgess, as usual, in his desire to be both clever and provocative, goes too far in his egocentric freelancer attitude:

The fairest review that any novel of mine ever received was one I wrote myself.

Now we have shifted to reviews of novels – always a rather subjective process, and Burgess, outrageously, thinks himself the best judge of his own work.

Nowhere in all this is the position of the reader justified, or even considered. All we hear is Burgess’ own sense of outrage at the reviews his own novels received, and the falsity of his position at having to write reviews of other people’s work. The reading public is not considered, as if they were entirely passive consumers of whatever the reviewer might deign to write. However entertaining Burgess might be as a writer, you feel he means with a vengeance not to miss the opportunity to earn a reviewer’s fee – or the royalties from an autobiography.  

There is a piece to be written on the benefit of the book review, but this is not it. Many book reviews are undoubtedly poor, but Burgess, the man with a chip on his shoulder, brings us no closer to why some reviews illuminate, inspire, and enthuse. I am left simply with a feeling that Burgess, in his self-centredness, is unlikely to appeal to me as an author.