Tales of the City: Confessions of a book-reviewer

John Walsh
Tuesday 25 February 2003 20:00 EST
Comments

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

There are red faces over at The New York Times, where a book reviewer has been caught red-handed writing a review without reading the book all the way through. The book was The Woman Who Wouldn't Talk by Susan McDougall, a one-time friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton who was involved in the Whitewater scandal and spent some time in jail for contempt of court. The reviewer was Beverly Lowry, a creative-writing professor, who airily opined that McDougall really should have testified in court. In fact, she had testified, and dealt with her testimony in the pages of The Woman Who. How did Prof Lowry miss such a crucial detail? By failing to read the thing to the end.

Columnists had some cruel sport with the professor. The New York Times had to publish a mortified correction. Literary folk all over town threw up their hands in horror. Imagine – a book reviewer failing to read a book all the way through! What is the world coming to?

We're so much more sophisticated in London literary circles, aren't we? Where literary editors get used, quite quickly, to the concept of the "taster review", in which a book is apparently assessed by a trial sampling of two chapters and the last page; and where crime reviewers often fall back on the tested formula, "I won't spoil the plot for you by revealing any more", because they fail to get beyond page 117. Taking their cue from the Rev Sydney Smith's famous claim, "I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so", British literary journalists are far too indolent to bother spending their valuable weekends wrestling with difficult tomes.

When I started work at a Sunday newspaper of great distinction, I looked with amazement at the lead review of The Satanic Verses, which had just been published. It was clear from the frame of reference that the reviewer hadn't read beyond the end of chapter one (but then, nor had I). Equally shocking were the reviews written by one Scots historian, who not only failed to read the books we sent to him; he failed to write the reviews either, sending in a couple of A4 pages of random phrases separated by ellipses ("Austro-Hungarian empire... Tallyrand... Congress of Vienna... Ems telegram... Bismarck") and inviting anyone in the office to fill in the gaps.

And I remember the embarrassment of the reviewer of John Fowles' last novel, A Maggot, who loftily dismissed the long legal passages in the text as "prosaic" and the plot as "pointless". The review hit the nation's doormats on Sunday morning, just as the reviewer (OK, then, it was me) was lying in bed actually finishing the book at last and discovering – in the final 20 pages – that the entire plot hinges on the founding of the Shaker religion. The word "maggot", I recall, pretty well summed up how I felt.

You can beat Ken's congestion charge, no sweat

Ten days into London's Congestion Charge nightmare, and two things have become clear. First, what drivers most fear is that awful moment when you're skirting the Charge Zone on your homeward journey and suddenly find yourself travelling, unstoppably, un-get-out-ably into a zone road, on which you will drive for, say, three whole minutes. You'll then spend the evening telephoning the congestion HQ, texting it, e-mailing it and generally weeping with frustration as you try to avoid being hammered with the £80 non-payment fine.

Second, there's a new rush-hour to worry about – half the motoring population of Greater London now hangs back on the outskirts of town until the magic moment of 6.30pm (when zone charges no longer apply) and they all decide, in a vast snorting herd, that now is the moment for 10,000 cars to converge on the West End.

I wrote last week about the ingenious ways in which Londoners are responding to this enraging tax on their civil liberties. Driving around Holland Park on Saturday, I discovered a stylish new one. It's the electrically assisted bicycle, and is many steps up from your son's electric scooter. The term "electrically assisted" makes them sound like the Sinclair C5 (or indeed the Stannah Stairlift), so they're known more sexily as "e-bikes". Mark, the owner of E-bike Central (150 Holland Park Avenue, W11), told me that two Harley Street medics had bought the same model on the same day. It's the City Mantis, costs £450, does 15mph, looks like a giant insect (in yellow, red, purple or silver) and buzzes through traffic for 10-18 miles, depending on conditions, without needing to be recharged. It folds away to carry-cot proportions, for stowing in the cloakroom of your fashionable club. Serious e-bikers can go for the Panther (pictured), the Stingray or the Lafree Twist, which will glide you electrically up any gradient in comfort, without needing a license, road tax, insurance or MOT, or showing up on the congestion cameras. At £800 or so, they're pricey, but they will get you there and back without involving you in ruinous penalties. There's a revolution brewing on the streets of London, ladies and gentlemen, and you may as well be in on it from the beginning.

A date to forget

So the war is scheduled to start on 14 March – according to all the newspapers. Well, at least we now know when the hostilities will kick off. We have a date at last. We can put it in our diaries. We can make sure the initial attack, with the 700 planes and the cruise missiles and 5,000lb laser-guided bombs, doesn't clash with anything we've got on for that day. Oh, but look, it does. It's Red Nose Day. Didn't Mr Blair feel concerned, when he drew up the 14 March ultimatum, that the war might distract people from watching Lenny Henry, Rowan Atkinson and several wacky newsreaders raising money for starving Africans? Did Blair appreciate the irony involved in sending off the bombing mission to a landscape that's just as ruined and helpless, just as infertile and hopeless, as the country whose pictures will be beamed into millions of living rooms, while Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley ask you for your charity cash?

I expect not. But, if the war goes according to plan, 14 March will become a date to conjure with – like 3 September 1939, when we declared war on Germany. Strangely enough, 14 March hasn't been a very exciting date in the past. Wars rarely break out in March, for some reason. Nor do exciting public events of any kind. Believe me, I've looked. I've checked in all the history books and absolutely nothing exciting or decisive has happened on 14 March for 150 years. You have to go back to the American Civil War and 14 March 1862, when North Carolina was captured by the Unionist army. Otherwise, nada.

But it has, for some spooky reason, been a significant date in diplomacy circles. It was on 14 March 1960, at the height of the Cold War, that the first 10-nations disarmament committee met in Geneva – but they were scuppered when the Communists walked out. Two years later, on 14 March 1962, they tried again, 17 foreign ministers trying to sign a disarmament treaty in Geneva – and this time, it was the French who refused to co-operate and pulled out. So the only thing this portentous date has ever signified has been the breakdown of peace negotiations. Funny, that.

Bottling out

How bizarre to find Ronnie Wood, the Stones guitarist, being lectured on the evils of drink by Mick Jagger, who told him to mend his ways or he wouldn't be going on tour. Chastising a chap for excessive hedonism is a bit rich when the Stones invented the idea of rock'n'roll behaviour with their celebrated 1965 dictum, "We piss anywhere, man".

Jagger as Mr Chips? He'll be chastising Keith next. "Look here, Richards. I've received disturbing reports that you have been staying up after midnight, drinking bourbon and visiting clubs of ill-repute. I will not tolerate this kind of behaviour. Pull your socks up or you will not be coming on the geology field trip... sorry, the 40 Licks Tour."

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in