Does anyone still read the literary periodicals, usually referred to by their abbreviated titles such as LRB, TLS, and NYRB? Those sad souls like myself who get a weekly kick from their subscription to a literary periodical will now have to wait every two weeks. The Times Literary Supplement (TLS), after more than a century (it was founded 1902), has changed from weekly to publication every other week. But, they promised, it will look different, and there will be more reviews, so the result should be the same. Is it?
By way of explanation, or rather, justification: I happen to believe that literary periodicals such as the TLS and the New York Review of Books play an important role in the republic of letters, that is, the world of humanities publishing. They provide a bridge between the strictly academic world of the learned journal and the monography, neither of which are designed for reading by non-academics, and the vague middlebrow knowledge that most of us have of things historical, societal, and literary. In other words, they are more valuable than the regular fix provided by (say) Model Railway Weekly, or Speedway Star. At least, I hope so. Actually, the buzz from reading has little or nothing to do with the subject: I’m looking for good writing, even in niche areas.
I abandoned reading the London Review of Books some years ago as too opinionated and, paradoxically, insufficiently interested in reviewing books, rather than displaying the cleverness of the reviewer. Unfortunately, the TLS looks to be going downhill as well, albeit for rather different reasons. But let’s see what has changed with the latest TLS format revamp.
I did a rough-and-ready check of the TLS before and after, and I can’t say I was surprised by the result. My results might have some inaccuracy by not counting many issues, but the key stats I found were these.
The new TLS has a slightly smaller page size, but a larger number of pages: 48 instead of 28, although, of course, half the number of issues per year. So, you would think, nearly as many reviews as before? Not the case. I counted 44 reviews in the first issue of the new format, almost as many reviews as in the 28-page edition. Each review has, on average, increased in size, from around 1500 to 2000 words, most likely in response to the LRB, which contains far fewer reviews (around 15 per issue) but with each review longer (over 3,000 words per review). Even at the old length, the reviews were long enough to engage with the book under consideration, and to say interesting things.
The important thing is the reviews themselves: what has changed? Sadly, there is little change in editorial tone. The subjects chosen for review look very similar. The headline on the cover of the first new issue, which was presumably chosen by the in-house editors as the most likely topic to interest new readers, is the discovery of a miniature portrait of what might be Shakespeare’s patron. Attempting to identify images of Shakespeare and his circle has been a ongoing topic for more than a hundred years, so this is hardly exciting news. No books this week on theology, but, as it happens, the TLS has managed to find yet another niche book about Shakespeare. I remember This sceptered isle, on “unexpected wartime adaptations of Shakespeare”; this week, it’s Shakespeare in the Age of Mass Incarceration, a collection of essays on productions of Shakespeare for prison populations in the USA, and how valuable they are for the inmates. Somehow, I don’t think that title will get reviewed in the national press, on either side of the Atlantic. If this had been a title about incarceration and how to prevent recidivism, would it have been reviewed?
Nonetheless, I will press on with the TLS, with the quirky, the catty (see the letters page), the die-hard traditional choice of subjects (Stefan Collini described it aptly as “a certain staidness”), in the hope of finding the one review in fifty or a hundred that reveals a new way of looking at something. It’s worth it for those magic discoveries.
Michael Shoehorn
I wondered if I was being unfair to the LRB for unsubscribing for similar reasons – not just that it was opinionated but that its opinions were so predictable and could be found in any number of newspapers. Hardly what a literary review should be for. But I missed the occasional great discoveries.
I experimented with the TLS for a little while but I was actually put off by the weekly publication schedule, as I do like to read as much of a magazine as possible and it felt a bit demanding. The new schedule has me interested again, so I’ll try it for a while, even if the change is largely psychological with the format being longer.
Perhaps longer articles might also improve on what I found was the TLS’s alternative drawback, which was that many reviews often read as summaries rather than as critiques.
Liliane Haegeman
I love the TLS.
Janet Jay
I have cancelled my subscription to the TLS. True, it was an indulgence, but one that I justified by the occasional review of a work on Classics or other subject of interest to me. All was fine with my subscription to digital-only copies until the changeover to once a fortnight. No longer did I receive a weekly or even a fortnightly email containing a foretaste of what was in store in the latest edition plus, of course, the magic link to know more…
I admit some months elapsed whilst engrossed in a family crisis before the proverbial penny, or in this case, the proverbial £6.99 dropped. Where were all the copies I had paid for? I contacted TLS subscriptions to be told that they had always been there online, the inference being that it was entirely my fault not to have known I now had to go online and find it myself without a welcome reminder to turn to matter literary and a magic link to click onto.
My remonstrations that I had been diddled out of several months subscription was met with polite denials and so I cancelled my subscription forthwith. I am still receiving reminders that I need to sort out my payments. I don’t know who took over the subscriptions but it all seems in a state of disarray.