LRB 17 November 2022

 

London Review of Books 17 November 2022

Draft notes from a reading of the magazine (WiP - will be edited further)

 

Letters

Claire Spencer, Victor Reus, Jim Carmichael, Tim Barker, Gareth Evans, James Parker, Andrew Lewis, J. Cohn

David Runciman

A Mess of Their Own Making

David Runciman on the Tories. But he still feels the need to deprecate Corbyn. This:

"had it been Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell who spooked the markets, Labour would have stuck with them out of a determination not to be pushed around by anyone"

is obvious nonsense given the repeated attempts of the PLP and the Party Staff to undermine and get rid of Corbyn. At least on this occasion the LRB did subsequently publish a letter (by Stephen Daker) making this point.

 

The LRB, including Runciman, demonstrated its blinkered establishment credentials by criticising, and mocking, Corbyn from the moment he became leader.

David Goldblatt

Inside Qatar: Hidden Stories from One of the Richest Nations on Earth by John McManus

Qatar and the 2022 Fifa World Cup: Politics, Controversy, Change by Paul Michael Brannagan and Danyel Reiche

Martha Barratt

At the Barbican: Carolee Schneemann

Rosemary Hill

Menu Design in Europe: A Visual and Culinary History of Graphic Styles and Design, 1800-2000 edited by Jim Heimann

Anthony Grafton

The Week: A History of the Unnatural Rhythms that Made Us Who We Are by David M. Henkin

Patricia Lockwood

Liberation Day by George Saunders

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders

Ailbhe Darcy

Poem: ‘Grand Guignol’

Michael Wood

The Aphorisms of Franz Kafka edited by Reiner Stach, translated by Shelley Frisch

The longest and most bewildering language aphorism is this one:

"For everything outside the world of the senses, language can be used only by way of suggestion, but can never even come close to being used representationally because it is concerned only with possession and its associations, in accordance with the world of the senses."

Tom Stevenson

The Revolutionary Decade

Tom Stevenson in Tunisia. Until recently​ Tunisia was seen as the lone success story of the Arab Spring. But on 25 July last year, President Kais Saied summoned the prime minister to the presidential palace in Carthage and dismissed him, declared a state of emergency, suspended parliament and sent the army to block the entrances to the building.

Tormod Johansen

Short Cuts: Lawless v. Ireland

Liam Shaw

Life on the Rocks by Juli Berwald

Joanne O’Leary

A Splendid Intelligence: The Life of Elizabeth Hardwick by Cathy Curtis

The Uncollected Essays by Elizabeth Hardwick, edited by Alex Andriesse

T.J. Clark

On Mike Davis

Clare Jackson

Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris

Madeleine Schwartz

Diary: Teaching in the Banlieue