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From the next issueCityphobia · John Lanchester: The Crash“Byron wrote that ‘I think it great affectation not to quote oneself.’ On that basis, I’d like to quote what I wrote in a piece about the City of London, in the aftermath of the Northern Rock fiasco: ‘If our laws are not extended to control the new kinds of super-powerful, super-complex and potentially super-risky investment vehicles, they will one day cause a financial disaster of global-systemic proportions.’ The prediction was right, but the tense was wrong. The disaster had already happened, it just hadn’t yet played itself out in the markets.” [ read more . . . ] Online onlyDon’t Just Do Something, Talk · Slavoj Žižek on the financial crisis“One of the most striking things about the reaction to the current financial meltdown is that, as one of the participants put it: ‘No one really knows what to do.’ The reason is that expectations are part of the game: how the market reacts to a particular intervention depends not only on how much bankers and traders trust the interventions, but even more on how much they think others will trust them.” [ read more . . . ] Has Anyone Lost Yet? · David Edgar watches the US election debates“With three down and one to go, it’s clear that the 2008 US election debates are fitting the pattern of every series since the early 1980s. No major, Gerald Ford-type gaffe, no obvious, Reagan-like knock-out blow, but a careful, well-rehearsed negotiation for minute advantage, contests in which confidence, body language, mien and even forms of address have proved as important as points of policy.” [ read more . . . ] This is an update to David Edgar’s piece on the history of presidential debates, ‘Who Will Lose?’, which appeared exclusively on the LRB website on 23 September 2008.  Vol. 30 No. 19 · 9 October 2008Don’t Ask HenryAlan Hollinghurst: Sissiness
“The story of Belchamber’s publication is probably better known than the book itself, which, like its author, has suffered the ambiguous fate of becoming an accessory to the life of a more important writer. It is his friend Henry James who keeps Sturgis’s novel distantly in view, at the same time as casting a long shadow over it. James read it in proof, and wrote a characteristic sequence of letters to Sturgis about it, beginning with neat praise and mild demurrals, but quickly building up to such fundamental criticisms of the book that the demoralised author said he would withdraw it altogether; at which James protested and pleaded, successfully though not with any retraction of the criticisms he had made.” [ read more . . . ] Cut, Kill, Dig, DrillJonathan Raban: Sarah Palin’s CunningSarah Palin has put a new face and voice to the long-standing, powerful, but inchoate movement in US political life that one might see as a mutant strain of Poujadism, inflected with a modern American accent. There are echoes of the Poujadist agenda of 1950s France in its contempt for metropolitan elites, fuelling the resentment of the provinces towards the capital and the countryside towards the city, in its xenophobic strain of nationalism, sturdy, paysan resistance to taxation, hostility to big business, and conviction that politicians are out to exploit the common man. [ read more . . . ] Why Not Eat an Eclair?David Runciman: Why Vote?
“Why would anyone vote for Barack Obama? Not why would anyone want to see Obama elected president rather than John McCain (or Hillary Clinton for that matter), but why would anyone who desired that outcome think that his or her individual vote could make the slightest difference in helping to bring it about? General elections are never decided by a single vote, so no one’s vote is ever going to be missed. If you want Obama to win, and plan to vote for him, but you forget, or find yourself otherwise detained, don’t worry – the final result will be unaffected by your failure to show up, even if you happen to live in a swing state like Ohio or Florida. If Obama is winning the state, he will do perfectly well without you; if he is losing, there is nothing you can do to help him get over the line, because the winning line will always be further away than your paltry individual vote. Either way, you are not needed, so why bother to vote at all?” [ read more . . . ] The Khugistic SandalJenny Diski: Jews & Shoes
“Great shoemakers of our day: Manolo Blahnik, Jimmy Choo, Christian Louboutin. None of them, I think, very Jewish. And if there had been any great pre or postwar Jewish shoe mavins they would certainly have been pointed out to me by my parents, who identified any Jewish achiever in any sphere as one of the family: Alma Cogan, Einstein, Marx, boxing promoter Jack Solomons (the Sultan of Sock), it didn’t matter what they were known for, everyone counted. Even, like the Kray Twins, a little bit Jewish and murderers would make them ours and make us proud – but there was never a mention of shoe designers.” [ read more . . . ] PlusShort CutsAdam Shatz: Obsession with IslamAt the MoviesMichael Wood on Max OphulsRegistered subscribers to the print edition of the LRB can also read the following: Jenny Turner on Janice Galloway
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