James Wood’s books include The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel, The Book against God, a novel, and, most recently, How Fiction Works. He is a staff writer for the New Yorker and Professor of the Practice of Literary Criticism at Harvard.
MORE BY THIS CONTRIBUTOR
RELATED ARTICLES
18 July 1996
You can’t put it down
16 October 1980
Hating
10 December 1998
On Britain and Europe
6 August 1981
Ideas of Decline
8 October 2009
The Miners’ Strike
6 November 2008
Weimar in Britain
16 August 2007
‘Mrs Woolf and the Servants’
RELATED CATEGORIES
History, Cultural history, 1900-1999, Europe, Western Europe, UK, Current affairs, Media and journalism
Vol. 24 No. 12 · 27 June 2002
pages 11-12 | 2972 words
Phut-Phut
James Wood
- Critical Times: The History of the ‘Times Literary Supplement’ by Derwent May
HarperCollins, 606 pp, £25.00, November 2001, ISBN 0 00 711449 4
There is a story that Gershom Scholem, the scholar of Jewish mysticism, was being introduced at a lecture in New York. Mysticism, the introducer said sarcastically, is nothing; but a history of nothing – well, that is science. The same can be said, multipliedly, of Derwent May’s book, which is essentially a history of the book review, a genre of such tiny dignity that its life might better be left unexamined. Over large portions, this book is about nothing – or, nothing more than the weekly phut-phut of the English literary establishment. It is a book in which the reader learns how to endure, if never quite outwit, a dark regime of sentences such as ‘One feature for which the Lit Supp has always been famous is its cantankerous letters,’ or ‘One of the happiest events for the Lit Supp in 1916 was Virginia Woolf’s return in the spring to health, and to its reviewing team.’
You are not Logged In
- If you have already registered login here
- If you are a print subscriber using the site for the first time please register here
- If you are not yet a subscriber you can subscribe here
- If you are a member of a subscribing institution or University library please login here
- If you have an Institutional print subscription and online access is not included, find out about our Institutional online subscriptions
This article is also available for purchase from the London Review Bookshop. Contact us for rights and issues enquiries.
- print this article
Letters
Vol. 24 No. 13 · 11 July 2002
From A. Banerjee
James Wood believes (mistakenly, I think) that Derwent May's Critical Times: The History of the 'Times Literary Supplement' is a 'melancholy record of lost opportunities' (LRB, 27 June). He goes on to cite The Rainbow, which the TLS failed to notice, perhaps because of the controversy surrounding its publication and prosecution. This might give the impression that the journal failed to recognise Lawrence's genius. In fact, according to May, 'of all the major writers of the war years and afterwards, it must be said that Lawrence was best served by the Lit Supp.' May's researches show that A.C. McDowall, one of the founding reviewers of the journal, 'understood what was best in Lawrence', and he was perhaps instrumental in Lawrence's receiving TLS reviews (generally favourable) of most of his work. The TLS was also among the first few to notice Lawrence's talents as a poet and playwright.
A. Banerjee
Institute of English Studies, London WC1
