re Tallis http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2tEt5q7Glo

The TLS is one of the few mainstream newspapers that requires a medium-sized attention span. The Times itself is increasingly tabloidy these days. I get the print edition of the TLS for a paltry pound a week, which is nothing when you think how much there is in it.

I admit that I struggle with some of the philosophy�- all that stuff about nothingness - nothing will come of that. And the letters page can be hilariously sniffy.

I have never read any W. G. Sebald, but will do so now. That's the first time I remember Will Self writing anything sensible.

And don't forget George Herbert�- I think he featured in a later edition than the ones you review.

oops - forgot to post the link for this performance before some rude Parisians:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5deaARYHbeM

Thank you for sharing the two issues of the TLS...at what age did you realise that you only wanted to write?

Thank you for this. I used to contribute to the TLS when Ferdinand Mount was the editor. After he left the commissions dried up, but so did my interest in what was published. I haven't subscribed in a decade, and now I see that I didn't miss a thing. 

Chateaubriand may have romanticized the Arabs in Spain, but he described the situation of the Jews in Jerusalem as constant oppression, persecution, and humiliation. As you probably know, Chateaubriand was here in 1806 [or circa 1806?], afterwards publishing his Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem.  His account of the Jewish experience in Jerusalem --at the bottom of the social barrel-- is confirmed by other observers of the first half of the 19th century. Edward Said didn't like Chateaubriand, claiming or implying or insinuating that he served French imperialism. In fact, Ch't'b'd hated Napoleon and had no wish to serve him or his empire, as far as I know. But Said knew better.

As to Robinson [and/or Rogan?], I think that the figure of 625 Arabs killed in the first "intifada" year --1988-- seems high. Be that as it may, Robinson and/or Rogan apparently ignore the killing of a mass of Muslims just six months before the so-called "intifada" began in December 1987. I refer to the slaughter of hundreds of Iranian pilgrims and some others too, at Mecca during the Haj by Saudi police in the summer of 1987.

The estimates of those slaughtered by the Saudi police at that time and place range from 400 to 1500. Even the low estimate gets close to the number 625 of Arabs supposedly killed by Israel in the first "intifada" year. And those killings were all in one day.  Whereas the op ed articles in the  Establishment press mainly defended the Saudis ["They had to do it"], Rogan, who would see himself as anti-Establishment, does not even mention the Mecca massacre, as seems most likely.

Anent Chateaubriand:

You can now take courses in French literature, even major in French, even be a graduate student in French, in the soi-disant best universities America has to offer, and not, in all of that study, be  required  to read a word of Chateaubriand, the best French prose writer of the 19th century. What are we to make of this?

So much bile and spleen, impossible to respond to it all. Just one little nugget, the American aid given so ungrudgingly and freely to "The Egyptian people." Not to the people, no, but to the dictator-for-life Mubarak, who forbids democracy, jails his opponents and uses American aid with which to do so. As in  many other American client states of the past and the present. 

I  quite agree that no American aid should have gone to Egypt, with or without Mubarak and his Family-and-Friends plan. No further transfer of wealth from non-Muslim polities and peoples to Muslims should take place. The Muslim states of OPEC have received more than thirteen trillion dollars since 1973 alone, and all without lifting a finger; let them share Allah's bounty will fellow members of the Umma. Meanwhile, we have to spend more and more money all over the Western world because of the large-scale presence of Muslims. This includes the much larger security apparatus required for airports, airplanes, trains, train stations, busses and bus stations,cruise ships, government buildings at every level, sites of historic or symbolic importance to various Western nations (Statue of Liberty, Invalides, Trafalgar Square), museums (especially those with portraits, or sculpture), churches and synagogues and even, in some places, Hindu and Sikh temples, Christian and Jewish day-schools, and much else, including round-the-clock protection for some celebrated cartoonists and apostates, with more being added to the list every day.

The expense includes not just the additional security, but the cost for police to do investigative work, the payments to Muslims who help, or at least claim to help, in reporting on what goes on in mosques, on lawyers including those assigned to the defense, on judges, on the whole apparatus of the justice system that in major part is now focussed, all over the Western world, on protecting against a Muslim threat, and then of course the cost of incarceration, especially in Western Europe, of Muslim prisoners whose percentage of the prison population is usually at least ten times their numbers in the general population, and for some crimes, as rape, the multiple is even larger.

No, I agree with you -- the Americans should not have supported Mubarak, nor King Abdullah of Jordan, nor the stratokleptocrats of meretricious Pakistan. But I suspect you do not agree with me, or with my reasons for wishing to see a cut-off of such aid. And I don't agree with you that Egypt is or ever has been a client state. It does not now, and never has, done America's bidding; every poll taken suggests that Muslims in Egypt (the Copts may be a different matter) are rabidly anti-American, and the Egyptian government has been running diplomatic interference for the Arabs who run the Sudan. That pretend-tsktsking over the Sudan should fool no one, but it always fools the Americans. And right now the Arabs in Khartoum, or those who like to think of themselves as Arabs, are getting ready to renew their mass-murdering of Christians (and animists) in the south, so as to head off that promised referendum on independence, and having killed so many non-Arab (and therefore inferior) black African Muslims in Darfur, and driven out a million or two more into Chad, are now ready to quiet down. is now focussed andf cartoonists).

Yes, cut Egypt off. Even if it had been willing -- it never was -- to be a client state, it should never have received any American aid. Nor should any of the other Muslim states or peoples that forgot to be born with oil and gas deposits under their soil.

If one cares about the wellbeing of such people, one would wish them to come to a recognition that the source of their political despotisms,of their economic paralysis, their mistreatment of women and non-Muslims and palpable lack of sympathy for all minorities (even minorities of fellow Muslims who are Shi'a in Sunni lands, or Sunni in Shi'a lands) has its source in Islam. The more we get in the way, the more aid we supply, the longer we delay the day of recognition. The less aid we give them and the less contact we have with them, the more likely it is that they will have to conclude, slowly, and at first only among a very small intellectual elite, that the political, economic, social, intellectual, and moral failures of Muslim states and societies are a result of Islam itself. Ataturk understood this. Nowadays, there is no one in the political class who quite understands this except perhaps for Mithal al-Alusi in Iraq. But many of those born, through no fault of their own, into Islam, who have come to the West, and taking advantage of the mental freedom it offers, have come to their own conclusions about Islam and offered articulate analyses of the matter. I am thinking of Ibn Warraq, Magdi Allam, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, Ali Sina, Nonie Darwish, and many others, some of them not widely known and wishing to keep things that way.

The fall of the university is a great shame. And the vanishing of Chateaubriand and other classicss causes great regret.

Anyhow, I would like to put into competition for the best writer of non-fiction, historical prose in French in the 19th century, the historian and diplomat, Cesar Famin. He wrote some beautifully written books, at least to my mind, although virtually forgotten today. His first was:

I think that Hugh would find Famin a kindred spirit in his view of Islam. His two relevant books are:

(1843).

Histoire de la rivalite et du protectorat des eglises chretiennes en Orient (Paris, 1853).

 It is a minor point, except for Truffaut enthusiasts, but still:  You give Godard too much, or at least misdirected credit.  Les Quatre Cent Coups was directed by Truffaut.  Deux ou Trois Choses Que Je Sais d'Elle, on the other hand was in fact a Godard product.  I sort of liked it years ago, although I am not sure I would now, knowing what came after.

I had the pleasure tonight of hearing a lecture by

on the subject of Chateaubriand and Jerusalem. When asked about Edward Said's negative view of Chateaubriand, Fumaroli answered that Said's criticism was "tres exageree". He pointed out that Said was trying to discredit a host of scholars and writers who had studied Arab history, culture, religion, etc. by saying or insinuating that they were imperialist agents. Fumaroli said that in fact these scholars were trying obtain knowledge [pour savoir].

If Fumaroli is right --as I believe-- then my conclusion is that Said was in fact opposing knowledge and science.

the comments about styron are marvellous.  His phrase describing a woman's buttocks "vibrating with magical eloquence" should rank in the pantheon of litrerary absurdities right beside david lawrence's  "twinkling buttocks".