Too many bosses
7th February 2008
You make a valid point (News & Curiosities, February) about the baffling number of vice-presidents and managing directors in US companies—and I write as a vice-president in just such a corporation. But this might be thought a little rich coming from a publication which boasts no fewer than 29 people with the word "editor" in their job title. In a magazine of less than 90 pages, one hopes that they all manage to find enough to edit.
Keith Ennis
Ilford, Essex
On Ukrainian identity
14th February 2008
I was surprised by Jonathan Power's claim, in his interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski (February), that one can't compare the rich artistic legacy of Russia with that of Ukraine. The cultural identities of both countries have always been much more intertwined than politicians would like us to believe. Ukrainian-born Gogol lived only intermittently in Russia, yet this is where Dead Souls is set. Bulgakov's White Guard unfolds in his native Kiev and deals with a Russian family's trials during the Bolshevik revolution. Both novels are considered classics of Russian literature—and great art always finds a way to transcend petty nationalism.
Anatoly Kurmanaev
London NW1
Suspicious sonatas
20th February 2008
I do not like Martin Kettle's uncritical attitude towards Daniel Barenboim (February), both because I think it's pretentious for Barenboim to play Beethoven's sonatas under the rubric "the artist as leader" and because Kettle hadn't yet heard Barenboim play at the time of writing.
There was an enormous hype surrounding these concerts that was not, I suspect, justified by Barenboim's current playing; but then I didn't hear any of them either. I did hear Paul Lewis—a young and beautifully precise pianist—play the Beethoven sonatas last year at the Wigmore Hall and at the Sheldonian, and I think I won't ever hear them better played than that.
Jean McCrindle
Tackley, Oxon
Down with Whitehouse
10th February 2008
I was shocked by John Lloyd's encomium (February) on the late Mary Whitehouse and the indulgent line on homophobic bigotry taken by his review. As a gay man of 65, I have lived through, and participated in, the slow, bitter struggle for gay liberation—a struggle to which Whitehouse showed her hostility by attempting to close down Gay News, the only gay newspaper of its day, and to imprison its editor.
As for the "seen as natural" queer-hatred on which Lloyd showers such sympathetic understanding, it is exactly in the home that such prejudice does most damage. A child abused for its race usually finds a haven among family. But an adolescent expressing their sexuality in a bigoted home is trapped in a nightmare from which there is no such escape. Parents with homophobic hang-ups should keep their problems to themselves if their children's sexuality is something they are too messed up to handle.
Lloyd would be unlikely to give such a nod and wink to racial prejudice—although it is not so long ago that this too was "seen as natural," as was the supposedly God-ordained subordination of women and owning of slaves.
James Scott
Great Linford, Milton Keynes
Taylor the metaphysician
30th January 2008
I was disappointed that your interview with Charles Taylor (Prospect online, February) missed what seems to me the main point. Taylor is that rare, perhaps extinct, breed—a metaphysician. Having been treated as tantamount to child murder by thinkers from Nietzsche, Heidegger and Wittgenstein to Derrida, this poor creature—metaphysics—still lives in Taylor. Metaphysics tries to think the whole of reality, even if reality appears impossibly distant from itself, and in that endeavour unites philosophy and religion. The interview ended up tiptoeing around this metaphysical core and discussing peripheral issues. An opportunity missed to peer a little beyond our Platonic cave.
Michael Kowalewski
via the Prospect blog
Reviewing the reviewers 1
3rd February 2008
I applaud William Skidelsky's critique of the state of book reviewing (February), but he does not go far enough. At least half the reviews I read of non-fiction, even in the TLS, never confront the author's argument or expertise. As an author, I pine for criticism: if only someone knew better than I; if only someone cared when I was wrong. Rather, reviewers often just give a bland summary of the field and sign off with an aside or word of praise. This may be because the reviewer's first encounter with the field in question was when he or she read the book under review. The fault lies partly with those experts who have simply not taken on book reviewing. Interface between academia and the wider public is essential for a healthy culture: book reviews are where it should begin.
Antony Black
Dundee
Reviewing the reviewers 2
10th February 2008
William Skidelsky analyses the conflict between book reviewers and literary bloggers, and concludes that the real battle is "for literature itself, and its right to be taken seriously." The "literary mandarins," however, must take some responsibility for provoking the ordinary reader by their dismissive and contemptuous tone. I came across a fine example of this in a recent essay by James Wood in the Guardian: "A glance at the thousands of foolish 'reader reviews' on Amazon, with their complaints about 'dislikeable characters,' confirms a contagion of moralising niceness. Again and again, in book clubs up and down the country, novels are denounced because some feeble reader 'couldn't find any characters to identify with,' or 'didn't think that any of the characters grow.'"
Literature's right to be taken seriously may be better served by the existence of book clubs and reader reviews than by the contempt of critics such as Wood.
Diana Birkett
London SW11
Myths of American decline
13th February 2008
Michael Lind argues in your cover story (February) that America is likely to remain a globally dominant force throughout the 21st century, yet he fails to ask just how robust the global chains of supply that support it can remain in an era of climate change, population pressure and resource depletion. The majority of goods Americans buy, as well as the raw materials that power their economy and infrastructure, must travel thousands of miles to reach them. America is fundamentally unprepared for both the long-term high prices and the international compromises a century of scarce resources will demand. Dollar supremacy will not survive an energy squeeze begun by the middle east; the euro is a more natural international currency for the first half of the 21st century, and perhaps the yuan in the second. American supremacy, of any stripe, is a dying beast.
Edward F Field
Wisconsin
The credit crunch
4th February 2008
Charles Goodhart (February) provides a helpful insight into the origins of the global crisis in financial markets, but recognises that the role of regulatory agencies requires further consideration. One characteristic of financial markets is that the players, but not the products, are regulated. This is unlike, say, pharmaceuticals, where a firm requires a licence for each drug it sells as well as to be licensed as a manufacturer.
The lack of product licensing in financial services permits untrammelled innovation, one common feature of which is the concealment of risk. New products offering seemingly attractive returns are sold successfully in competition with traditional, well-understood lines. Big bonuses are earned until market conditions change and the concealed risk becomes apparent. We used to think this was a problem associated with consumers who couldn't understand the small print. But now we see that it is also a major problem in wholesale markets. The question, which perhaps Goodhart will answer in his promised second article, is how the regulatory regime might bear down on the concealment of risk.
David Metz
London NW5
Africa's artificial nations
17th February 2008
David Anderson's otherwise informative piece on the Kenyan crisis (February) was marred by his reflex dismissal of the "artificial nation" thesis of African tribal conflict. Anderson says that the creation of a colonial-era state in Kenya, throwing together Kikuyus with Kalenjins and many others, "has not been a big factor in the conflict… in a country with more than 40 ethnic groups, the nation trumps the tribe for most people." Really? At a certain level, most Kenyans are no doubt proud to be Kenyan. But unlike Europeans, they have not had hundreds of years to build a common national ethos helping to underpin the rule of law and democratic institutions. Surely most Africans, especially in rural areas, identify far more with their own people, language and society than with a nation that has probably done nothing for them—and that tends be run by and for the dominant tribe of the region: the Kikuyu in the case of Kenya. Post-national academics in western countries may think the idea of the nation state is out-dated but, from Kenya to Pakistan, citizens are evidently suffering from too little of it, not too much.
Forbes Davidson
Bude, Cornwall
Amis's lovely circularity
3rd February 2008
It's easy to take an author to task for the "circularity" of their arguments, as Tom Chatfield does with Martin Amis (February). For those attempting to create as well as merely to comment, however, literature is more than a puzzle to which accurate solutions need to be sought. Writing is often and necessarily a circular, agonised business, and those who are honest enough to confront their own contradictions—let alone to find a voice that publicly and eloquently explores these—deserve better than to have their words sifted for "telling" details designed only to show how clever a reviewer is.
James Anson
London SW16
