"Look at the huge success of Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart, The News Agents..." As a happy subscriber to the New Statesman under Jason Cowley's editorship, I dread the possibility of a new editor who wants the magazine to align with The News Agents, let alone the useful idiots Campbell and Stewart, particularly following their poorly judged (to put it extremely mildly) interview with Abu Mohammed al-Jolani/Ahmed al-Sharaa. And I don't want the magazine to be a part of "the Labour family", whatever that is; it sounds like a transformation into an organ of propaganda. The New Statesman has been so good for a while; it could so easily be ruined.
Fatal Shore is a superb book. I love this remark about Hughes from Clive James:
"Hughes is the Bastard from the Bush dressed up as the Wandering Scholar. Thousands of bright young Aussies will want to be him, in the same way that thousands of slightly less bright Aussies want to be the cricketer Shane Warne."
What Sydney University must have been like in that era - not only Hughes and James, but also Germaine Greer, Les Murray, Bruce Beresford, all churning round, full of enthusiasm and ideas.
Thank you (again) for another fascinating read. Luckily, your newsletter arrives a full hour before Helen Lewis's (where you get a shout-out) - if they coincided I would be like Balaam's Ass...
On Sally Rooney's question asking how snooker players can appear to make incredibly complex computations almost instinctively, part of the answer is that humans are good optimisers. Thinking is literally exhausting for our energy reserves, and we often need to react quickly to avoid being eaten etc., so we found heuristics that get the result we want without calculation. And not just humans. The great Gerd Gigerenzer talks of the Gaze Heuristic that lets dogs (and baseball players) catch high balls while running: they fix their gaze on the ball, start running, and adjust their running speed so that the angle of gaze remains constant. This ensures that the path of dog and ball will intersect.
Thank you - that's very interesting. I absolutely love Helen Lewis's writing. She is actually responsible for this newsletter. I asked her for career advice and she said start a substack. So here I am!
I accidentally published the above message on Helen's substack without realising. When someone pointed out that it seemed out of place, Helen graciously responded:
"I believe it is intended for capitalist running dog and enemy of the revolution James Marriott, whom I encouraged to write a newsletter and who now send one out on Friday morning, making me worry people will like his better."
I read The Fatal Shore in 1989 when I was living in Sydney. It’s a tough read but magnificent. I’ve just taken it off my bookshelf and I think I’ll read it again.
Let me know how you get on second time around. I read it last year (or maybe the year before last) and loved it. I remember thinking the opening couple of chapters were especially beautifully written
I was going to write and say that I cannot think of anything worse than a Rest is Politics NS but then I don't subscribe to the current version. Still it does sound awful.
Good to read about Robert Hughes, The Shock of the New was formative, and I also regularly read Nothing if Not Critical. He and Sylvester and Golding are the great postwar art critical essayists. His (Hughes's) biography of Goya misses the mark, strangely.
I'd wondered about reading the Goya biography. The Rome book is a bit disappointing too (and, apparently full of factual errors). Keep meaning to get hold of Heaven and Hell in Western Art
I think he was just better short form - the same perhaps with Sylvester and Golding. There is no good biography of Goya as far as I know - and it is pretty disappointing to see the Hughes attempt as the only monograph on sale in the Prado Museum (at least last time I was there).
I've been thinking a lot about your "sign of a pseud". I'm sure I heard something similar once about it being more revealing to learn what albums someone hates compared to ones they love.
But I think it IS possible to like most things. Or at least to yield that maybe I don't understand something, or am too old for it. I read Magic Mountain when I was much younger, and now I really want to read it again, I bet I'll connect with it in a completely different way 20 years down the line. But there's loads of stuff that I probably just missed the boat on: is Kerouac bad? Probably not, but I didn't read him when I was 18, and I'm unlikely to connect with it now.
And sometimes I think you CAN like something if you try. I saw Branagh's King Lear, and Sigourney Weaver's Prospero in the last couple of years, and I found loads to enjoy in both. I'm not sure how much of that was wilfulness on my part on the back of the reviews.
I've only recently come around to (early) Ashbery, having spent the 90s annoyed at how much beloved he was. Your description of lovely meaninglessness is right on.
His readings were definitely funny, though. I always had the sense he was waiting for someone to stand up and say "hey! He isn't wearing any clothes!"
His Illuminations translation is genuinely stunning, though. He was a very very good renderer of French into English.
If you have not read it already, check out Dave Hickeys book “Air Guitar.” Not only about art, but still incredible. I’d argue he’s even better than Hughes.
Thanks for your writing James I always really enjoy it :-)
One thought on reading your brilliant musings on the positive case for moral leadership.
It is interesting to consider the syntax of Trump on war and peace and consider what his view of *himself* is here. In reality you can stand up that he is merely acting through pure id, or if being kind as some sub-Nietzschean expression of pure Columbian will.
But I don't entirely believe he believes that. I think he genuinely does want peace, and I think killing genuinely does seem to psychologically affect him. It may be that in an almost American Psycho way it physically disgusts him more than morally outraging him.
When you talk about The Ethic of The Deal, though, that made me think. Does Trump in some weird way think he is showing moral leadership? Or does he just want Obama's peace prize, or good conditions for trade.
I hesitate but I wonder if, as easy as it is for the Liberal world just to cut him off as unconscionable and hence capital Evil, the psychology driving tone-deaf realpolitik has at least a scintilla of Christian (or Roman) peace and goodwill at its core.
Yes that's interesting. I've seen other people say that killing really does seem to affect Trump. But I wonder if it's sadly just down to the fact that he seems to have become obsessed with winning the Nobel Prize peace and he has a self-serving idea of himself as latter day Gandhi or Martin Luther King or something
"Look at the huge success of Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart, The News Agents..." As a happy subscriber to the New Statesman under Jason Cowley's editorship, I dread the possibility of a new editor who wants the magazine to align with The News Agents, let alone the useful idiots Campbell and Stewart, particularly following their poorly judged (to put it extremely mildly) interview with Abu Mohammed al-Jolani/Ahmed al-Sharaa. And I don't want the magazine to be a part of "the Labour family", whatever that is; it sounds like a transformation into an organ of propaganda. The New Statesman has been so good for a while; it could so easily be ruined.
Fatal Shore is a superb book. I love this remark about Hughes from Clive James:
"Hughes is the Bastard from the Bush dressed up as the Wandering Scholar. Thousands of bright young Aussies will want to be him, in the same way that thousands of slightly less bright Aussies want to be the cricketer Shane Warne."
What Sydney University must have been like in that era - not only Hughes and James, but also Germaine Greer, Les Murray, Bruce Beresford, all churning round, full of enthusiasm and ideas.
Forgot to include the link that Clive James comment came from:
https://www.clivejames.com/robert-hughes-remembers.html
Another interesting read, thank you. Also, for the Shock of the New recommendation. Superb series I'm now in the midst of.
Ah I'm so pleased
I am reading The Fatal Shore at the moment. It's great. I also LOVED Shock of the New.
Those early chapters about the landscape of Australia are so beautifully written aren't they
Thank you (again) for another fascinating read. Luckily, your newsletter arrives a full hour before Helen Lewis's (where you get a shout-out) - if they coincided I would be like Balaam's Ass...
On Sally Rooney's question asking how snooker players can appear to make incredibly complex computations almost instinctively, part of the answer is that humans are good optimisers. Thinking is literally exhausting for our energy reserves, and we often need to react quickly to avoid being eaten etc., so we found heuristics that get the result we want without calculation. And not just humans. The great Gerd Gigerenzer talks of the Gaze Heuristic that lets dogs (and baseball players) catch high balls while running: they fix their gaze on the ball, start running, and adjust their running speed so that the angle of gaze remains constant. This ensures that the path of dog and ball will intersect.
Thank you - that's very interesting. I absolutely love Helen Lewis's writing. She is actually responsible for this newsletter. I asked her for career advice and she said start a substack. So here I am!
I accidentally published the above message on Helen's substack without realising. When someone pointed out that it seemed out of place, Helen graciously responded:
"I believe it is intended for capitalist running dog and enemy of the revolution James Marriott, whom I encouraged to write a newsletter and who now send one out on Friday morning, making me worry people will like his better."
I read The Fatal Shore in 1989 when I was living in Sydney. It’s a tough read but magnificent. I’ve just taken it off my bookshelf and I think I’ll read it again.
Let me know how you get on second time around. I read it last year (or maybe the year before last) and loved it. I remember thinking the opening couple of chapters were especially beautifully written
I will. I just opened my old copy and found a eucalyptus leaf I used as a bookmark 36 years ago!
I was going to write and say that I cannot think of anything worse than a Rest is Politics NS but then I don't subscribe to the current version. Still it does sound awful.
I agree but I do think the commercial case is (depressingly) probably compelling...
I love this newsletter, and its generosity. Thank you. "Hang me for a filthy elitist, but it’s true."
ah thank you!
Good to read about Robert Hughes, The Shock of the New was formative, and I also regularly read Nothing if Not Critical. He and Sylvester and Golding are the great postwar art critical essayists. His (Hughes's) biography of Goya misses the mark, strangely.
I'd wondered about reading the Goya biography. The Rome book is a bit disappointing too (and, apparently full of factual errors). Keep meaning to get hold of Heaven and Hell in Western Art
I think he was just better short form - the same perhaps with Sylvester and Golding. There is no good biography of Goya as far as I know - and it is pretty disappointing to see the Hughes attempt as the only monograph on sale in the Prado Museum (at least last time I was there).
I've been thinking a lot about your "sign of a pseud". I'm sure I heard something similar once about it being more revealing to learn what albums someone hates compared to ones they love.
But I think it IS possible to like most things. Or at least to yield that maybe I don't understand something, or am too old for it. I read Magic Mountain when I was much younger, and now I really want to read it again, I bet I'll connect with it in a completely different way 20 years down the line. But there's loads of stuff that I probably just missed the boat on: is Kerouac bad? Probably not, but I didn't read him when I was 18, and I'm unlikely to connect with it now.
And sometimes I think you CAN like something if you try. I saw Branagh's King Lear, and Sigourney Weaver's Prospero in the last couple of years, and I found loads to enjoy in both. I'm not sure how much of that was wilfulness on my part on the back of the reviews.
And Branagh's face when he said "my poor fool is hanged" was one of the best things I've ever seen on stage.
OK, maybe not Weaver's Prospero. But Ariel and Caliban were GREAT.
Hooray for Robert Hughes!
I used to pounce on stray copies of Time magazine so I could read Hughes. He was amazing. Would add that American Visions is also particularly good.
I've only recently come around to (early) Ashbery, having spent the 90s annoyed at how much beloved he was. Your description of lovely meaninglessness is right on.
His readings were definitely funny, though. I always had the sense he was waiting for someone to stand up and say "hey! He isn't wearing any clothes!"
His Illuminations translation is genuinely stunning, though. He was a very very good renderer of French into English.
If you have not read it already, check out Dave Hickeys book “Air Guitar.” Not only about art, but still incredible. I’d argue he’s even better than Hughes.
better than Robert Hughes!?
I think so! Though the men are quite different, so it’s a bit of an unfair comparison.
Air Guitar is not primarily art criticism, fwiw, though Hickey did write a lot of it while he was alive.
Thanks for your writing James I always really enjoy it :-)
One thought on reading your brilliant musings on the positive case for moral leadership.
It is interesting to consider the syntax of Trump on war and peace and consider what his view of *himself* is here. In reality you can stand up that he is merely acting through pure id, or if being kind as some sub-Nietzschean expression of pure Columbian will.
But I don't entirely believe he believes that. I think he genuinely does want peace, and I think killing genuinely does seem to psychologically affect him. It may be that in an almost American Psycho way it physically disgusts him more than morally outraging him.
When you talk about The Ethic of The Deal, though, that made me think. Does Trump in some weird way think he is showing moral leadership? Or does he just want Obama's peace prize, or good conditions for trade.
I hesitate but I wonder if, as easy as it is for the Liberal world just to cut him off as unconscionable and hence capital Evil, the psychology driving tone-deaf realpolitik has at least a scintilla of Christian (or Roman) peace and goodwill at its core.
Yes that's interesting. I've seen other people say that killing really does seem to affect Trump. But I wonder if it's sadly just down to the fact that he seems to have become obsessed with winning the Nobel Prize peace and he has a self-serving idea of himself as latter day Gandhi or Martin Luther King or something