Reading
For early audiences, the thrill of the chase was part of the fun, and it was better to travel down the byways of interpretation, individually or through social consultation, than to arrive at a fixed conclusion. For writers and publishers, the cultivation of uncertainty, even the sowing of confusion, was a useful resource.
Are we being told that to seek truth in books is dangerous? Perhaps. But Lucy Ives also seems to be saying that books are things we pour meaning into as much as they dispense it. ‘A novel is a medicine bundle,’ Ursula Le Guin writes, ‘holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us.’
The sad reality is that Claudine Gay and Harvard University were upended by a bunch of ruthless right-wing politicians and activists, desperate friends of Israel alarmed by the rise of a pro-Palestinian constituency, disturbed mega-donors and resentful insiders seething at a ‘diversity’ ethos that they perceive as lowering standards.
Is Bella Baxter an unruly kind of feminist? Yes, in a way, but before we make this claim we need to understand what else she is – principally an uninformed child in an adult body.
The Blue CarRain began to speckle the pavementThat is known as an establishing shot.*We claim things happenin the pastto prove we have survived them.The idea is that the past is sealedand cannot...
You do walk through the world with some people. You don’t know anything about them, but you walk through the world; if they die, you do not get used to it.
As always in Guston, there is a sense of what cannot be shown, or has been erased, and can only be gestured towards: ropes instead of lynchings, clubs and sticks instead of beatings. But the props look like props.
Like sculptures, fossils need curators. A raw lump of stone must be prepared and cleaned before it can be studied as a fossil; scientists of the past may well have inadvertently destroyed interesting surface layers. Still, most of its molecular secrets will have remained locked inside – as long as a fossil isn’t blasted into space, it can be handed down to future generations to explore.
I know a good deal about the Bonhomme Richard. I know that it was originally a French merchant vessel called the Duc de Duras; that it was loaned to the fledgling US navy; and that it took part in the War of Independence. I know it was 152 feet long, weighed 998 tonnes and carried 42 guns. But at the time this replica was created in 1975, I knew only that it was my dad’s obsession.
The letters page from London Review of Books Vol. 46 No. 2 (Saturday 13 January 2024)
Table of contents from London Review of Books Vol. 46 No. 2 (Saturday 13 January 2024)
Keats was deeply interested in suffering. He came by it naturally and also medically; sometimes it appeared as an impulse towards poetic tragedy. He wants what he has always wanted, to soothe pain. If he cannot soothe it, he wants to redeem it as creative power.
Marie Laurencin’s independence and her refusal to pander to her patrons only makes her more compelling as a ‘femme peintre’. Like Helena Rubinstein and Coco Chanel, she was ambitious and not always nice.
The BBC was a postwar phenomenon and a promising field for a woman. When Hilda Matheson met John Reith he recruited her to be director of talks on the phenomenal salary of £900 a year. She was 38 and unmarried, fully formed as a character. Yet the Matheson of this period remains, despite her biographers’ efforts, somewhat opaque.
Apart from getting rid of the Bolsheviks, the aims of the Western intervention were remarkably ill-defined. Sometimes it was to protect British interests and keep the Germans, Turks, Poles, or Japanese imperial or territorial ambitions in check; sometimes to support ‘democratic forces’ in Russia, notably the transient Czechs; and sometimes just to back up the (anti-democratic) Whites.
With the exception of a brief threat to the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, in November 2021, the war was only of interest to a few specialist staff at foreign ministries. The idea that there are ‘forgotten’ wars raises the question of who is doing the forgetting. Certainly not the participants or their civilian victims.
When Martin Luther King Jr. walked up the steps to the Lincoln Memorial, he delivered a speech that would change history. With passion and eloquence, he showed us a vision of true equality—an America where people of all colors and backgrounds could enjoy life, liberty, and a piece of this sweet Fort Lauderdale timeshare I’m offering.
Seriously, he would have wanted you to sign up right away. It’s a primo bog-side location in the heart of the city’s outskirts.
America was founded on principles of justice. Unfortunately, it took over a century to begin living up to those ideals. Only when Dr. King uttered his famous words, “I have a dream,” did we realize that he probably meant to follow up with, “that you will all go for the Platinum Package, with access to a reasonably well-maintained thirteen-hole golf course.”
That, and the fact that you haven’t given me your credit card number yet, might be the greatest injustice of all.
Denial in Israel is a means of keeping supporters abroad on message. We in the Global North need lies so that we can continue to see our support for Israeli action as morally possible.
Gareth Roberts reflects ruefully on his own part in the wrongful conviction of an innocent sub-postmaster and looks at what should be done to exonerate each of them
I usually do animals but I thought this was pretty heartwarming for a cold January night: JV Last at the Bulwark featured this. It’s about a minor league hockey team, the Hershey Bears, which has a fundraising event in which locals bring stuffed animals for donation. When the team scores its first goal they throw them on to the ice. Last wrote: This year, Hershey fans donated almost 74,599 stuffies during the game and you have to see the video to believe it. The rain comes slowly at first and then it picks up. But then it just keeps going, a flood-tide of plush. Watch and bask in the warmth of people being good. It’s out there. We just have to look for it.
Edelman, the world’s largest PR firm, used its authoritative research on consumer trust to help fossil fuel companies fight climate action.
Ναι, το ΜέΡΑ25 είμαστε εδώ. Εκτός Βουλής, αλλά με την βούληση να κάνουμε ακόμα μεγαλύτερη διαφορά τώρα απ’ ότι όταν είμασταν στη Βουλή. Ναι, είμαστε εδώ. Με την εκλογική ήττα να μας έχει βελτιώσει. Είμαστε εδώ περήφανοι για το κοινοβουλευτικό μας έργο αλλά και προβληματισμένοι από το γεγονός ότι τόσες και τόσοι που μας εκτιμούν, […]
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