LRB LETTER WRITERS—AN ARTICULATE GROUP

THE LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS IS EVIDENTLY WELL COMPOSED, and articulate as well are its “Letters” column respondents. To me they serve a double purpose: reminding me of something previously appearing in LRB and invariably adding to the original article’s pleasure and erudition. Here’s a sampling from LRB “Letters,” May 23, 2024.

It’s Not Cricket. Frances Cole writes from Aldbury, Hertfordshire, about an earlier letter comparing Shrovetide football (sorta rugby to us Yanks) to lacrosse: “My Toronto-born grandfather played lacrosse for Canada in the early 20th century. He told us he learned the rough-tough game from Indigenous Americans, with whom, as a young adventurer, he was well acquainted.”

“Having moved to London in 1919,” Cole continues, “he taught his two daughters the same version of the game, in preparation for their attendance at Francis Holland School, Regent’s Park. In her first game at the school, my mother let rip in the way she had been taught and was promptly sent off in disgrace, having whacked several classmates and tripped them up with her stick. She was allowed to play again once her game was sufficiently ladylike.” 

Where Culture Comes From. SimanaitisSays readers may recall Terry Eagleton’s LRB piece on culture. LRB reader Ian Ferguson  writes from Auckland, New Zealand, “I wonder how Terry Eagleton’s piece on the foundations of culture would read if it was less Eurocentric, and written from the domain of an indigenous culture. Here in Aotearoa, it is impossible to conceive of ‘culture as a surplus over strict need.’ ”

Ferguson recounts, “Māori art, ancient and modern, tā moko (tattoo), whakairo (carving), and waiata (song), are all intrinsic, inseparable, living parts of the very existence and identity of the tangata whenua (people of the land).”

He says, “It is something that we pakeha need to learn from as we dither around wondering whether our cultural base is the Sistine Chapel, Beethoven and Eliot, or something specific to Aotearoa that we still struggle to define.”

In Orbit. Another letter writer offers gentle correction: Andrew Gelman, New York, recounts, “Adam Mars-Jones writes that ‘to be in orbit, after all, is to be held in a balance of forces. Any acceleration would nudge things out of kilter’ (LRB, 8 February).”

“In fact,” Gelman writes, “as Newton taught us, an object in Earth’s orbit is acted on by just one force—gravity—which induces at all times an acceleration towards the Earth. It’s this acceleration which keeps the satellite on its orbital path: in the absence of gravity, the object would move in a straight line at constant velocity and not be in orbit at all.” 

I thought the name Andrew Gelman looked familiar. Though not cited in LRB, there is a Columbia University professor of this name. I wonder.  

Pocket Envy. This is another topic appearing in SimanaitisSays; indeed, a book review in The New York Times prompted my website piece six months before the LRB’s article about the lack of pockets in women’s wear. Neil Blackshaw, Alnwick, Northumberland, writes, “Women may get pocket envy, but Susannah Clapp underestimates the tyranny that pockets impose on men (LRB, 25 April).”

He shares a family tale: “The sheer visibility of pockets can also have dire consequences. There is a family story about my uncle, who was brought up in rural south-west Scotland. To our enduring embarrassment, he once appeared in the local paper under the headline ‘The Boy with the Bulging Pockets.’ Returning home one day he had been confronted by the local bobby, who forced him to disclose two rabbits, the fruits of poaching.”

Plenty of Pockets. Perhaps with good reason, the following letter was from “A U.S. Army officer (Name and address withheld.)” She writes, “Susannah Clapp will be relieved to know that, as a female gunship helicopter pilot, I have innumerable pockets in my flying suit. No need of vulva envy in this cockpit.”

I surely enjoy the London Review of Books, and so apparently do other readers. ds

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2024