Books of the Year 2021

 

Photo by Florian Schmetz on Unsplash

Mercifully, I don’t have to be restricted to books published this year, only to books I have read this year. I think I failed to read a single  book that was actually published this year (although see below).

Book of the year must be Twelve who Ruled (R R Palmer, 1942). A truly remarkable book, covering one of the most hotly disputed themes in history: the Terror during the French Revolution. Given that the Committee of Public Safety left no records, this makes Palmer’s book all the more impressive. His depiction of Robespierre seems admirably balanced. Best of all, the book has a gripping narrative as good as any novel. The best history books tell a story, and this is quite some story.

I also greatly enjoyed Imperial Mud (James Boyce, 2020), a fascinating depiction of the Fens through history that brought some political thinking to an area that is usually presented without any apparent political awareness. My only complaint was that I see no sign of political radicalism in the Fens today – where did it go?

Tim Bolton’s Cnut the Great, in the Yale English Monarchs series, was an eye-opener. Here was a highly effective monarch, who at one time ruled not only England but a fair bit of Scandinavia as well. But, of course, it wouldn’t do to have a Dane as one of the mythical founders of England. He continues to appear rather incidentally in histories of England covering this period, which are usually titled “Anglo-Saxon England” or something similar.

I read The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and enjoyed every page, even though the fact that the book remained unfinished at Dickens’ death makes it more of a  mystery than perhaps even Dickens intended. Dickens, of course, is not a whodunit writer; he is more interested, like Simenon, in the motives and the feelings of the guilty parties, and so the identity of the murderer is immediately apparent. Drive your Plow over the Bones of the Dead, by Olga Tokarczuk, wins my prize for the best post-modernist work of the year. The unsettling tone of the first-person writing leaves the reader both enjoying the curious moral stance of the narrator, and at the same time struggling to identify what is actually happening – a rather similar technique to Graeme Macrae Burnet’s Case Study, which I thought was the only book I read that was published this year – but it turns out it first appeared back in 2016. Quite who is mad and who is sane is not easy to decipher – but it’s great fun to try to work it out. 

Twelve Who Ruled: a classic history book

 

Twelve Who Ruled is a truly remarkable book. It covers a single year in the French Revolution, the period of the Committee of Public Safety (July 1793-July 1794. It was published back in 1941, yet does not feel in the least out of date. Why is this book so gripping? I can think of several reasons:

• It goes beyond the first few months of the French Revolution where most attention is directed, such as the fall of the Bastille. Instead, it concentrates on the period 1793-1794, the period when the Committee of Public Safety (CPS) was in charge.
• Secondly, it avoids the tendency either to sanctify or to demonize Robespierre. Robespierre must be one of the most polarising figures in modern history. You don’t have to look far for examples of both views:
• To Palmer’s credit, he does not give the impression that Robespierre was mainly in charge of the CPS (even though the Wikipedia entry I read for the CPS states it was “the provisional government in France, led mainly by Maximilien Robespierre, during the Reign of Terror (1793–1794)”
• It’s quite a challenge to write a biography of two people, let alone 12, especially when the minutes of the CPS have not survived (or were never recorded).
• Palmer tells a story, and what a story! France is threatened by every other state in Europe. There is little agreement within France about what the Revolution means. The Committee have no time to discuss niceties. The survival of the nation depends on those 12 committee members. The narrative is so skilfully told that the end of each chapter is a lead-in to the next episode. You feel with anticipation that major events about to happen, whether the execution of Danton, or the victory at Fleurus, or the tragic conclusion – that solved nothing.
• Palmer’s verdict on Robespierre, and the Committee  of Public Safety, is that was a paradox. By loading all responsibility for the Terror onto Robespierre’s shoulders after his death, it became possible for France to move away from the Terror. Yet, for all his faults, Robespierre believed in the power of virtue, and the CPS was “the first dictatorship whose stated aim was the complete regeneration of society”; its goal was to found the “republic of virtue”.
• Hence this book provides a chilling postscript to the age of Enlightenment; not that the principles of the Enlightenment were in any way wrong, but to see the very principles of virtue so appallingly applied by a government casts some doubt on the political abilities of the Enlightenment chief thinkers: Diderot, Voltaire, Rousseau, all good for a book or a play, but don’t hand them the reins of power. It can be said, perhaps, that the Enlightenment was for the most part an opposition movement. Enlightenment principles did not gain power in Western Europe except for France during the Revolutionary period. Perhaps every student of the Enlightenment ought to read about the period 1794 to 1795 to see how noble principles can sometimes have horrific results when linked to executive power.
• Palmer identifies strands in the Revolution that I had not expected to encounter. All through the period 1794-1795 there was tension between those aiming to exterminate the Catholic religion, and those wanting simply to tolerate it while removing its privileges. Robespierre was in favour of toleration, something that paradoxically was one of the factors that led to his downfall: insufficiently radical. Too soft towards Danton and Desmoulins.
• Even more distasteful is the strain of xenophobic nationalism the Revolution promoted. In Alsace, there was an attempt to enforce French as the only acceptable language of “patriots” – something that would not go down well with German speakers. You expect episodes of offensive nationalism in England after Brexit, but not in Revolutionary France.
• Above all, Twelve Who Ruled casts Robespierre as the principal actor in a tragedy, and like all tragic heroes, Robespierre has his faults.  Chapter 11 includes a major speech by Robespierre, based on a quote by Saint-Just:

The tragic misconception was R’s idea of the people … the French people was not like what R imagined. It ws not all compact of goodness; it was not peculiarly governable by reason … R’s “people” was the people of his mind’s eye, the people as it was to be when felicity was established. [p277]

The only citizens in the Republic are the republicans. Royalists and conspirators are foreigners, or rather enemies, in its eyes.” … A republic so conceived must remain at war with a large part of its own population. [p277]

• Palmer, writing in the darkest days of World War II, skilfully makes comparisons between totalitarianism and democracy in 18th- and 20th-century flavours.

All of which goes to explain how a book published 60 years ago can still be labelled as the best guide to the subject: for professor of French history Lynn Hunt, “my single most favourite book on the French Revolution”, describing people who were “trying to do something really important, coming up against enormous obstacles in the course of trying to do it, failing, but completely understanding why this would happen in this particular way.”

Discovering gold in the Steppe

 

Gold relief of a stag. The catalogue states it is recumbent, but the impression I get from it is of movement, not stasis

A fascinating exhibition at the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge (Gold of the Great Steppe, September 2021-January 2022) revealed some gorgeous work in gold from prehistoric Kazakhstan (the first millennium BCE). The quality of the work, mainly in gold, was remarkable, and the depictions of animals, especially deer and horses in movement, very fine. There is a wonderful sense of movement and grace from many of the objects. 

But the show left me wanting more. I bought the catalogue, but the catalogue (not for the first time) failed to answer all my questions, or even to include some of the things in the exhibition, notably:

• A comparative timeline of the prehistoric burials shown here, alongside what was happening in England, Greece and Rome at the same time.

• Fascinating reconstructions of costume and horse decorations. Even if conjectural, these figures bring the collection to life. Yet these reconstructions are not shown in the catalogue, and we have no way of knowing how the team established how the objects in the exhibition would be worn.
• Some idea of what other things were happening in neighbouring regions at the time. The catalogue, for example, shows an astonishing Scythian amphora from the 4th century BCE (now in the Hermitage), so contemporaneous with these burials. Was this known to the people here?

However amazing the objects and the skill in creating them, I’d like to know more – where the gold and iron came from, for example. Overall, my feeling is that the fascination of this show would be greater by seeing more context. What was the relationship between the Scythians and the Saka? Since it is referred to in the catalogue as the “Saka-Scythian era”, a comparison would be valuable. Elsewhere, there are references to the “early Saka period” and the “classical Saka period” – a timeline or chronology would help. The catalogue has no index, so for all I know these terms are explained somewhere. For simpletons like me, some more signposting would be useful: I didn’t know what a kurgan was (a burial ground, but it’s two or three bays into the exhibition before you realise this). I couldn’t find in the catalogue anything that told me when the Bronze Age was, and Wikipedia tells me it was 3300 to 1200 BCE – hence ending before the period when the objects in this exhibition were dated to (around 800 – 400 BCE). What does this mean?  Perhaps it is one sign of success for an exhibition to leave the viewer asking so many questions. At the end, what I remember most is the idea of movement conveyed by the gold objects attached to clothing. 

What the lockdown means to me

 

Every day for the past five or six years I have walked the dog along the path beside the evocatively named Hobson’s Brook, a tiny stream (barely more than that) built to carry fresh water into Cambridge. Today, the path is surrounded by mature trees that, even if they don’t date back to the building of the brook in the 17th century, must be at least 100 or more years old. 

The largest single trees on the walk, which is only half a mile or so long, are over a hundred feet tall. These trees are like the elder statesmen in a parliament, looking down over their younger companions, and no doubt providing an example to the young upstarts of how to live and to behave properly. These trees are the ultimate survivors. 

Today I discovered (by looking at the leaves and consulting a tree guide) that those three or four enormous trees are actually black poplars. On examining one fallen leaf (the tree was so enormous that the lowest branches were unreachable) you could see the heart-shaped leaves with slightly serrated edges.  It wasn’t difficult to identify them, but I must admit I’ve walked past these giant trees hundreds of times, without ever bothering to know more about them. Not only do I know the tree, I can now see if each tree is male or female – black poplars are dioecious, which means each tree is either male or female, but not both. 

These black poplars form part of my everyday existence, even before I could name them. During the lockdown (which is now easing, but which last summer, the summer of 2020, was at its most restrictive), the walk by the Brook was one of the few activities outside the house left to me. You couldn’t travel, or go to offices, or meet other people, but you were still allowed to walk the dog. That discovery of a new name was, for me, something of a revelation. I’m not a tree expert. Beyond oak, sycamore, willow, and the common names, I am lost. And I saw things in a new light.

A piece by Joe Moran in the TLS (June 18, 2020) describes everyday life during the lockdown (“All cities are the same at dawn”). After describing a video posted by a BBC journalist of his car journey through a deserted West End of London, which was startling because of the emptiness of the city (“empty cities are compelling because they bear the traces of our lives as inescapably social beings”), he describes the mundane reality of everyday existence, and lists some 20th-century French writers who deal with, even celebrate, the everyday: Henri Lefebvre, Maurice Blanchot, and most of all Georges Perec. Perec recommended logging the minutiae of daily existence: what you could see from a street café, all the food you eat for one year, and other mindless tasks. The point, according to Perec, is that life is a spell that can be broken. To follow Perec's suggestion would be for me like sinking further into quicksand.  Yet, argues Moran, we really don’t want to break that spell. “Crises make us long for a return to normality, where everyday life is mere background noise … the daily grind that Parisians call metro-boulot-dodo (commute – work – sleep) had its compensations after all.” That’s a rather perverse response to what is probably the longest lockdown any of us has experienced. Perhaps my revelation from one black poplar leaf suggests otherwise. For a small moment, the boredom and repetitive seeing without knowledge was interrupted. Now I have engaged with that tree, I’ll never look at it in quite the same way again. Every time I walk past it, that black poplar will drag me out of my reverie. 

 

Why does feeding Britain require a larger navy?

 

The food we eat: where it comes from, how nutritious it is, if we have access to healthy food, are vitally important topics. We make food choices every day. We question why food is flown from Peru when it appears it could be grown in the UK. We see endless repetitions of slogans aimed at improving our food consumption (“five a day”!) Is there any logic behind it? 

So it’s all the more disappointing that Tim Lang’s book, Feeding Britain, is such a poor discussion. I have to report that if you are interested in the above questions, Tim Lang’s book is not the place to start. Sadly, Tim Lang, despite being Professor of Food Policy at City University, has not written a very coherent or well-argued book. Anyone trying to get an idea of food policy from this book will be left confused and, I’m afraid to say, led astray by some very curious arguments. 

Perhaps one reason for the disappointing book is that appears to be based at least in part on a 2018 report, of which Professor Lang was co-author: Feeding Britain: Food Security after Brexit. Notice the change in subtitle from the report, and this book: Feeding Britain: Our Food Problems and How to Fix Them. The title of the report sums up this book more accurately, but I would never have bought a book with such a subtitle, and I think I’m not alone in that opinion. This might also explain why his book is called “Feeding Britain”? Surely the problems the author describes are universal, or at least apply to all the wealthier countries of the world, as the author himself admits on page 424? 

Unfortunately, there are other echoes of what appears to be a UK Government policy document. For example [p135] “But PAS 96 took HACCP one stage further, proposing an ancillary system to HACCP it named TACCP – Threat Assessment Critical Control Points.” 

I can’t claim to have read all the book, but I have read enough to see it is not worth my time completing it. In this post, I will cover his main argument, then give some examples of problems I have with the rhetoric, and some specific examples where I think the argument plain wrong. To save you, reader, from having to plough through the entire book, here is my summary and commentary. 

Argument of the book

Mr Lang argues that Britain needs a food policy. To be precise, Britan needs a “food system” policy, by which he means a policy for the entire process of food creation, delivery, sale and consumption – not just the food supply chain. His book comprises three parts:

In the first part, he argues that Britain needs a food defence policy: Britain has to make sure that it is less reliant on imported food. He calls for government intervention to ensure this policy is carried out. To ensure this, he calls for many changes, including a larger navy to “protect” food imports.

In part two, he discusses several of the most important “food problems”. He lists 12, and some of them are central issues for discussions about the food supply. 

In part three, he suggests a “food plan”, which comprises largely a series of centralized government initiatives for managing a food policy.  After yet another repetition that “too much prime land is being built on” [p434], his recommendations are mainly exhortations for more government input and centralized planning.  For example:

o   A Food Defence Review [p445]

o   An audit of what could be grown more in the UK [p446] (an excellent idea)

o   A tax on food advertising and e-media [p449]

o   A new National Food Resilience and Sustainability Council [p450]

o   Inequality reduction must be a principle at the heart of UK food policy [p454]

You get the idea. The ideas are worthy, but have little political or economic awareness. They don’t include any discussion of the implications of trying to impose food policy on a populace that prefers Mars Bars to apples. 

Antiphrasis

Tim Lang is one of those slippery writers who claims he isn’t saying what he really wants to say. Moreover, he makes these claims not once, but several times. Saying one thing while you mean another – combined with repetition:

Page xx: “The UK has undue food reliance on external sources”.

Page 14: “Britain does not feed itself. Some say it doesn't matter. I think it does. I do not favour autarky – only food from here ... but argue that to allow the current decline is risky.”

Page 27: “There is a mismatch between what our current food system delivers and what we ought to be doing to make UK food secure … I am not arguing a “pull up the drawbridge” position; simply that we would do well to face our own contradictions”

 There are several further references to “autarky”, a word the author is clearly fond of using. The aim is to make us feel uncomfortable that we Britons do not farm more. 

Confusion

Of course the term “sustainable” has become one of those words that means whatever you want it to mean. In this book, the author appears to conflate food sustainability with food security (two very different topics). It is the food security angle that leads Prof Lang to complain that the British Royal Navy has too few ships (but more about that later).

Irrelevances

Without the above summary in mind, any reader risks getting lost in trying to follow Mr Lang’s various tangential discussions. For example (page 28)

UK land use is profligate … We keep building houses on prime land, or putting motorways across it … land is a precious resource. 

As far as I know, the UK Government is currently paying farmers not to cultivate some of their land. I did not realise the UK needs to cultivate more land. But that is one of the recommendations Lang makes in part three, as part of his “Great Food Transformation”.  

So much of the book’s excessive length is because it keeps drifting from the subject. How else can you explain, for example, the lengthy descriptions of Ro-Ro ferries (page 170), most of which, the author admits, are not carrying food at all? What is the relevance of the dividends paid by Eurotunnel? What is the relevance of the growth in capacity of Sheerness port, when it is not stated what proportion (if any) of this capacity relates to food? I cannot see any indication from the port website that it carries any food at all.  In any case, Sheerness port accounts for a fraction of a per cent of UK port traffic. 

Repetition

·      Anything important will be repeated several times in the book. For example, Lang repeats descriptions of supermarket shelves: (page 14) “Britain is awash with food.” (page 26) “Supermarkets are full of food.”

Poor structure and indexing

The book is not helped by inadequate indexing. Terms such as “HFSS” are used throughout the book without, as far as I can see, ever being spelt out. “WRAP” is, in contrast, spelt out in the index, but not in the text of the book. Lang appears to differentiate “horticulture” from “agriculture”, but there is no clear definition of what he means by horticulture. He claims that horticulture represents only a tiny proportion of cultivated land in the UK, but without a clear definition of what he means by horticulture, it is difficult to respond to his assertion. 

Questionable claims

·    The author argues for greater state control of the food supply, referring mainly to rationing during and after World War II, without evidence that it improved the health of the nation. There is very little discussion of what wartime measures were implemented. The author repeatedly worries about the size of the British Navy:

In 2017, in the course of analyses of potential threats from Brexit, it emerged that the UK Border Force has just three vessels operations to protect sea borders … this remains a pathetically small border force to protect ship-borne food traffic. [p138]

Four pages (pp137-141) are devoted to the inadequacy of UK naval defences. This is the first I have heard of the UK Border Force having responsibility to protect merchant shipping. Does Mr Lane expect piracy in the English Channel, perhaps? 

Misuse of statistics

Here are two examples. The impression I get is that Prof Lang interprets statistics the way he chooses, regardless of the figures in front of him. These examples are sufficient to make me very dubious about his other arguments making use of statistics. 

Is the UK more or less self-sufficient in food today than 75 years ago? On page 8, we are told that the UK in 1939 produced a third of its food requirements. Today, we are told (on page xx) that the UK produces 50% of its food requirements. On page 14, we are asked to examine this “decline”. It looks like an increase to me. 

Two pages (pp30-31) are dedicated to graphs of life expectancy in England and Wales. The author shows statistics of increasing life expectancy over the last 100 years. However, the two graphs do not agree. Life expectancy for females is shown as higher than for males in 2001 in one graph, and lower in the other graph. Neither graph shows an absolute decline in life expectancy, although one graph shows a declining rate of increase. Neither graph includes the dotted line referred to in the text. In any case, the author continues, triumphantly: “It is true. Life expectancy has risen … but not all those life years are healthy.” How are we to interpret this? Life expectancy has not gone up, whatever the statistics tell you, and in any case, they aren’t the real measure. You could argue that life expectancy depends on many factors, of which food is only one. But the author claims (without attribution) that “food critics” who “have lost a sense of proportion” in claiming that “in the order of things British food is a great twentieth-century success story.” This is the straw man line of reasoning: misrepresenting an opposing argument in order to further one's own [Wikipedia]. 

Poor use of language

Mr Lang’s use of phrases to emphasise his message often have the result of making it more obscure. For example, the author describes “genetic chance”(not indexed) for the random way in which “a child born to affluent in-work parents thrived. Others did not.” [p10]. This is nothing to do with genetics. A child adopted by wealthy parents would thrive. And what has this got to do with food? Other dubious terminology he uses include a reference to the Whig interpretation of history, and a statement that the UK imports more food than it grows. This is true, but it is not what economists would describe as “market failure” (p78). Nelson did not look through his telescope with a “disinterested” eye [p439]. If he had, he would have seen the other ships. 

 

I came away from the book not much wiser about how to create a sustainable food supply, apart from thinking it would be best to start with a different book – and different publisher. 

Wisbech: What happened “one of the most perfect streets of England”?

 

North Brink, Wisbech, with its pedestrian-friendly pavement

Wisbech was run down, certainly. In the main (Market) square there wasn’t much sign of any big-name shops, although Costa Coffee was busy. There were a few drunks around, and groups in the public spaces. The Wisbech Museum was surrounded by scaffolding, with a couple of drinkers admiring it from across the beautiful Georgian place in front of it.  A wine bar in a side street looked like the busiest site in the centre (at 4pm). 

But none of that explains why what Pevsner described as “one of the most perfect Georgian streets of England” was so run down – and needlessly so. North Brink and South Brink are streets facing each other across the River Nene. North Brink is the finer, including Peckover House, but it is interesting all the way down. Unfortunately it has been turned into a one-way street, which means that traffic moves down it fast. Worse, it is impossible to stand on the river-side of the street, which you need to do to get a good look at the buildings. Instead of a pavement, the surface is very large pebbles that are impossible to walk on. There are double yellow lines on both sides (although the idea of anyone trying to stop on the river side is a joke). One of the greatest streets in England cannot, in other words, be experienced properly. 

South Brink is no better. It is one of the main streets out of the centre, with a lot of traffic in both directions – which is curious, since a few hundred metres away is a dual carriageway (Churchill Street) running through the centre of Wisbech. I don’t see the need for two main arteries in the same direction out of the centre. 

I’m not expecting all the inhabitants of Wisbech to be desperate for an aesthetic experience. But all the towns I have seen in France with a historic centre, sensitively pedestrianised and made attractive, seem to have had an effect on the inhabitants. To put it bluntly, beauty rubs off on you, without you noticing. 

We tried (as many people do) to walk down North Brink and then back up South Brink. Sadly, there was no footbridge to enable you to cross from one side to the other of the river. All in all, the town planning of this wonderful street ensures that any visit will be short and not very pleasant. Few towns in the UK have managed to mangle their heritage in such a comprehensive way. The good news, I suppose, is that it could be fixed. Heritage Lottery funding, perhaps? With a bit of love and attention, Peckover House could be seen in all its glory. 

Farewell, London Review of Books

Literary periodicals such as the London Review of Books have more than one role. They provide a bridge between the academic world, which steadily, but perhaps with some justification, encroaches on every area of intellectual judgement in our lives. Was Henry VIII a good or a bad king? Your view will today be largely determined by an academic, or an academic consensus. The consensus will change over time, but it is the academy that makes the decision. Of course, there is disagreement, but in the arts, as well as in science, there is an expert view that we ignore at our peril. Hilary Mantel writes historical fiction, and she can take any attitude she likes – but she would not be taken seriously if she strayed too far from the “official” academic line.

As I have argued elsewhere, one of the challenges posed by the academy is that it is a closed world to outsiders. Not having access to the world of scholarship, we cannot see the reviews written by academics that form such an important part of defining the academic orthodoxy. So the literary periodicals, such as the TLS, the NYRB, and the LRB (to use their common abbreviations), play an essential role. These publications are aimed the perhaps mythical general reader. They enable “common readers” to follow theh debates about history, politics, the environment, and about writers.

If that is the case, why abandon reading one of them, the London Review of Books? I’ve been dutifully subscribing to this publication for several years, but with increasing dissatisfaction. The LRB, like all the literary periodicals that exist on the income they receive from subscriptions, has an element of entertainment to it. Readers don’t just want to read improving literature, they want to enjoy what they are reading.

Unfortunately, the LRB has lost sight, both of the educational role and the entertainment role. I know that Mary-Kay Wilmer, founder of the LRB, has been very heavily involved throughout its life and whatever editorial stamp the LRB has is largely her work. Perhaps then it is significant to discover something of her style in a celebratory piece by one of the LRB staff (presumably appointed by her): 

Mary-Kay once wrote a sign that was taped above the tea station at the paper’s old offices in Tavistock Square. ‘Please wash your cup,’ it said. ‘There’s nobody who doesn’t resent doing other people’s washing-up.’ When Karl Miller saw the sign, he laughed and asked whether she was responsible for its ‘Johnsonian cadences’. If you want a manifesto of an editor’s style, just read those sentences again. In them you will find the LRB’s ideal tone. [LRB, 18 February 2021, p8] 

Well, I read those sentences again, and I don’t find them particularly “Johnsonian”. I find the second sentence unnecessarily overwritten. How about “Why should others do your washing-up?” I’m afraid to say every issue of the LRB contains infelicitous phrases and poor use of English, text that cries out (to my thinking) for a good editor. How about a film review, from the same issue: 

There is plenty of angry talk in Regina King’s One Night in Miami – available on Amazon Prime and adapted from Kemp Power’s play – but the cruellest remark is very discreet … 

If you have two things to say about a film that spring to mind when you start writing your review, you could (as here) just string them together with “and”, even though they don’t have the slightest connection. It’s the sort of thing a good editor should pick up. 

My other gripe is the elitism of the contributors. I frequently feel they are not writing for a common reader, but for each other, or to demonstrate (or to reveal) their superiority from the average reader. Look, for example, at the start of a review by Patricia Lockwood: 

Do you understand what a pleasure it is not to have to begin with this little biographical section? 

We are never told what “this” refers to, but it subsequently becomes clear she is probably talking about the few lines of biography often provided on the cover or in the prelims of a book – and, presumably, the presence or absence of biographical description in the book she is reviewing. I don’t mind an arresting opening, but I object to her hectoring tone. Why not “It is a pleasure not to have to begin reading a book with …”? As it stands, from reading the very first sentence I feel I am somehow in the wrong, and it’s my fault if I don’t know what she is talking about. It might be easier if Ms Lockwood were to state that the book she is reviewing, a book by Elena Ferrante entitled in the English translation The Lying Life of Adults, has an Italian title called Frantumaglia. Would it be too much to explain somewhere that, despite one not being the translation of the other, both titles refer to the same book? We are told, several paragraphs into the review, that the book includes an essay with autobiographical questions from a magazine presented to the author.  Now we begin to understand that first sentence. 

But more important than the poor English and the cavalier approach to reviewing is the freedom given to the writers to drift away from the purpose of their writing to indulge in what can only be described as free association. Giving writers the luxury of several thousand words rather than several hundred is usually disastrous in the LRB, and it is all too common. Here is another example from Patricia Lockwood, complaining that many of the people who interviewed Elena Ferrante were too insistent: 

One journalist was so disgustingly persistent in this attack that I looked her up online. I found a picture of her wearing a green ring I coveted – and then softened, as I imagined a novel about us stealing it back and forth from each other forever. 

Is this a book review or am I expected to be wildly appreciative of Ms Lockwood’s not very relevant dreaming? I’m afraid to say the LRB increasingly appears to me to be a kind of circus, where we are admitted (after paying) to admire the reviewers/performers for their daring skills, but it is clear we are never, ever, to be close to their level of wit, elegance, and skill.  The reviewers may be on a par with the authors of the works reviewed, but they are never on a level with us. So for this reader at least, I will resign myself that I have no aspirations to being anything but a common reader who lacks the patience to remain comfortable in my role as a minor consumer of star writing. 

Most issues of the LRB have an advert (filed under “Writing and Arts Retreats”) for holiday apartments in Greece. These aren’t just holiday lets, however; they are in “the village where the great author Paddy [sic] Leigh-Fermor lived and wrote … read Leigh Fermor’s Mani and follow in his footsteps.” The advert mentions you will have a private swimming pool, no doubt the very pool that Leigh Fermor swam in daily. Yet another opportunity to pay homage to the elite. Perhaps by swimming in Paddy's pool I might learn to accept more uncomplainingly my very limited role in the world of letters as represented by the LRB.