Saturday, 4 December 2010
This research, which has only recently become possible, thanks to a new generation of powerful digital tools and databases, represents one of the many ways that technology is transforming the study of literature, philosophy and other humanistic fields that haven’t necessarily embraced large-scale quantitative analysis.
More than two centuries after Mercier wrote his fantasy, the idea of fitting the whole of mankind’s documentary heritage into an improbably small space ‑ this time a desktop computer or a mobile phone handset ‑ has become a real prospect.
Schiffrin’s argument is essentially that “big-business conglomerate publishing in its current form is doomed… Investors are demanding as much as 15% returns on a business which, Schriffin argues, can only offer 3 or 4%.” Widening-out from this is a cultural argument, of course: why is a business seen to be a failing concern if it is profitable, but just not massively so?
State of Emergency: Britain 1970-1974. It was four dozen months in which Britain lost the Beatles, but gained Edward Heath. It certainly seemed to be an out-of-balance moment. But culturally, it may have been, as one of our reviewers writes, a ‘golden age’. Twin reviews by Anthony Howell and Michelene Wandor.
Allen M. Hornblum: Little more than a last-gasp attempt to prop up the dispirited and dwindling Rosenberg forces, Final Verdict (barely 200 pages, with only 22 footnotes) promises “a surprising new narrative of the case” and one that actually “stands on its head” what the Schneirs and “millions of others formerly believed.”
Thursday, 16 September 2010
Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé: It would have taken me some time to form a judgement had I not suddenly had a vision of that life, born in a hospital, brought up in misery, in sickness, in pain, to be continued in Siberian prisons, in the barracks; ever pursued by want and moral distress, always being crushed and yet ennobled by the work of a – Redeemer. Then I understood that this persecuted soul escaped all known standards…
Juliet du Boulay: To recognize the enduring quality of much that I describe is not, however, to ignore the fact that change has always been a part of village life, and indeed so many changes have happened since I was in Ambeli in the 1960s and 1970s that much of the way of life recounted here can no longer be found. Earlier changes begin with the village itself, which had been built around 1800 by families who escaped there from a lower village which had been devastated by the Turks. Before this some of the big families were said to have come in a boat from the north, perhaps Pelion. These upheavals, however, dramatic though they were, did not necessitate a deep change of values but simply a reinterpretation of ancient themes in the new situation.
Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé: It cannot be repeated too often: it is the characters of those resolute men which take hold of the people, not their ideas; and the philosopher’s piercing eye in this matter looks beyond Russia. Men are everywhere becoming less and less unreasonable as regards ideas, and more and more skeptical as regards cut-and-dried formulas. Those who believe in the virtue of absolute doctrines are now rare to find. What does captivate men is character, even if their energies are put to a wrong purpose, for that guarantees a leader and a guide, the first requirements of an association of human beings. Man is born the “serf” of every will stronger than his own that passes before him.
Andrew Sinclair: The running style in this extended account is that of a newsman, sniffing out the good stories. And there are plenty of them, from that golden age of gossip and occasional retribution. Although there is a great deal of dazzle and detail, there is little new in the causes and consequences of Prohibition – the rural saloon and the rise of women’s rights, the conflict of the country against the city, the attack on foreigners and the surge of nativism, and the economic reasons for Repeal.
Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé: One feels angry with the author for being so prolix, one runs on ahead of him, and, all of a sudden, he is no longer understood – the electric current has been interrupted. That, at least, is what everybody tells me who has tried it.
Nicolson: ‘The real centre of his hospital life was, however, to be the Hôpital Broussais, in the rue Didot, which he first entered in December 1886. Verlaine always had a weakness for this particular hospital. ‘
Anthony O’Hear: It is interesting to see in these three very different books some thoughtful intellectuals demurring from the secularism which had until recently reigned virtually unchallenged among the self-professed thinking classes.
Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé: During his last year of freedom (before going to prison) the obsession of imaginary maladies, trouble with his nerves, and a “mystic fright,” were driving him straight into a state of mental derangement, and we can believe him. He assures us that he was only saved by the sudden change in his manner of life, for it compelled him to brace himself against the misfortunes which had hitherto mastered him. I accept this statement, for the secrets of the soul are unassailable; and it is certain that there is nothing better to cure an imaginary illness than real misfortune.
Harry Stein: Who knew, for example, that the Breton bonnet Charlotte Corday wore in the tumbrel en route to the guillotine would give rise to a fashion craze? (And, yet, knowing, who can truly be surprised?) But after a while, even such details become suspect.
Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé: In commenting on the labours and life of this man I invite the reader to accompany me on a journey, always sad, often frightful, at times ominous. Those who feel a repugnance on entering hospitals, courts of justice, prisons, and who are afraid to pass through a cemetery at night, had best keep away. Part one of a five-part series.
