We forget what for, exactly, but the good guys should always get prizes. Down at the Café Coup de Poing we gathered round to look at the photo of the award, Jon Snow handing it over, etc.
Our friend Andrés, admittedly spliffed up at the time, thought it was a photo of Pavarotti, and we had to point out that Luciano recently passed away, and that this really was our journalist friend.
In the flesh, you might say.
Keep singing, Matthew!
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Stephen Glover – still can’t think
Poor Stephen Glover. Writing about the right of proprietors to intervene in the newspapers they own, he manages to be both agitated and confused. (Indy Media, 21 April. Compare his smooth nastiness about Prescott’s bulimia in the Mail on the same day – comfortable and at home there, of course).
Evidently bothered by a solicitor’s letter from Withers, representing the Barclay Brothers – owners of the Telegraph – he makes a public apology. He didn’t mean to suggest that the Brothers had caused either the Telegraph or the Spectator to spike / alter pieces on Lord Deedes, Bill Deedes having said, apparently, that the Barclays regime was “a stinking mob”. (First question: how can two people be a mob? If it wasn’t the Brothers specifically, how can Withers make a case?)
Stephen plunges on, finding an instance of “legitimate editorial intervention” which “Oddly…concerns me”.
Me again!
Sir David Barclay wrote to then-Spectator editor Boris Johnson in 2004, complaining about something that Glover had written about the Telegraph. Boris – sorry, that should be Mr Boris Johnson – wrote back to say a) ignore the guy, and b) “I will ensure that nothing of the kind is repeated”. Stephen thinks that this is an example of “a gentle guiding hand”, exercised by “the guardians of venerable publications”.
For us out here it looks rather different. It looks like an owner protecting himself against criticism by bringing pressure to bear. Boris Johnson is entirely compliant, and another opportunity for reasonable comment is lost.
Glover doesn’t seem to realise how much these two stories show him as a weakling and a loser.
Come on Stephen – there’s a difference between a guiding hand and a hand at your throat!
Evidently bothered by a solicitor’s letter from Withers, representing the Barclay Brothers – owners of the Telegraph – he makes a public apology. He didn’t mean to suggest that the Brothers had caused either the Telegraph or the Spectator to spike / alter pieces on Lord Deedes, Bill Deedes having said, apparently, that the Barclays regime was “a stinking mob”. (First question: how can two people be a mob? If it wasn’t the Brothers specifically, how can Withers make a case?)
Stephen plunges on, finding an instance of “legitimate editorial intervention” which “Oddly…concerns me”.
Me again!
Sir David Barclay wrote to then-Spectator editor Boris Johnson in 2004, complaining about something that Glover had written about the Telegraph. Boris – sorry, that should be Mr Boris Johnson – wrote back to say a) ignore the guy, and b) “I will ensure that nothing of the kind is repeated”. Stephen thinks that this is an example of “a gentle guiding hand”, exercised by “the guardians of venerable publications”.
For us out here it looks rather different. It looks like an owner protecting himself against criticism by bringing pressure to bear. Boris Johnson is entirely compliant, and another opportunity for reasonable comment is lost.
Glover doesn’t seem to realise how much these two stories show him as a weakling and a loser.
Come on Stephen – there’s a difference between a guiding hand and a hand at your throat!
Monday, April 14, 2008
Martin Amis nailed by NYT
Martin Amis’s The Second Plane has been nailed in the New York Times (8 April) in terms that should bring shame to reviewers in the UK. Their reviewer pulls no punches, and says what should have been said over here in January when this book first appeared. Michiko Kakutani starts out by calling the book of essays “chuckleheaded”. Whatever that means, she’s not giving a compliment.
Then Kakutani goes for Amis’s objections to the “9/11” shorthand we all now use, calling it a “pretentious and formalistic argument” that shows Amis trying to deal with a tragedy by means of “preening, self-consciously literary musings”. It should be 11/9, you see.
Kakutani points to Amis’s “nonsensical analogy between terrorism and boredom”. Try telling the families affected “that their relatives and friends died in the opening chapter of the ‘age of boredom’ or ‘the global confrontation with the dependent mind’” she writes.
Where boredom is concerned, notice that the publishers of the US edition changed the book’s subtitle to September 11: Terror and Boredom. The UK edition has September 11: 2001 – 2007, to suggest the enduring significance of the absurd little essays Amis began to write just after the event. The American subtitle seems designed to be insulting.
Kakutani reminds us about Amis’s remarks in the London Times about making the Muslim community “suffer” until they get their children to behave. Amis said: “There’s a definite urge – don’t you have it? – to say ‘The Muslim community must suffer until it gets its house in order’”. He later defended himself by saying this was speculative, thinking out loud. But it wasn’t – as any good fiction writer knows, the phrase “don’t you have it?” is complicit, not opening out to truth. And it doesn’t care if you don’t have it, either.
Then there is Amis falling for a Canadian right-wing nutter called Mark Steyn. Steyn is into birthrates, and Amis goes along with him. Western Europe isn’t fertile enough, but Somalia, Afghanistan and Yemen (Yemen?) are. The culture is threatened. (Weirdly, Stein began his journalism career with our old friends at the Indy, back in 1986 when it was set up – appointed by founding editor Stephen Glover, maybe?)
This criticism by Kakutani is more decisive than anything written on the European side – look at how nice and polite Christopher Tayler was in the Guardian Review. Who knows what links of friendship there are in that corrupt little world – come on Chris, you know Amis is wrong, but it’s time to be a bit more coup de poing.
The negative review of Amis in London Review of Books was by Marjorie Perloff – another American, another perceptive woman.
Kakutani also does well something Brit reviewers shy away from – intellectual indebtedness. She spots Amis’s reliance on conservative academic Bernard Lewis, “the Middle East scholar who influenced the thinking of some members of the Bush administration”. She doesn’t miss the influence of our good friend ex-Trot (but still a Trot), Christopher Hitchens, the authoritarian man of the left who supports the Iraq war. And she spots a name new to M. Apache, Sam Harris, an religious-culture author who has been interviewed for a “Jesus never existed” docu called The God Who Wasn’t There – never mind that you may agree, just keep clear of such junk.
Kingsley Amis, Martin’s novelist father, lost his political common sense over the Vietnam War. From 1968 onwards, he was barking mad about it. The idea that he had once been a Communist – which was not well-known at that time – now seems barely credible. Vietnam sent Kingsley off his political rocker (and the young Apache did have a chat with him at the time – you could feel the danger).
9/11 has done the same for his son Martin.
Come on Martin – get back in touch with the rest of us. There may still be time.
Simon Hoggart, ageing slacker at the Guardian, wrote a kind of defence of Amis against the Kakutani assault in Saturday’s paper (12 April). “I suppose the only way to handle such a review is to regard it as a badge of honour. You can’t be a real writer until you’ve been demolished by Ms Kakutani.” Yes, and ha ha, Simon.
Can you not recognise that the NYT review raised serious questions about Amis and the British literary culture that he is part of? This shrugging-off is not the right response. Nor is the “I made that bit up” suggestion that Ms Kakutani might, in some imaginary past, “have made an idiot of herself by loathing, say, Great Expectations”.
Your father, Richard Hoggart, believed in something. What do you believe in, beyond feeble jokes about nothing much?
Then Kakutani goes for Amis’s objections to the “9/11” shorthand we all now use, calling it a “pretentious and formalistic argument” that shows Amis trying to deal with a tragedy by means of “preening, self-consciously literary musings”. It should be 11/9, you see.
Kakutani points to Amis’s “nonsensical analogy between terrorism and boredom”. Try telling the families affected “that their relatives and friends died in the opening chapter of the ‘age of boredom’ or ‘the global confrontation with the dependent mind’” she writes.
Where boredom is concerned, notice that the publishers of the US edition changed the book’s subtitle to September 11: Terror and Boredom. The UK edition has September 11: 2001 – 2007, to suggest the enduring significance of the absurd little essays Amis began to write just after the event. The American subtitle seems designed to be insulting.
Kakutani reminds us about Amis’s remarks in the London Times about making the Muslim community “suffer” until they get their children to behave. Amis said: “There’s a definite urge – don’t you have it? – to say ‘The Muslim community must suffer until it gets its house in order’”. He later defended himself by saying this was speculative, thinking out loud. But it wasn’t – as any good fiction writer knows, the phrase “don’t you have it?” is complicit, not opening out to truth. And it doesn’t care if you don’t have it, either.
Then there is Amis falling for a Canadian right-wing nutter called Mark Steyn. Steyn is into birthrates, and Amis goes along with him. Western Europe isn’t fertile enough, but Somalia, Afghanistan and Yemen (Yemen?) are. The culture is threatened. (Weirdly, Stein began his journalism career with our old friends at the Indy, back in 1986 when it was set up – appointed by founding editor Stephen Glover, maybe?)
This criticism by Kakutani is more decisive than anything written on the European side – look at how nice and polite Christopher Tayler was in the Guardian Review. Who knows what links of friendship there are in that corrupt little world – come on Chris, you know Amis is wrong, but it’s time to be a bit more coup de poing.
The negative review of Amis in London Review of Books was by Marjorie Perloff – another American, another perceptive woman.
Kakutani also does well something Brit reviewers shy away from – intellectual indebtedness. She spots Amis’s reliance on conservative academic Bernard Lewis, “the Middle East scholar who influenced the thinking of some members of the Bush administration”. She doesn’t miss the influence of our good friend ex-Trot (but still a Trot), Christopher Hitchens, the authoritarian man of the left who supports the Iraq war. And she spots a name new to M. Apache, Sam Harris, an religious-culture author who has been interviewed for a “Jesus never existed” docu called The God Who Wasn’t There – never mind that you may agree, just keep clear of such junk.
Kingsley Amis, Martin’s novelist father, lost his political common sense over the Vietnam War. From 1968 onwards, he was barking mad about it. The idea that he had once been a Communist – which was not well-known at that time – now seems barely credible. Vietnam sent Kingsley off his political rocker (and the young Apache did have a chat with him at the time – you could feel the danger).
9/11 has done the same for his son Martin.
Come on Martin – get back in touch with the rest of us. There may still be time.
Simon Hoggart, ageing slacker at the Guardian, wrote a kind of defence of Amis against the Kakutani assault in Saturday’s paper (12 April). “I suppose the only way to handle such a review is to regard it as a badge of honour. You can’t be a real writer until you’ve been demolished by Ms Kakutani.” Yes, and ha ha, Simon.
Can you not recognise that the NYT review raised serious questions about Amis and the British literary culture that he is part of? This shrugging-off is not the right response. Nor is the “I made that bit up” suggestion that Ms Kakutani might, in some imaginary past, “have made an idiot of herself by loathing, say, Great Expectations”.
Your father, Richard Hoggart, believed in something. What do you believe in, beyond feeble jokes about nothing much?
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