Top Intellectuals

"ACP" - Agnes Catherine Poirer - pictured here - covers the London beat for the French press, and effortlessly combines the twin francophone gifts of smarts and style, much as Sartre did - and also enjoys the curious French habit of turning everything elite and sexy into an acronym.

Recently, she pointed out, quite rightly, in The Guardian, that there are few if any public intellectuals in the UK. No, comedians and BBC radio hosts don't really count, nor ghost writers for Wayne Rooney et al.

The English don't accept this - perhaps to be expected.

To confirm her thesis, she pointed to the fact that a woeful 3% of books published in the UK are translations, whereas in France the figure is more like 25%. This could be due to the fact that the French need to translate Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Dickens, Austen and Swift, and we don't. However, there does seem a high-brow trade imbalance here, especially if one considers that probably 99% of those translations are of Tintin.

Worse, though ACP doesn't mention this, British publishers don't even bother to publish English-language writers from places that aren't worthy. Almost no American, Canadian, Indian or New Zealand poets get published in London. The map of what's relevant, at any rate, gets drawn by a mostly-prose-bound media, guided by the infallible oracles known as the Prize.

Meanwhile, British author terrible, Zadie Smith, has joined the growing list of figures Time Magazine - apologist for the worst excesses of American self-satisfaction since the 50s - wishes to claim for their own by adding her to their list of the "100 most influential people of 2005".

She is the only British person on this list, which is staggering. Smith should immediately refuse this honour, lest she quickly assume iconic status and move to Hollywood to host a gameshow. ACP knows better than to accept such Yankee blandishments; like all good French, she resists. She simply is the gad-fly par excellence.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1765388,00.html

http://www.agnespoirier.com/

Comments

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....

Poetry vs. Literature

Poetry is, of course, a part of literature. But, increasingly, over the 20th century, it has become marginalised - and, famously, has less of an audience than "before". I think that, when one considers the sort of criticism levelled against Seamus Heaney and "mainstream poetry", by poet-critics like Jeffrey Side , one ought to see the wider context for poetry in the "Anglo-Saxon" world. This phrase was used by one of the UK's leading literary cultural figures, in a private conversation recently, when they spoke eloquently about the supremacy of "Anglo-Saxon novels" and their impressive command of narrative. My heart sank as I listened, for what became clear to me, in a flash, is that nothing has changed since Victorian England (for some in the literary establishment). Britain (now allied to America) and the English language with its marvellous fiction machine, still rule the waves. I personally find this an uncomfortable position - but when ...

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and Silence of the Lambs . I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".

E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

Search This Blog