Reidy's Digest #1
Tweenage Maoists! Islington Irish! Ocean... Wrong? and more. Plus, professional news and new writing opportunities
Reidy’s digest #1
Hello and firstly some apologies. Firstly, for the punning title. But God damn it, it had to be done. Secondly, for the infrequency of posting. I would joke that I don’t so much publish posts as make interventions, but the plain fact is that time and energy are in short supply, while work and obligations are plentiful.
This regular strand should, I hope, provide something useful for you (interesting stuff to read) and me (an outlet and a purpose to the interesting reading).
Without further ado, here’s what I have mostly been reading/thinking/doing.
There are revolutionary communist parties, and then there are Revolutionary Communist Parties. People with an eye for these things will have noticed the recent launch of a new Revolutionary Communist Party in the UK, which is part of a worldwide relaunch by what used to be known as the International Marxist Tendency. This has nothing to do with the notorious Revolutionary Communist Party of the 80s and 90s, the contrarian vanguardist group whose former cadre and activists (Frank Furedi, Claire Fox, Brendan O’Neill etc) now swim happily in Orbanist waters, though they would deny, probably sincerely, that they have taken a sharp right turn. In the US, the Revolutionary Communist Party is a Marxist-Leninist (i.e. Maoist) cult based around guru Bob Avakian. In the latest n+1, Hannah Zeavin describes her recruitment as a 12-year old horrified by the excesses of post-9/11 America. It’s a touching but clearheaded read, neither defence nor denunciation.
Over at the Irish Times, Mark Paul uses a viral moment of misunderstanding about the death of a north London Irishman to tell a deeper story about an ageing immigrant community. When Martin Fallon of Archway died, a notice of his death was put in the window of Butler’s newsagent, a hub for the community that sells Irish newspapers (all of them, including the north and south Kerry editions of The Kerryman), biscuits, snacks, soft drinks etc. The practice is so embedded that it never struck me as unusual until the Irish Times piece pointed it out - I’ve lived among what could broadly be termed the Holloway Irish milieu for nearly 20 years. Paul’s story points out how the prevailing narrative about the elderly Irish in London (lonely and longing for a home they are cut off from) overtook the reality of Fallon’s life (he had family and friends in London and Sligo, and no particularly longing to return). And he gets some great lines from Fallon’s Archway Irish contemporaries - the best being an unnamed County Clare woman who when asked if she’d ever return to Ireland replies “You get too used to the life over here. They’re too nosy where I’m from anyway. They want to know everything but tell you nothing,” an eloquent restatement of Frank O’Connor’s assertion that “an Irishman’s private life begins at Holyhead.”
Tom Crewe has been praised for his demolition of Ocean Vuong’s new novel Emperor of Gladness in the LRB. I must admit to having a soft spot for Vuong, but it’s easy to see where his hyper-sincere Gen Z poetics tip into the absurd. For a less vicious, but no less scathing assessment of Vuong’s oevre, Alexandra Long Chu’s critique in Vulture is a wonderful read, asking the vital question that haunts so much diaspora literature: “Who is all this for?”
In the wake of the Casey Review, my colleague (more on which below) Zoe Grunewald has written about the reality of life for even comparatively comfortable teenage girls: “I went to a girls’ school in West Yorkshire in the late 2000s and early 2010s. The majority of students came from stable, middle-class families. In theory, we were the girls who had every protection. In practice, grooming was everywhere.
Men in their twenties would pull up outside school gates at lunchtime, collecting 13-year-old girls and dropping them off before break ended. Sixth-form boys would solicit nude photos from girls several years their junior with empty promises of affection, only to distribute them among friends. Grown men would approach girls on Facebook, meet them in shadowy parks, ply them with alcohol — and who knows what else — leaving them vulnerable and ashamed.”
On this week’s Little Atoms podcast, Neil talks to Nell Stevens about The Original, her new novel about impostors and inheritance
Helen Lewis’s new book the Genius Myth has had a blizzard of great reviews. This interview with Helen in the all new New World by political editor James Ball is a great insight into Helen’s own views on inspiration; intellect and work
Belated happy Bloomsday! Here’s Salman Rushdie’s 30 second summary of Joyce’s masterpiece.
PROFESSIONAL NEWS KLAXON 1: I am pleased to say I am now editor-at-large at The Lead titles, and we’re in the market for interesting and off-radar people-led UK stories. Let me know if you have any at firstnamedotlastnameatgmaildotcom
PROFESSIONAL NEWS KLAXON 2: Little Atoms magazine is making its way back into the world, because it seems about time. We’re looking for life writing, criticism, essays and reportage that addresses what we might call “the current crisis” in an engaging and original way. Pitches/suggestions to contact details as above.
Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this, do tell someone. And if you see something I should be recommending, do tell me. +++