True Nature: The Lives of Peter Matthiessen
lrb.co.uk"Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole"," is Evelyn Waugh's take on the gentleman naturalist in "Scoop" (1938) a role which Peter Matthiessen seems to have taken to heart.
It's a job. Somebody has to note the first cookoo of spring.
Eventually this... whatever it is, almost gets somewhere.
TL;DR: the CIA recruited people in the 1950s.
London Review of Books articles aren't allowed to discuss the book being reviewed for the first five paragraphs. It's an obscure British law or something.
Apparently it isn’t a rule as much as an implied norm. I didn’t know this, thank you for educating me. Explains a lot about the article.
I’ve always been fascinated with how governments operate their clandestine operations. This particular article felt more like an expositional adventure than informative.
"Expositional Adventure" should be the title of a book about OSS/CIA action in europe during and after the war.
I like to think of the coffee and wine drunk to write all those artists manifestos the French intellectuals insist on publishing, all paid for by the almighty US dollar.
"the short reign of Pippin IV" by John Steinbeck (1957) is an amusing work about euro communism, royalty, youth culture and the american fascination with postwar france.
I would be very disappointed if it turns out "Shakspear et Cie" was in fact, part of this.
Isn't the LRB the one which people buy for the lonely hearts ad?
"neurotic, high functioning oxbridge reject seeks rich older man to predate, future matrimony possible if you can satisfy my need for Proust reading and cake"
Highbrow US publications (The New Yorker, Harpers) kind of do this too, right?
They basically write their own article about the subject of the book, in which one of the notable things that has happened recently is that the book came out.