A few linky things

[oursin]

Okay, this is a really interesting article about syncretic religious traditions in South India: but the bit that grabbed me and threw me off completely was:

Bhagavati is the pre-eminent goddess in Kerala.... she could be ferocious: a figure of terror, a stalker of cremation grounds who slaughtered demons without hesitation or compassion.

which had me thinking 'Clearly folk memories of one of the earlier Slayers'. I guess W Dalrymple is not a Buffy-fan.

Oliver Burkeman snarks bestselling self-help guru who confesses himself thrown into rage by lack of availability of room-service.

Love by numbers: I enjoy pornography. I'd really like my girlfriend to watch it with me because I think it would make our sex more exciting. She doesn't seem that interested. How can I get her to try it?. I feel that this question could equally well be asked replacing 'pornography' with 'male adventure action movies', because he's probably thinking of something made by men, for men (unless he's somewhat unusual), that he enjoys, but doesn't necessarily offer anything pleasurable to his girlfriend (who I hope is off somewhere reading slash fanfic on the internetz, or even writing it).

Celebrity memoirs, breathless lives of 18th-century socialites and countless royal mistresses - whatever happened to the golden age of biography? And what is the future for a genre in which the best subjects have already been written about, time and again, asks Kathryn Hughes. Some cautionary thoughts here:

According to this convenient way of thinking, dressing up old subjects in new clothes becomes playful and postmodern, rather than just desperate. Yet Jerry Brotton of Queen Mary, London University... warns against being taken in by this sleight of hand. "What often happens is that a perfectly solid biography from 1978 gets rewritten with an eye to the intellectual moment, without the addition of a single bit of new information." [o dear yes]
....
Why doesn't anyone say or do something about these acts of biographical cannibalism? According to literary agent Andrew Lownie, who runs the Biographers' Club (a networking organisation for practitioners), it's because the power in publishing companies has decisively passed from the commissioning editors to the sales people. "Their thinking is, if something was once a hit, then let's try it again, even though clearly there's a law of diminishing returns. Anything new or different is looked on with suspicion." Lownie's theory is confirmed by the recent experience of one writer I spoke to. Having produced a first biography that punched well above its weight, he has been looking forward to writing his second, this time on a playwright whose work he knows well. His publishers, though, are having none of it and have suggested instead that he try a life of ... Graham Greene. That Norman Sherry's authorised multi-decker Life has sucked every last shred of marrow from Greene's tired old bones seems scarcely to matter. [Tell me, who have been approached to write life of already over-biographised figure in the birth control movement, about it]
....
Holroyd... believes that scholarly and innovative biographies are increasingly overlooked in favour of texts that, although fluent and timely, are closer to journalism. "One used to award literary prizes to the 'tortoise' book, the one that had taken years of archive work but was never going to be a popular hit," he recalls. These days, by contrast, juries seem keener to make sure that a crowd-pleasing title wins on their watch. Stories slipping out from judging rooms over the past couple of years suggest a growing wariness of books that appear too long, complex, or perhaps simply good-mannered to beg for easy love.
....
[S]ince Foreman's unprecedented hit, photogenic young women are routinely commissioned to produce biographies of equally camera-ready subjects, regardless of whether they are equipped to do so. The results are often intellectually slight and stylistically poor. (Although this isn't always so - in which case, some rather good young women biographers are probably missing out on the critical attention they deserve.) The press releases accompanying these books are always the same, breathlessly referencing what are seen to be the author's key qualifications for the job: she went to Oxford, has done some part-time modelling and has a hobby such as grape-treading or motor-car racing. Whether she knows anything at all about her subject (and, let's be clear, a PhD is not the same as a decade of immersion in the relevant archives) is neither here nor there.

If this seems a peculiar way for publishers to pick their authors, not to mention their subjects, then Lownie can explain. "If a writer is untried, then they are, paradoxically, more attractive than one who already has form. The moment you publish your first book, you leave a paper trail. People can look up your sales figures and make a judgment about whether you are worth giving another chance. A new author, by contrast, is an unknown quantity."

Even older and not especially winsome biographers routinely feel the effect of this "anyone can do anything" culture. I have lost count of the number of times a publishing professional has suggested that I might like to try my hand at a subject from the Tudor or Stuart period (on the unspoken assumption, presumably, that my usual patch, the Victorians, is all used up).
....
Still, better to seem like a dreary pedant than a rank amateur. That's what happened six weeks ago to Veronica Buckley when it emerged that, during her writing of a biography about Mme de Maintenon (yet another royal mistress), she had mistaken a fictional diary of Louis XIV for the real thing. For Brotton, Buckley's mistake is the predictable outcome of a systematic deskilling over the past 30 years. "Today's biographers simply aren't immersing themselves in the manuscript sources, but are working instead with more accessible printed versions. As a result, they fail to develop the deep familiarity with their material which would prevent such basic errors."

This reluctance to consult the primary sources is not because biographers have suddenly become lazy or stupid - in general, they are a hunched and harried crew who have to be prized away from their desks - but because they are increasingly given unrealistic deadlines to complete work.

See also the letter Nothing New (scroll down).

Why is Edward Thomas still so undervalued - supposing that he is? We get the usual story here, and there is a big hole in it. Didn't his brief burst of poetic output just possibly, in terms of the chronology, have something to do with his involvement with Eleanor Farjeon? Just sayin'.

Ben Goldacre on good codslappy form.

Shouldn't all politicians do this? opposition politicians in Australia have questioned whether the country's treasury secretary should be allowed to take five weeks' holiday to look after endangered wombats.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Not immersing in the sources, but working from secondaries...yes, that is the main problem with stuff like that stupid "What Jane Austen Ate" or whatever. FULL of errors.

[livinglaurel.livejournal.com]

What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew, yes, and its even more dreadful 'SEQUEL,' Dickens' Fur Coat and Charlotte's Unanswered Letters. Blargh. When even I can pick out bad errors in supposed historical reference books, they're pretty bad.

[redbird]

I note that that article's definition of "pornography" leaves out most of what appeals to me, because it's entirely in terms of photos and/or videos, ignoring that some of us prefer text.

[sacred-sarcasm.livejournal.com]

From the article on porn:
It's not unreasonable to ask your girlfriend to watch porn with you, but it would be wrong to coerce her.
It concerns me slightly that the writer thought that last bit of advice was necessary.

[hafren.livejournal.com]

I'm all for the wombat man. Splendid fellow.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

Most demon-slaying goddesses make me think of BtVS.