This came up before:
I encountered this book in the library, “Homage to Qwert Yuiop: Selected Journalism 1978-1985,” by Anthony Burgess. It’s just great. I think somebody should collect and print the rest of Burgess’s journalism too. (There do seem to be one or two other collections out there but I doubt they have the density of this overflowing volume of 589 pages of small print. I have a feeling they’re leaving out a lot of good stuff.) I’d also gladly buy an edition of the uncollected book reviews of Alfred Kazin or of Anthony Boucher. I’m sure a lot of editing would be required, though, but I think it would be worth it.
It would be fun to spend some months going through old book reviews from the 1950s-1980s and collecting the most interesting parts for a collection. But I suspect that almost nobody but me would be interested in such a thing.
Awhile ago I picked up a collection of essays by Anthony West, a book called Principles and Persuasions that came out in 1957, was briefly reprinted in 1970, and I expect has been out of print ever since. It’s a wonderful book, one of my favorite collections of literary essays, period. West was a book reviewer for the New Yorker for a long time so there must’ve been material for many more volumes but given the unenthusiastic response to this one collection, I guess it makes sense that no others were printed.
West is thoughtful and reasonable and a fluid writer, with lots of insights. The book includes interesting and original takes on well-trodden authors such as George Orwell, Charles Dickens, T. E. Lawrence, and Graham Greene, along with demolitions of Edwin O’Connor (author of The Last Hurrah) and the now-forgotten Reinhold Niebuhr, and lots more. West employs historical exposition, wit, and political passion where appropriate. I really enjoyed this book and am sad that there’s no more of this stuff by West that’s easily accessible. Reading it also gave me nostalgia for an era in which writers took their time to craft beautiful book reviews—not like now, here I am writing 400 posts per year along with articles, books, teaching, fundraising, etc., we’re just so busy and there’s this sense that few people will read anything we write from beginning to end again, so why bother? Here I am typing this on the computer but for the purpose of literature I wish we could blow up all the computers and return to a time when we had more free hours to read. There’s something particularly appealing about West’s book in that he’s not a famous author or even a famous critic; he’s completely forgotten and I guess wasn’t considered so important even back then.
I was thinking about all this because I just finished reading “Critic at Large: Essays and Reviews: 2010-2022” by D. J. Taylor. I’ve been a fan of Taylor’s critical writing from way back, so I was excited to hear about this new book. It was excellent, but . . . it contained only 29 essays and reviews. It was only 191 pages long, and without many words on each page (but, annoyingly, the pages were thick so the book is kinda heavy).
Why not publish an 800-page book with a couple hundred reviews? That’s what I’d like to read! OK, I get it, nobody’s gonna buy such a book—but, realistically, I can’t imagine that many people bought this short version either.
In the book’s last essay, entitled “Why Review Books,” Taylor writes that he’d been reviewing for 37 years, “a couple of thousand, maybe.” I’d like to read these! OK, not all 2000, I guess, but it must be possible to pull out a few hundred that would be worth reading—more so than the original books. I’d start by reading all his reviews for Private Eye. Too bad that my taste is not generally shared, so I’m stuck just with these 29 articles. It’s just so frustrating . . . these 2000 reviews are out there, but we don’t get to see them.
P.S. After some searching, I found this essay by Taylor from 2021, where he includes “books of belles lettres and reprinted literary journalism” as examples of genres that have fallen out of fashion. I’m bummed. On the plus side, you can find about fifty of Taylor’s reviews and essays here.
Biologist Richard Lewontin’s book “It Aint’ Necessarily So” (2000) is a collection of book reviews (essays, really) that he wrote for the NY Review of Books. Very readable, cogent, and with a not insignificant dollop of statistics.
They played rough in the academic world back then. With regard to Lewontin, from
https://www.wired.com/story/richard-lewontin-leaves-a-legacy-of-fighting-racism-in-science/
“Lewontin criticized Wilson so sharply that Wilson would refuse to enter the elevator in the Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology when Lewontin was already in it, according to Steven Rose, a professor emeritus of neurobiology at the Open University in London who fought genetic determinism alongside Lewontin. Dick certainly collected his muster of enemies,” Rose says.”
Is it to be assumed that we are more civil these days? Or, are we just to assume that the elevators are now larger enough to accommodate the current egos?
Why do you assume that this kind of thing doesn’t happen anymore? It does in my institute.
Burgess’s autobiography volumes (Little Wilson and Big God, You’ve Had Your Time) are also fantastic. I found them highly entertaining.
I love the way that Private Eye book reviews are relentlessly negative – it’s really funny when you realise that’s part of the point :)
Is there an anthology or collection available?
(I mean generally of Private Eye reviews, not just of Taylor’s contributions)
Anon:
Yes, there is a collection of book reviews from Private Eye, and I’ve read it! It’s called Lord Gnome’s Literary Companion. It’s excellent, it came out many years ago. Unfortunately, it’s a pretty short book and there don’t seem to have been any others, which is consistent with the general pattern that people don’t seem to want to read collections of reviews.
I once encountered Michael Kazin, the son of the legendary literary critic Alfred Kazin, and asked if he was interested in putting out a collection of that his father’s book reviews. Michael mentioned a book that had recently been published with a selection of Alfred’s reviews and essays, and I said, no, I want the collection of all of them! If necessary on a webpage but I’d prefer a book. Michael seemed to have no interest in putting together something in either form. That surprised me, but it also suggested that it’s not just an issue of commerce, it’s more that most people don’t care, they think of past journalism as entirely disposable.
That talk of Anthony Burgess’s journalism in the linked post reminded me of a story my father, a Burgess superfan, told me (and subsequently recounted in an obituary https://bit.ly/4gJSlA7). He had written to Burgess to ask him for a contribution to the magazine he was editing, Classical Guitar. Burgess, who had composed for the instrument, duly obliged producing a dazzling article where he memorably described the guitar as having “the difficult nobility of a great disease”. The magazine was, of course, utterly broke and the only payment Burgess received was a box of small cigars my dad had picked up in Havana.
A coda: I met Anthony Burgess at a book signing in Bloomsbury for A Mouthful of Air a year before he died (my dad was thrilled to receive the inscribed volume as a birthday present). Burgess was genial and entertaining but had no recollection of his contribution to the magazine.
Anyway, good luck to whoever is going to put together that collected journalism of Anthony Burgess. As Martin Amis wrote, on a typical afternoon Burgess “went home, did the kitchen, spring-cleaned the flat, wrote two book reviews, a flute concerto and a film treatment, knocked off his gardening column for Pravda, phoned in his surfing page to the Sydney Morning Herald, and then test-drove a kidney dialysis machine for El Pais before settling down to some serious work.”
Only vaguely book review related, but there’s a monthly magazine here called Toukyoujin (“The Tokyoite”) that’s nominally about Tokyo, although lately they seem to have trouble staying on topic: last month’s issue was on dictionaries (I guess most dictionary publishers are located in Tokyo) and this month’s theme is Japan’s butsuryuu (logistics/distribution system including its history). Both things I’m interested in, so I guess I shouldn’t complain.
This month’s issue has a book review of a collection of excerpts from modern Japanese literature (late 19th century and on) that deal with trains. OK, Japan’s trains are fun (and insane) and that’s the period of Japanese lit I’m interested in. I’ll order it.
Bop over to Amazon Japan and it says: “Usually takes 2 to 3 months to deliver.”
Oh, well. It’ll be a nice surprise when it arrives, since by then I’ll have forgotten that I even ordered it.
Truth in blogging confession. I didn’t order the book on first visit to its Amazon (Japan) page, but went back the next day.
At which point it was: “Only one left in stock. Order now.” So I did, and it showed up today (the next next day). Go figure.
The intro starts out ”I think that folks involved with literature generally have a strong curiosity and sharply obeserve (and reflect in their writing) their fellow humans and the events in their world as well as the society in which they live. Regarding trains, which are for me the most fascinating of fascinating things…”
The editor is a train fan. Japanese train otakus are something else. I’m not quite that bad, but I do like trains.
It’s a beqautifully printed hardcover (like all Japanese hardcovers) of 300 or so pages with uninspiredly reproduced (sigh) B&Wphotos of the trains the 30 or so selections refer to. A few of the selections I’ve read (e.g. Mikan by Akutagawa Ryunosuke, Snow Country), lots of authors I’m aware of but haven’t read as much of as I should have, a few unfamiliary names. Nerd heaven.
This got me wondering about my favourite collection of book reviews: I think it’s Expletives Deleted by Angela Carter. Some wonderful writing, and some great takedowns.
Reminds me of Stanislaw Lem’s book of reviews of fictional books, “A Perfect Vacuum”, which I really enjoyed. Naturally, the book opens with a review of itself.
You should write more book reviews yourself! I think many of your readers would be interested.
Weichi:
Coincidentally, I just wrote one yesterday! It should appear on the blog in a few months.
Principles and Persuasions: The Literary Essays of Anthony West is available as a pdf from the Internet Archive.
https://ia902901.us.archive.org/17/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.184016/2015.184016.Principles-And-Persuasions.pdf
Effete:
I just wish someone would publish another book of all his other book reviews!
Speaking of book reviews, the 10 January 2025 issue of Science has a lovely book review of (drum roll):
“Anatomy of a Train Wreck: The Rise and Fall of Priming Research” by Ruth Leys, U.of.C. press. 416 pages (!!!)
It sounds like a real page-turner. To quote said review:
“Leys gives readers a near-forensic accounting of the many ways in which priming research went off the rails.”
David:
I haven’t read that book but someone pointed me to the review and I posted something on it, should appear in a few months.