TS: TLS vs LRB

feel like a d harvey should come hang on ilx, teach us about socks done proper.

i agree with whoever said above the right answer was NYRB, but then LRB but I am allowed to enjoy all of em

Basically he's a Nabokov character

― woof

My first thought was Pessoa, but yeah. Amazing article.

so impressed with this article. creating all those characters and having them interact must make him so _happy_. i'm sort of jealous.

By his own count, since receiving his PhD from Cambridge he has applied for around 700 university positions in Britain, but has been invited for interview only eight times. (This lack of success in the British academic job market has perhaps confirmed him in his staunchly critical view of the hiring and promotion processes to be found in most English universities.)

that seems a strikingly poor ratio for someone with a cambridge phd

what has he been doing wrong huh?

700 university positions in britain?

doesn't that seem strange? given that some of those were probably 30/40 years ago when the number of positions/applications must have been fewer and a 1%~ interview rate seems unfeasibly low for some random provincial university appointment

the letter about grammar/public schoolboys written during his own undergraduate days suggests he is of a certain type given to a resentful life on the periphery of institutions, who in the ferment of the late 60s was still caught up in the internecine cultural politics of an earlier era, crankishness a self fulfilling prophecy leading to further estrangements and nurtured grievances

i do enjoy this sort of literary sleuthing but given that the initial dostoevsky hoax was quite engaging and in any event fairly harmless, it's saddening to find out how useless and shitty his other escapades have been