Are Literary Magazines up to the Task?

Although I’m not a fan of newspapers, I did succumb recently to an offer from Le Monde – even if I miss the smell of the newsprint and its footnotes. But it is to journals I turn for serious reading - some two years ago I shared quite a long list of journals worth reading which is probably due an update. Here in Romania I often buy “Lettre Internationale”…..whose woodcuts are a great attraction. “Le Nouveau Magazine Litteraire” is also a regular purchase – sadly, German literary journals are not easily available so I have to make do with the German version of Lettre Internationale.

At the moment I actually have internet subscriptions to no fewer than 3 journals the New York Review of Books; the London Review of Books; and Political Quarterly

A venerable journal acquires a new editor

But the spark which ignites this particular post was my purchase recently of a couple of copies of the Times Literary Supplement (or TLS) – which have started to appear in Bucharest’s great little English bookshop “Carturesti and Friends”.

TLS is a venerable English institution – if not quite as old (est 1902) as its parent The Times which began in 1788 and was, until the late 1970s, very much the paper of the British elite whose seriousness was immediately evident by the closeness of the script and the lack of photographs. Indeed, until 1966 the front page was devoted to small advertisements of interest to the monied classes. All of this changed in 1981 when Rupert Murdoch acquired the newspaper after which its reputation may have declined but by 2005 its circulation had more than doubled (to 600k). Presently its circulation is only 300k

The Times Literary Supplement (TLS) I knew of old had repellent elitist tones but was then the only regular journal (weekly) devoted to books but, in the 1970s and 1980s, it was “New Society, “The Listener” and “Encounter” which attracted – and whose passing (some 30 years ago) I deeply regret. Each, in their distinctive ways, had a breadth and sensitivity which few other cultural mags seem capable of these days. I daresay that says more about me than the mags…..You can still taste the delights of “Encounter” in its archives which can be accessed here

But a strange happened in 1978 – a newspaper strike put The Times and TLS off the streets for almost a year. And into the empty space jumped a new title – initially as a pull out in the New York of Books. It was called the “London Review of Books” (or LRB) – a bi-monthly which now has a circulation of almost double that of TLS. The precise details of all this are set out in this nice little story in The Financial Times. What I had forgotten was that another title also jumped into the gap – and one which is also going strongly, the monthly Literary Review. But it is the LRB which has engaged my affections – confirmed whenever I buy the odd copy of TLS.

However the TLS acquired a new editor a couple of years ago – Stig Abell, a 39 year-old who had….wait for it….been the editor of the most offensive british tabloid newspaper – the Sun - for a couple of years…as well as a presenter on London Radio.

If the 2 copies I'v e read recently are typical, then he seems already to have made a difference to the staid journal I remember.....and I am tempted to write to him to make some points along the following lines.......   

I am an unashamed bibliophile – but of non-fiction - who has, however, become so concerned with the combination of scale and quality that I suggested recently (only half jokingly) that non-fiction books needed to be rationed. I now look very carefully at the introductions (and “Further Reading”) of books I pick up - to see what awareness the author (and indeed the publisher) reveals of the cynicism with which many of us readers approach this latest addition to our burden of reading. Ideally I would now like to see a typology – a short review of the relevant literature - to give me the confidence that the author is master of the field and has a mind open to the points at both ends of the relevant spectrum…..I certainly need to read a few pages of the text to give me a sense of the clarity and sensitivity of the writing 

And this is where we need the help of the literary journals…whose reviewers should be more obviously be asking these questions on our behalf – and exerting some pressure for answers on publishers and editors (with the exception of Simon Winder do editors exist these days?)

 But it is the European dimension which, not surprisingly, I find missing in the British journals….with the exception of the towering figure of Perry Anderson to whom I refer fairly regularly here.… Perry Anderson deserves much more credit for being one of the very few English-speaking writers whose articles (mainly in LRB) pay serious attention to contemporary debates on the European continent – whether France, Germany, Italy or even Turkey. They are collected in a version The New Old World which can be downloaded simply by clicking on the title. 

A UK outside the EU is in particular need of such writing – but has enough bilingual journalists (eg Olterman) and translators of the quality of Michael Hoffman – let alone polymaths such as Clive James of blessed “Cultural Amnesia - to make it possible. They just need a bit more encouragement from the editors of literary journals…

In the meantime I am just grateful to the EC for its continued support of the Eurozine venture which brings together the best of some 70 European cultural journals. And point to Courrier International as an example of a good selection into the French language of quality global journalism. Pity no one thought of making a bid some years ago for European funding for a journal giving us a sense of how different European countries were dealing with the big issues in their societies…..