TLS

More than a year ago now, tiring of the TLS, I moved to the NYRB. No doubt I will tire of it and the US political scene in time, but that time has not yet come.

My resolve had not been shaken by the tempt-me-back offer of twelve issues for a pound each and I declined the second such offer. (The way it worked was that you paid your pound each by means of a direct debit, which they hoped, quite reasonably, that you would not get around to stopping. But I did, at least on this particular occasion).

However, coming across a TLS in the newspaper stand at Waitrose the other day, I was moved to find out what I was missing. Which turned out to be not much, at least if this October 31st issue was anything to go by. But there were some bits and pieces.

A. N. Wilson had a piece keyed to a new biography of Scott Moncrieff, the original translator of Proust, a translation which, as it happens, I happen to own in its 1935 version from Random House, another nicely made book from the US. I think I got it from one of the book tables under Waterloo Bridge and while I did once read the original, I never did read this translation. Perhaps the TLS has served to poke me into action - but I am not tempted to buy the biography.

Then, following T. H White, there was a review of a book about another goshawk lover, Helen Macdonald, a book by which I am tempted, partly by the claim that dedicated falconers identify with their charges, in a way that owners of cats and dogs, at least to my knowledge, do not. I associate to my one-time neighour Derek Ratcliffe, his kind wife Jeanette and his book on the peregrine falcon.

An account of an exhibition about Constable and the way he worked, rather than of his completed work, at the V&A. Another example of our drifting away from the product, back into the process. But I am tempted, and may make it before it ends in mid January.

An article keyed to the 'The Iris Murdoch Review' from Kingston University Press. I learn that Kingston is the centre of the world of Murdoch studies, mainly, one gathers, because they hold her library and papers. Also that there may be a related exhibition at Kingston Museum (the people that did Muybridge). Perhaps we will take it in when we next go shopping, a next which has been delayed by the sad demise of the Kingston Christmas Shopping Bus, a bus which we found very convenient.

And then, to wrap things up, a splendid advertisement for the work of Bucharest University (illustrated above) on 'Finnegans Wake' and other matters Joycean, clearly grist for the mill of the study proposed at the end of reference 2. The work, coming from the far east of Europe, fits well with the suggested focus of the study on geography.

Inter alia, the people at Bucharest do a manual for the advanced study of the wake running to 111 volumes and no less than 30,000 pages. An impressive feat for people whose first language is presumably not English, let alone expatriate Irish. Who on earth is going to wade through all this stuff? Was it all generated by some computer and never touched by human hand or eye? Is the whole thing an elaborate Rumanian joke? See reference 3.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/falun-gong.html. I am sure we visited the Muybridge exhibition during blog life, but  I cannot now find a post for it. Maybe it slipped through the net. Rather good it was too.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/on-road.html.

Reference 3: http://editura.mttlc.ro/.