True Nature: The Lives of Peter Matthiessen

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n02/christian-lorentzen/i-m-always-in-the-club

by Thevet • 5 months ago

18 7 5 months ago

lrb.co.uk

irishcoffee2• 5 months ago

Eventually this... whatever it is, almost gets somewhere.

TL;DR: the CIA recruited people in the 1950s.

pkkim• 5 months ago

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.

irishcoffee2• 5 months ago

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.

smelendez• 5 months ago

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.

ggm3• 5 months ago

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"

ggm3• 5 months ago

"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.

True Nature: The Lives of Peter Matthiessen

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