WRB—Oct. 26, 2022

Imagine a “beneficent human algorithm”

The WRB aspires to be that algorithm. [“Finally,” the readers said. “A newsletter with a lot of off-the-cuff comments from Chris.”]

To do list: 

• Follow us on Twitter, and consider whether you would like to apply to be the new, perhaps better-managing social media intern (email us a pitch for yourself at washingreview@gmail.com!) [The benefits are the same as every other position at the WRB, which is, that we would have a lot of fun. —Chris];

• order a tote bag or now a MUG, both of which receive rave reviews and are as functional as they are stylish [Julia says that when she carries home loaves from her local bakery in her WRB tote, she feels quote sooooo cool unquote—who are you to deny yourself such a lifestyle? —Chris];

• avail yourself of our world-famous classified ads, now stored on this page for non-paying readers to access, either by placing or responding to one; 

• and, 

Links:

• A reader sent this with the comment “matt levine’s personal middlemarch.” He’s never read Middlemarch, but we appreciate the spirit. It’s a great read and tons of fun: “In a sense it’s a dumb time to be talking about crypto, because the lines went down. But really it’s a good time to be talking about crypto. There’s a pause; there’s some repose. Whatever is left in crypto is not just speculation and get-rich-quick schemes. We can think about what crypto means—divorced, a little bit, from the lines going up.”

• Magician essay.

• For the CRB, Greg Gerke of Socrates on the Beach writes about Faulkner. And well!: “Why my concentration on Faulkner rather than Melville, James, or Gaddis—certainly the three other most important US novelists? As these momentous days go by, bending late summer light into more of our dinner hours, admitting the fickle and ostentatious and smoky winds of summer, it becomes more and more obvious, being on the verge of a low-grade civil war with many racial overtones, that Absalom, Absalom! is not only the greatest American novel, it aptly represents America and its many myths in the same way that Dante stands for the Italy of the Middle Ages and Shakespeare for hundreds of years of English history.” [I’m going to admit that when I first saw “Cleveland Review of Books” on Twitter I just thought their name was as much of a wry joke as our own. That’s there, of course, but they also consistently publish excellent work, which the WRB only manages when Nic and I aren’t involved. —Chris]

• Kojeve promised that the end of history would be boring. Fairly off the mark, most things considered, but not insofar as essays about the subject are concerned. In The Point, here’s Nicolas Guilhot keeping our attention on the topic. [I would never share my personal thoughts about this unless I’m in person and past two drinks. —Chris]

Reviews:

• For TLS, Helen Hackett reviews Oxford historian Lucy Wooding’s forthcoming history of Tudor England (Tudor England, January): “For one book to narrate and analyse the reigns of all five Tudor monarchs is a daunting task. To add to this an interwoven account of the social and cultural contexts of the period—including the natural and built environment, the structures and practices of local communities, developments in the arts and, of course, religious change—might seem impossible, yet this is what Wooding has achieved in this impressive book.”

• And for the NYRB, Kathryn Hughes reviews Sam Knight’s book from earlier this year about telling the future (The Premonitions Bureau: A True Account of Death Foretold, May): “In this hugely enjoyable book, expanded from his New Yorker piece of 2019, the British journalist Sam Knight is careful to neither poke fun at the Premonitions Bureau nor to treat it as holy writ. Keeping editorializing to a minimum, Knight sticks close to his main characters as they navigate a postwar world where ‘science’ is revealing itself in all its mixed capacities, able to wipe out a whole city in a mushroom cloud and to put a man on the moon. It was a moment that Fairley was determined to make his own. Within a few years he would leave the Evening Standard, move to television, and become the public face of what Britons now happily referred to as ‘the space age,’ despite having no skin in the game.”

N.B.:

• Library of America is having a sale through today. 

• This bit about Shakespeare is kinda weird.

• [OK, I thought this article was kind of pointless in the end. But I loved the comparison of Starbucks’ dark roast, California Cabs, and IPAs, so I feel it deserves a link. —Chris] 

• [Also someone sent me a screenshot of Semefor’s newsletter subheading “The London Review of Substacks,” and I have to say one thing: Please feature us, Mr. Semafor. —Chris]

Upcoming book:

January 24 | W. W. Norton

An Ordinary Life: Poems
by B.H. Fairchild

From the publisher: In this stirring volume, award-winning poet B. H. Fairchild seeks the ironic, haunting presence imbuing each ordinary life with beauty, power, and meaning. By turns polyphonic and deeply personal, these poems range from Kansas highways and sunbaked baseball fields to secondhand memories of a World War II foxhole. They zoom in on a welder’s truck, a Walmart on Black Friday, and a record store, where a chance encounter offers radiant kindness in the face of grief. Elevating blue-collar work and scenes from small towns in clear-eyed, reverent poetry, Fairchild proves himself once again “the American voice at its best” (New York Times).