PS about the TLS

I hadn't been on the TLS website in the past while, and so wasn't aware that the editor, Peter Stothard, maintains a blog! Here. I enjoy reading Peter's blog quite a lot - a lovely mix of literature and politics, old and new.

The TLS remains the finest literary review. I read my copy generally very late at night, in bed, trying not to make too much noise as I turn the pages. I read every issue cover to cover - I mean every issue, every review, because I use it as education in fields I know nothing about - and I've done so for years and years and years. I used to save them, but then it got too much, so out they went.

(This summer I have forced my poor, oppressed 13 year old daughter to read one review a week, hoping that something about essay style will rub off on her, like magic. Also she might learn something. Is that cruel or what? I also made her read 1984 and Friedrich Durrenmatt's The Visit. Years ago, before the concentrated busywork of American private school took over all her time and turned off her brain, she had an idea that she would put together a website called the Kids Literary Supplement or KLS. It might have made her the most formidable force in children's publishing in the USA.)

Okay, that is all by way of saying that you too should subscribe to the Times Literary Supplement.

(And by way of not saying that I owe the TLS a review of a very peculiar book about immigration in America and the formation of the American character. And I delivered to Peter and to my dear friend at the TLS, John Ryle, an 8,000 word Major Statement on Francis Fukuyama's After the Neocons - when I was given a generous 4,000 to work with. John has had it now for two weeks, holding it polite silence, no doubt, while revving up his blowtorch. I have utter confidence in his editing, however, and his ability to get even my prose down to manageable length.)