CULTURAL STUDIES 3 Michael Saler Terri Apter 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF Telephone: 020 7782 5000 Fax: 020 7782 4966 [email protected] LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 6 LITERATURE 7 Putin’s foreign policy, Eric Korn, John Evelyn’s poems, etc Morris Dickstein Paula Byrne Robert Archer B ernard Malamud’s reputation as a writer was falling before he died in 1986 and has risen only a little since. This week Morris Dickstein reviews his novels and short stories from the 1940s to the 1960s, newly collected by Library of America, asking why Malamud’s “virtues of craft” and “long reach of moral imagination” have left his legacy so “precarious”. Dickstein’s answers include the author’s fierce protection of his privacy, his prose style and a deep pessimism that ill fitted the tenor of his times. Membership of a troika alongside Saul Bellow and Philip Roth did not help. Malamud’s family had fled from the persecution of Jews in Russia, the subject of one his finest works, The Fixer. Bernard Wasserstein reviews two books about the shtetl, the small settlements that inspired Fiddler on the Roof, where, in total, 8 million Jews once lived. Despite fears of “yet another nostalgia trip to Yiddishland”, he finds a serious analysis by Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern (pictured) of the shtetl in its golden age, from book publishing in Hebrew to the liquor trade. A cultural history by Jeffrey Shandler is too much “an exercise in mediating the mediators”. Michael Saler examines the mythology of the Dark Net, that hidden zone of life online that has been recently much reported by journalists on the side of the light. He notes how Jamie Bartlett, “an informed guide for the armchair explorer”, finds drug dealers and pornographers there but also “competitive prices and cheerful customer service”; it is a mirror image of ourselves from which we have much to learn. Terri Apter discusses digital guides to parenting: “how can I tell if my child is enticed into illegal activities while apparently safe at home?” Anna Katharina Schaffner considers the idea of “Generation Twee”, in which the current vogue for televised cake-baking is part of a yearning for “perma-childhood”. The writings of the young Jane Austen were “violent, restless, anarchic and exuberantly expressionistic”, Kathryn Sutherland writes in her introduction to Jane’s juvenilia; “female brawling, sexual misdemeanour and murder run riot across their pages”. Paula Byrne praises “a splendid new edition”. HISTORY 11 Jamie Bartlett The Dark Net – Inside the digital underworld. Gabriella Coleman Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy – The story of Anonymous. Julian Assange – When Google Met Wikileaks Howard Gardner and Katie Davis The App Generation – How today’s youth navigate identity, intimacy, and imagination in a digital world. Lynn Schofield Clark The Parent App – Understanding families in the digital age Bernard Wasserstein Bernard Malamud Novels and Stories of the 1940s & 50s. Novels and Stories of the 1960s Jane Austen Volume the First. Volume the Second. Volume the Third; Edited by Kathryn Sutherland. Love and Freindship and Other Youthful Writings; Edited by Christine Alexander Josep Pla The Gray Notebook; Translated by Peter Bush Mark Greengrass Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern The Golden Age Shtetl – A new history of Jewish life in Eastern Europe. Jeffrey Shandler Shtetl – A vernacular intellectual history Joseph Bergin The Politics of Religion in Early Modern France Swimming for Beginners Rings POEMS 12 25 Stephen Knight Andrew McCulloch SOCIAL STUDIES 13 Anna Katharina Schaffner Marc Spitz Twee – The gentle revolution in music, books, television, fashion and film COMMENTARY 14 Nicholas Vincent Benjamin George Friedman Then & Now In plain view – The Sandwich Magna Carta – and others Freelance Patrick McCaughey Madame Cézanne (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). Dita Amory et al Madame Cézanne Viollet-le-Duc – Les visions d’un architecte (Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, Palais Chaillot, Paris). Laurence de Finance and JeanMichel Leniaud, editors Viollet-le-Duc – Les visions d’un architecte Zinnie Harris How To Hold Your Breath (Royal Court Theatre) ARTS 17 Andrew Saint Mika Ross-Southall FICTION 19 Gwendoline Riley Michael LaPointe Paul Griffiths Claire Lowdon Josh Glancy TLS October 16, 1969 – Framing Malamud Ruth Morse Elizabeth Harrower In Certain Circles Adam Thirlwell Lurid & Cute Jeremy M. Davies Fancy Tommy Wieringa These Are the Names; Translated by Sam Garrett Ayelet Gundar-Goshen One Night, Markovitch; Translated by Sondra Silverston Karim Miské Arab Jazz; Translated by Sam Gordon POETRY & MEMOIRS 22 Lachlan Mackinnon John Burnside All One Breath. I Put a Spell on You ART HISTORY & BIOGRAPHY 23 Gillian Tindall Anne Sinclair My Grandfather’s Gallery – A legendary art dealer’s escape from Vichy France; Translated by Shaun Whiteside S. N. Behrman Duveen – The story of the most spectacular art dealer of all time MUSIC 24 IN BRIEF 26 RELIGION 28 Stefan C. Reif Harry Freedman The Talmud – A biography. Moulie Vidas Tradition and the Formation of the Talmud CULTURAL STUDIES 29 Julian Preece Kate Elswit Watching Weimar Dance. Michael H. Kater Weimar – From Enlightenment to the present James Ward Adventures in Stationery – A journey through your pencil case Bruce Boucher Michael Haas Laura Ashe and Ian Patterson, editors War and Literature, etc Catharine Morris This week’s contributors, Crossword 31 NB 32 Julie Brown Schoenberg and Redemption. Joy H. Calico Arnold Schoenberg’s ‘A Survivor from Warsaw’ in Postwar Europe J. C. Hopkins in Scots, the TLS murder case, Blurb-babble Cover image: Binary computer code © Paul Fleet/Alamy; p2 © Estelle A. Ure, Northwestern University; p3 © David Cheskin/PA; p4 © Luke MacGregor/Reuters; p7 © Nancy R. Schiff/Getty Images; p9 © Estate of Joan Hassell. Image courtesy of The Folio Society; p11 © SuperStock; p13 © Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images for Cath Kidston; p14 © Stan Pritchard/Alamy; p17 © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Mr. and Mrs. Henry Ittleson Jr. Purchase Fund, 1962; p18 (top) © Henri Le Secq/Ministère de la Culture – Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais; p18 (bottom) © Alastair Muir; p20 © Raymond Depardon/Magnum Photos; p24 The Library of Congress (Music Division, Koussevitzky Collection); p28 © Carsten Koall/Getty Images; p29 © Atelier Binder/ullstein bild via Getty Images The Times Literary Supplement (ISSN 0307661, USPS 021-626) is published weekly except a double issue in August and December by The Times Literary Supplement Limited, London UK, and distributed in the USA by OCS America Inc., 195 Anderson Avenue, Moonachie, NJ 07074-1621. Periodical postage paid at Moonachie NJ and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: please send address corrections to TLS, P0 Box 3000, Denville, NJ 07834, USA. USA and Canadian retail newsstand copies distributed by Kable Distribution Services, 14 Wall Street, PS Suite 4C New York, New York 10005 TLS FEBRUARY 20 2015