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T he TLS is, we like to think, a learned journal but it is not, by our definition, a Learned Journal. Our coverage is too broad for that. This week we review a Life of Ivan Pavlov set amid Stalin and salivating dogs, a haunted history of ghosts, a cultural history of zombies, the German birth of the tragic, the biography of an archbishop and a book about the sense of touch in Renaissance England. Michael Dirda tells the miserable tale of misdeeds and missing dollars during the renovation of the New York Public Library. Modris Eksteins recalls the grand clay feet of post-war Oxford, the ego of A. J. P. Taylor and the great man’s love of using R.W. Johnson’s ideas. Matthew Sturgis reminds us how important, once, were the Sitwells – in painting, poetry, coal-mining and the shooting of wasps.
Meanwhile, in our annual section on the Learned Journal, Claire Lowdon notes a “scoop” in the Canadian quarterly Tin House, in which Ernest Hemingway (pictured) discusses his financial hopes from short stories and other writers invent the kind of rejection letters that so often need no imagination at all. Gillian Tindall reviews The London Gardener, alternatively titled The Gardener’s Intelligencer, a “modest annual” which comes from Duck Island Cottage close to the heart of British government, and describes how the original designer of Regent’s Park hoped to preserve its charms for resident royalty and the very rich.
Adrian Tahourdin assesses the score of the Wisden cricket monthly, Nightwatchman, the lone case of a Test player executed for murder and the precedents for sportsmen becoming media pundits, beginning with the fast bowler of the 1950s, Frank “Typhoon” Tyson, who used to read Wordsworth and Chaucer before setting out to terrorize Australians. David Grumett considers the International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, noting the fading likelihood of unity beweeen Anglicans and Catholics and the place of Methodism for writers of English fiction. Michael Caines introduces Utopian Studies, a biannual in the footsteps of Thomas More from Penn State. Next year Utopia is 500 years old, an anniversary which will be celebrated here beyond the Journals of the Learned.
PS
BIOGRAPHY
3Stephen Lovell
Daniel P. Todes Ivan Pavlov – A Russian life in science
BIBLIOGRAPHY
5Michael Dirda
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 6
CULTURAL STUDIES
7Jonathan Barnes
LITERARY CRITICISM
POEMS
8Oliver Noble Wood
Michael Silk
Katharine Craik
10 22 Jennie Feldman Andrew Motion
Scott Sherman Patience and Fortitude – Power, real estate, and the fight to save a public library
Paine’s ‘Rights of Man’, Berlin’s letters, Norman Lewis, etc
Lisa Morton Ghosts – A haunted history. Roger Luckhurst Zombies – A cultural history. Sharla Hutchison and Rebecca A. Brown, editors Monsters and Monstrosity from the Fin de Siècle to the Millennium
Roberto González Echevarría Cervantes’ ‘Don Quixote’. Ilan Stavans Quixote – The novel and the world Joshua Billings Genealogy of the Tragic – Greek tragedy and German philosophy Joe Moshenska Feeling Pleasures – The sense of touch in Renaissance England
Crete The Realms of Gold
HISTORY
RELIGION
COMMENTARY
ARTS
FICTION
12 Jan Plamper
Ad Putter
13 Peter Sedgwick
14 Michael Holroyd
Jan Marsh Lou Glandfield Then & Now
17 Jerome Boyd Maunsell
Jonathan Arnold
Hal Jensen
19 Roz Dineen
Kate Webb Catherine Scott Sarah Crown Alana Shilling Janoff
Laura Profumo
Ian Morris Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels – How human values evolve; Edited by Stephen Macedo David Matthews Medievalism – A critical history
Peter Webster Archbishop Michael Ramsey – The shape of the Church. Robert Boak Slocum The Anglican Imagination – Portraits and sketches of modern Anglican theologians
Hidden in the forest – The last words of H. R. F. Keating Books in bottles? Freelance TLS April 17, 1981 – Andy Warhol and his ‘Superstars’
Thomas Crow The Long March of Pop – Art, music, and design 1930– 1995. The World Goes Pop (Tate Modern). Jessica Morgan and Flavia Frigeri, editors The World Goes Pop Michael Marissen Tainted Glory in Handel’s Messiah – The unsettling history of the world’s most beloved choral work Nicola Wilson Plaques and Tangles (Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, Royal Court)
Philip Weinstein Jonathan Franzen – The comedy of rage. Jonathan Franzen Purity Anuradha Roy Sleeping on Jupiter Laila Lalami The Moor’s Account Maylis de Kerangal Birth of a Bridge; Translated by Jessica Moore Christian Kracht Imperium; Translated by Daniel Bowles. François Garde What Became of the White Savage; Translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins Robert Seethaler A Whole Life; Translated by Charlotte Collins
POETRY
22 Andrew McCulloch Dannie Abse Ask the Moon – New and collected poems 1948–2014
LEARNED JOURNALS 24 Claire Lowdon
Rory Waterman Gillian Tindall Adrian Tahourdin Michael Caines David Grumett
IN BRIEF
MEMOIRS
BIOGRAPHY
30
32 Modris Eksteins
Frances Wilson
34 Matthew Sturgis
Tin House Poetry The London Gardener, or The Gardener’s Intelligencer The Nightwatchman Utopian Studies International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church
A. W. Clarke Jaspar Tristram; Edited by A. D. Harvey, etc
R. W. Johnson Look Back in Laughter – Oxford’s postwar golden age David Plante Worlds Apart – A memoir
Desmond Seward Renishaw Hall – The story of the Sitwells
NB
35
36 J. C.
This week’s contributors, Crossword
Cover-flap copy, Bond’s Bentley, Shakespeare’s flowers
Cover picture © Ben Welsh/Design Pics/Getty Images; p3 © Ben Pruchnie/Getty Images; p4 © Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images; p5 © 2014, Art Spiegelman; p7 © Indelible Productions/The Kobal Collection; p10 © Lieberenz/ullstein bild via Getty Images; p12 © Nick Turner/Alamy; p14 © John Foley/ Opale/Leemage/Lebrecht Authors; p17 © Bernard Rancillac/DACS 2015; p18 © Manuel Harlan; p19 © Steve Eason/Hulton Archive/Getty Images; p21 © Gattoni/ Leemage/Writer Pictures; p22 © Derek Adams/Writer Pictures; p26 © National Geographic Image Collection/Alamy; p28 © Per-Anders Pettersson/Getty Images; p32 (top) Courtesy Magdalen College Oxford; p32 (bottom) The author’s collection; p36 © Motoring Picture Library/Alamy.
The Times Literary Supplement (ISSN 0307661, USPS 021-626) is published weekly except a double issue in August and December by The Times Literary Supplement Limited, London UK, and distributed in the USA by OCS America Inc., 195 Anderson Avenue, Moonachie, NJ 07074-1621. Periodical postage paid at Moonachie NJ and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: please send address corrections to TLS, P0 Box 3000, Denville, NJ 07834, USA. USA and Canadian retail newsstand copies distributed by Kable Distribution Services, 14 Wall Street, Suite 4C New York, New York 10005
TLS OCTOBER 30 2015
