Tom McCarthy, writing in the LRB, described James Joyce's Ulysses as a ‘heavy book, a book full of weight, a fallen book’; a ‘properly obscene book’; ‘a book in which the central stake is the coming into being of the book itself’; a book for which ‘people should desist, once and ...Show more
How Fredric Jameson became Fredric Jameson
Perry Anderson once wrote that in Fredric Jameson’s account of postmodernism, ‘the vocation of Western Marxism has reached its most complete consummation.’ Praising the ‘spacious rhythms’ of his ‘complex, yet supple syntax’ and ‘sudden bursts of metaphoric intensity’, Anderson al ...Show more
This episode in our history of the great essays and great essayists is about Susan Sontag’s ‘Against Interpretation’ (1963). What was interpretation and why was Sontag so against it? David explores how an argument about art, criticism and the avant-garde can be applied to contemp ...Show more
This week, James Marcus goes partying with Susan Sontag and George Steiner; and Laura Beers sheds a light on Eileen O'Shaughnessy, George Orwell's first wife.'Maestros and monsters: Days and nights with Susan Sontag and GeorgeSteiner', by Robert Boyers'Wifedom: Mrs Orwell's invis ...Show more
This week, TLS editors and writers guide you through a summer of reading; and Sarah Watling explores the extraordinary story of an artistic double act.'Dorothy Hepworth and Patricia Preece: An Untold Story', Charleston, Lewes, Sussex'The Secret Art of Dorothy Hepworth, aka Patric ...Show more