April 2005
TLS
TLS Newsletter
Thu, 28 Apr. 2005
Seamus Heaney Tollund Man revisited
David E. Cooper Philosophers in Africa
John Skorupski Was Sidgwick a wobbler?
Helen Langdon Caravaggio’s outlaw years
Welcome to the TLS newsletter,
a free taster of the books, debates and arts covered in the TLS this week.
Untouchable Joyce: "Twenty-first-century Joyce is unassailable, and to call Joyce overrated is a bit like saying Shakespeare too is overpraised" – Justin Beplate argues for more critical reading and less adulation where Joyce is concerned.
The artists’ Wittgenstein: Terry Eagleton gets to the heart of how "art for Wittgenstein was not secondary or aberrant, but – along with St Augustine and cowboy movies – the real thing".
HM and Diana: M. John Harrison is amused and appalled by Hilary Mantel’s conjuring-up of Blair’s Britain, complete with a vision of Diana, Princess of Wales, from beyond the grave – "Give my love to Kingy. And the other kid. Kingy and Thingy."
Arthur Machen, the Apostle of Wonder: Phil Baker welcomes a new edition of a biography of the cultish fantasy writer Arthur Machen – "Perhaps the true Machen enthusiast needs to be a lover of lost causes".
The backwards life of Stuart: Tony Gould learns about the life of Stuart Shorter, "thief, hostage taker, psycho and sociopathic street raconteur", as told by Alexander Masters, an "aspiring middle-class writer (and homelessness worker)".
In the rest of the paper, you will find Seamus Heaney’s Tollund Man revisited, Caravaggio’s outlaw years and, of course, In Brief.
COMMENTARY
Richard Lansdown investigates how Henry James widened the scope of F. R. Leavis’s criticism and Richard D. Jackson considers the significance of high windows in Philip Larkin’s poem. NB deals with the Encore Prize, the Kingdom of Redonda and the admirable ambition of literary magazines; Hugo Williams notices correspondences between Betjeman, Larkin, and himself. On the Letters page, the subjects are The Museum of Modern Art, ‘Secret Shakespeare’ and Smart insolvent, among others.
ARTS
Helen Langdon explores the darkness and daring of Caravaggio’s outlaw years and Lesley Chamberlain is seduced by the sorrow in twentieth-century German tragic drama. Judith Flanders finds Tristan and Yseult to be the "don’t miss" of the season; Roz Kaveney is a fan of the new Doctor Who but not of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; and Paul Bailey deplores the stereotypes in BBC Radio 4’s version of Proust.
NEXT WEEK'S TLS
David Schiff
The Shostakovich wars
Douglas C. Smith
Ivan the Terrible’s experiments
Clive Wilmer
Donald Davie reappraised
Sean O’Brien
Nick Hornby’s A Long Way Down
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TLS Newsletter
Thu, 28 Apr. 2005