The Spectrum – the week in books | 6 July 2012

UP: SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE

Faber’s new Shakespeare’s Sonnets app is rated 12+ on account of its ‘Infrequent/Mild Sexual Content or Nudity’. After watching Andrew Motion’s  come-to-bed reading of Sonnet 142 we’re surprised it escaped an X-certificate. Who needs 50 Shades when you’ve got the third sexiest poet laureate (after Ben Jonson and Ted Hughes) wearing nothing but polka-dot pyjamas and braces? ‘Love is my sin’ indeed!
 
 
UP: 60s SUMMER READS

Now’s the time of year when literary pages replace serious stuff like reviews with drivel about what famous people are reading on their holidays. A depressing symptom of our celeb-obsessed age, it’s tempting to think, but a glance at an old newspaper reveals ‘twas ever thus. If you’ve often wondered what books Enoch Powell, John Braine and Lady Antonia Fraser packed in their suitcases in 1968, your prayers have been answered.
 
 
UP: POETIC JUSTICE

On hearing that defence attorney Frank Louderback was seeking time off a murder trial to take part in Key West’s annual Ernest Hemingway look-alike competition, a Florida judge was not impressed: ‘Perhaps a lawyer who evokes Hemingway can resist relaxing frolic in favor of solemn duty. Or, at least, &”Isn’t it pretty to think so?” Motion DENIED.’ You can’t help feeling sorry for Louderback: when else is it ok for a middle-aged, overweight man to dress up as a boy scout?

 
DOWN: CHARABANCS

With new volumes of T.S. Eliot’s letters set to appear every other year till the end of time, the was-he-or-wasn’t-he-a-massive-racist debate (‘He ate duck à l’orange with French fascists’… ‘But &”Jewboy” was a term of affection back then!’) is in danger of getting a bit tired. The most indefensible revelation in the latest 900-page doorstop is the Pooterish letter Eliot wrote to the Daily Express on traffic policy: ‘Would it not be a good thing if charabancs were forbidden to follow each other except at such a distance as would allow a motorist behind to cut in past one of them at a time?’ Vivienne was lucky to be packed off to a sanatorium.

 
DOWN: HORSEPLAY

Reviewing Dirt for the Guardian, Alfred Hickling thinks David Vann’s ‘extremely loose and self-indulgent writing’ could’ve done with a spring-clean: ‘There’s a lax infiltration of unnecessary adverbs (“Galen’s mind was just empty”; “It just seemed hopeless”) and some bizarrely redundant phrases: “He lifted the lid of the piano, a large flat polished piece of wood on a hinge.” We’re even told at one point that Galen “used his opposable thumbs” to grip an axe, as if to clear up any ambiguity over whether the protagonist possesses hooves.’

 
DOWN: FACT-CHECKING

American author Patrick Somerville was upset after the New York Times panned his novel, angry when he realised critic Janet Maslin had mixed up his characters, and astonished when the email account he had set up for his protagonist ‘Ben Hanson’ received an apology from embarrassed NYT editor Ed Marks. 38 emails later, as Ed and ‘Ben’ bonded over Borges, Pynchon and Twitter, a mindbending meta-fictional bromance had blossomed. Brace yourself for the inevitable Sundance contender.

Anna Baddeley and Fleur Macdonald edit The Omnivore.