T H I S W E E K
No. 6343
October 25 2024
the-tls.co.uk
UK £4.50 | USA $8.99
T H E T I M E S L I T E R A R Y S U P P L E M E N T
Ana Alicia Garza The uncommercial Dickens | Daniel Johnson Goethe’s cruelty Johnjoe McFadden Richard Dawkins looks to the future | Paula Marantz Cohen Wall St women
The real Greek golden age Peter Thonemann on John Ma’s radical reappraisal of ancient history
Caryatid Porch of the Erechtheion, Athens © Reynold Mainse/ Design Pics/Gett y Images
In this issue
T he popular story of the glory that was Greece begins at the monumental Lion Gate of the Bronze Age citadel of Mycenae, attributed to the work of giant Cyclopes by the traveller Pausanias. After an intervening dark age, the narrative con- tinues with the rise of the Greek city-state, which reaches its apogee in the democratic Athens of Pericles, Plato and the Parthenon. A tale of woe follows. Despite the Athenian statesman Demos- thenes’ attempt to rally resistance against Alexander the Great’s father, Philip II, the Greek cities are crushed by the Macedonian tyrant. Two centuries later Rome’s legions deliver the coup de grace. Thereafter the Greek cities linger on in twilight and their ruling oligarchs become servile tax collectors for Caesar. John Ma will have none of it.
In Polis, Ma argues that in the “classical” period celebrated by western poets and historians, the Greek cities reached their nadir, not their peak. Vicious class war and 100 years of violent intercity competition and empire-building disfigured this so-called “golden age”. According to Ma, however, the later, convergent model of the Greek polis was blessed with “stability, prosperity and egalitarian self-government” for seven centuries from 350BC. Under the Romans the polis was a partner in the empire, not its victim, and the People’s assembly continued to wield power. Oligarchs, writes Ma, “coexisted with the strong, unyielding constraints of the democratic institutions, instruments and ideology, inherited from the great convergence”. In his TLS review, Peter Thonemann finds himself “shaking my head in astonishment and admiration” while reading Ma’s counterintuitive narrative, and hails Polis as “history-writing at its very best”.
In her review of the new Oxford editions of The Uncommercial Traveller, edited by J. H. Alexander, and Nicholas Nickleby, edited by Elizabeth James and Joel J. Brattin with Alexander, Ana Alicia Garza describes Charles Dickens’s defining purpose: “what he absolutely refused to do was to let his readers get away with being mindlessly naive or unaware of hard truths” about the ills of Victorian society. A. N. Wilson has hard truths to tell about Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In Goethe: His Faustian life, reviewed by Daniel Johnson, the man who emerges is “a callous colossus”. As a member of the privy council in Weimar, Goethe upheld a death sentence against an unmarried servant who had killed her baby in desperate circumstances, when even his Duke favoured life imprisonment. In Faust the fictional Gretchen is reprieved for the same crime.
MARTIN IVENS
Editor
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2
3 LITERATURE
6 LETTERS TO THE
EDITOR
ANA ALICIA GARZA
PIOTR GWIAZDA ELIZABETH BROGDEN
The Uncommercial Traveller Charles Dickens; Edited by J. H. Alexander. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby Charles Dickens; Edited by Elizabeth James and Joel J. Brattin, with J. H. Alexander The Homeless Stefan Żeromski; Translated by Stephanie Kraft Confessions of a Thug Philip Meadows Taylor; Edited by Kim A. Wagner
National literatures, Gaia, The Fortsas Hoax, etc
7 ECONOMICS
PAULA MARANTZ COHEN She-Wolves – The untold history of women on Wall Street
Paulina Bren
8 CLASSICS
PETER THONEMANN
Polis – A new history of the ancient Greek city-state from the early Iron Age to the end of antiquity John Ma
10 GERMAN LITERATURE DANIEL JOHNSON
MARCEL LEPPER
12 BIOGRAPHY
TIM WHITMARSH
Goethe – His Faustian life A. N. Wilson Goethe und die Juden W. Daniel Wilson
Classics, Love, Revolution – The legacies of Luigi Settembrini Andrea Capra and Barbara Graziosi
13 MEMOIRS
13 POEM
OONAGH DEVITT TREMBLAY My Good Bright Wolf – A memoir Sarah Moss
OLUWASEUN OLAYIWOLA Coast
14 ARTS
J. E. SMYTH ROD MENGHAM
16 FICTION
MIRANDA FRANCE LILY HERD CHRISTOPHER SHRIMPTON NICHOLAS ROYLE
18 POLITICS & HISTORY LAWRENCE DOUGLAS
KEITH M. BROWN
Silent Sherlock – Three classic cases (London Film Festival, BFI Southbank) I Followed You to the End Tracey Emin (White Cube Bermondsey)
The Last Dream Pedro Almodóvar; Translated by Frank Wynne Nobody’s Empire Stuart Murdoch Journeys and Flowers Mercè Rodoreda; Translated by Nick Caistor and Gala Sicart Olavide Panics Barbara Molinard; Translated by Emma Ramadan
No Democracy Lasts Forever – How the Constitution threatens the United States Erwin Chemerinsky From Tudor to Stuart – The regime change from Elizabeth I to James I Susan Doran
20 SCIENCE
22 BIBLIOGRAPHY
23 MUSIC
24 IN BRIEF
26 FILM
27 AFTERTHOUGHTS
28 NB
KEITH FRANKISH JOHNJOE MCFADDEN
SIMON HOROBIN JOSHUA RICE
FLORA WILLSON
PHILIPPA SNOW GRAHAM DASELER
IAN SANSOM
M.C.
An Artificial History of Natural Intelligence David W. Bates The Genetic Book of the Dead Richard Dawkins
The Medieval Scriptorium – Making books in the Middle Ages Sara J. Charles History in Flames – The destruction and survival of medieval manuscripts Robert Bartlett
The Shortest History of Music Andrew Ford
Seated Woman Guillaume Apollinaire. Kalmann and the Sleeping Mountain Joachim B. Schmidt. Modern and Contemporary Yorkshire Poetry Kyra Piperides. John Berger Iona Heath. Duelo sin brújula Carme López Mercader. Black Arsenal Clive Chijioke Nwonka and Matthew Harle, editors. Nightshade Mother Gwyneth Lewis
How Coppola Became Cage Zach Schonfeld Peerless – Rouben Mamoulian, Hollywood and Broadway Kurt Jensen
Manual labour – The golden age of instruction books
Fleur Adcock’s reviews, Byron (et al) in Cheltenham, RLS’s pubs
Editor MARTIN IVENS (editor@the-tls.co.uk) Deputy Editor ROBERT POTTS (robert.potts@the-tls.co.uk) Associate Editor CATHARINE MORRIS (catharine.morris@the-tls.co.uk) Assistant to the Editor LISA TARLING (lisa.tarling@the-tls.co.uk) Editorial enquiries (queries@the-tls.co.uk) Managing Director JAMES MACMANUS (deborah.keegan@news.co.uk) Advertising Manager JONATHAN DRUMMOND (jonathan.drummond@the-tls.co.uk)
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TLS
OCTOBER 25, 2024
