First Drafts
The Prospect magazine blog
Philip Hunter
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2nd February 2010
Under fire: a periodic attack from within
The peer review process, by which scientific research is accepted or rejected by leading journals such as Nature and Science, has come under one of its periodic attacks from within. This might seem an arcane matter to the general public, but it does matter to us all because peer review governs the quality of medical research that leads to the development of new treatments. The drugs we are prescribed a decade from now for a range of conditions—from cancer or heart disease to allergies—may hinge on peer review today. It can also influence the scientific advice ultimately determining major policy decisions—for example, about climate change.
The problem is that cutting edge research can only be properly assessed by specialists in the field who are, to some extent, rivals and may be subliminally at least motivated to produce slightly negative comments. In many fields there is just a handful of leading specialists around the world who both produce original work themselves and also peer review each other’s work.Such an arrangement may be the only one to ensure suitably expert assessment, but does inevitably elicit bouts of paranoia among scientists when their research submissions are either rejected as a result of negative comments from reviewers, or bogged down with requests for extensive further experiments that may take several years.
The latest complaint seems more than paranoia, however, since it came from 14 leading stem cell researchers in an open letter to all the major journals—journals in which scientists must publish if they want be taken seriously in their field and have their work funded. The accusation is essentially that self interest governs some of the peer review comments and therefore decides which research is published and ultimately taken further.
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A S H Smyth
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2nd February 2010
Frayn: attending Galle this year
Thursday: three hours down to Galle with Pradeep Jeganathan, noted anthropologist, shortlisted short-story writer, and member of my “post-war literary” panel. Started Out of Sheer Rage, which is the Tristram Shandy of literary criticism inasmuch as, halfway through, the subject—Geoff Dyer’s proposed study of DH Lawrence—is still “not yet born.”
Woke this morning (Friday) in agony, on the floor of Ru Freeman’s hotel room. Apart from a shared lift yesterday evening, Ru Freeman does not know me from Adam.
Effortful recollections of last night’s writers’ welcome drinking session. Met the man who played the brigadier in the recent film version of The Road From Elephant Pass (a garment manufacturer in real life). Also met Rana Dasgupta, the bright young Delhi-based novelist whom I’m supposed to interview at some point, and his wife, the artist Monica Narula. And met Ulrik Plesner, renowned Danish architect and colleague of G Bawa—until Plesner got married, anyway (the history of Sri Lankan modern architecture, ex-pats included, is a litany of homosexual tantrums). Then (re)introduced myself to Michael Frayn, whom I interviewed a couple of years back—nothing doing, until I mention that he thought I’d come to fix the door knobs and then I discovered he had not in fact adapted the play about which I was supposed to be asking him questions. “Ah,” he says, “yes.” He was smiling, but all the same I made a note not to bother him for the rest of the weekend.
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David Killen
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2nd February 2010
By NAF, Prospect’s cartoonist of the month.
Edward Davey
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1st February 2010
In conversation: Ian McEwan
The highlights of Saturday morning were two sensitive, probing and humane interviews of contemporary authors, Paolo Giordano and Mario Vargas Llosa, conducted by one of Colombia’s most celebrated contemporary writers, Hector Abad Faciolince. Faciolince is best known for his autobiographical work El olvido que seremos, a searing account of the political violence in Medellín—the second largest city in Colombia—in the 1990s which led to the assassination of his father, a prominent university professor outspoken in his condemnation of para-military, drug-related violence (a work now being translated into English by the prize-winning translator, Anne McLean).
Faciolince is a generous, kind, and erudite man, and his conversation with Paolo Giordano, in Italian, drew out many of the facets of the 28-year old author from Turin, whose novel La solitudine dei numeri primi (The Solitude of Prime Numbers), has been a worldwide publishing phenomenon. Giordano, a physicist who is to present his doctoral thesis next week, spoke about the tormented adolescence of Alice and Mattia (the two principal protagonists), his literary influences (including Ian McEwan), and the process of writing the book itself. For a young man (enviably) caught up in perhaps unexpected global success, Giordano seemed kind, unassuming, reflective and critically aware.
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David Killen
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1st February 2010
This month’s cartoonist is NAF
NAF’s cartoon (above) appears on page 32 of our February issue. A selection of his cartoons for Prospect will be published on First Drafts over the next month. He can be contacted at andy_naf@yahoo.co.uk
First, give me your autobiography in 100 words or so
Raised by a loving family in Edinburgh, I studied biological sciences before embarking upon a career as a zookeeper. I looked after primates and snakes (a classic combination) but ended up slaughtering more animals than I kept alive so, tired of playing God, I ran away to South Africa to work on a game reserve. The game reserves were full, however, so I hit rock bottom and with nowhere else to turn and with nothing to lose, I became a cartoonist. I still survive in this sleazy profession, occasionally supplementing my income by playing the banjo.
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Edward Davey
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31st January 2010
Cartagena: a literary lilt in the air
The fifth Hay Festival in Cartagena, Colombia’s jewel on the Caribbean Coast, has begun in style. The sun has shone brightly, drawing out the vivid yellows, pinks and blues of the colonial cit’s houses, churches, theatres and cafés; the breezes from the sea sweep through the streets; salsa and the sound of fruit-sellers bellowing out their wares adds a lilt to the air; and a flurry of linen-clad authors, readers and observers meander from one literary event to the next. The festival began on Wednesday evening in Colombia’s cosmopolitan capital, Bogotá (the “Athens of South America,” as it is sometimes referred to on the continent), with an hour’s conversation between Ian McEwan and Festival Director Peter Florence. Five hundred or so people listened with rapt attention as McEwan talked about his work, in particular On Chesil Beach: its composition, characters, influences, the melancholy of Florence’s disappearance from the last pages, the context of the time, their inability to overcome their traumatic experience.
It was a wide-ranging conversation, touching on the value of the novella as opposed to the novel; the mathematical structure with which McEwan begins the planning of each book that he writes; his experience writing screenplays and libretti, a humbling demotion in the case of screenplays from the role of God to a scribe whose work is subject to constant change at the whim of directors, actors and the rest; the celebrated passage in Atonement in which Briony contemplates the fingers of her hand, which the Colombian students present had found extraordinarily powerful; and the wider impact McEwan’s novels have had on his readers, here and worldwide. It was a fascinating hour and one could hear a pin drop in the packed public library in which the event was held.
Arriving in Cartagena, there is a buzz in the air. Octagenarian Gabriel García Márquez is here, a rare and exciting event as he spends most of each year in his permanent home in Mexico City. Your Prospect blogger made his perennial pilgrimage to the author’s forbidding but stylish house, built in the sixties by Colombia’s preeminent (late) architect Rogelio Salmona, to see if he might catch a glimpse of the great man. But Gabo has – surprisingly – left the city for a day or two: might this coincide with the presence of Mario Vargas Llosa, the great Peruvian novelist? As Gerald Martin’s biography of ‘Gabo’ explains, the two men have never spoken – despite an earlier strong friendship—since Vargas Llosa punched García Márquez, and almost knocked him out, outside a Mexican cinema in 1976. The cause of the punch has never been known, although conjecture abounds. Read more »
A S H Smyth
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29th January 2010
My literary crush: Wendy Cope
I am on board for the fourth annual Galle Literary Festival, held in Sri Lanka. Until a few days ago the only sold-out events were the piss-ups, the concerts, and the sit-down dinners with famous authors—so don’t try telling the local literati that drinking isn’t where it’s at.
Partial list of famous authors: Wendy Cope, Antony Beevor, Artemis Cooper, Rana Dasgupta, Gillian Slovo, Michael Frayn, Claire Tomalin, Louise Doughty, Shyam Selvadurai, Ian Rankin. “Partial” because not impartial. The other day someone asked me who the biggest name was going to be this year. I tried Cope, Frayn, Beevor, Slovo… WG Sebald… Antoine de St Exupéry… ASH Smyth… but nothing. Eventually I gave in and mentioned Rankin. Big reaction, followed by confession of ignorance regarding Rankin’s actual output. Horrifying conclusion: you’re not famous if they haven’t heard of you in Sri Lanka.
I have my own event to prepare for, “The literature of post-war Sri Lanka,” a panel discussion relegated to the fringe festival since it’s deemed not to be as relevant a topic as the private life of a royal mistress living in 18th century London. So naturally, I have spent the past few days indulging in any and all diversionary activities.
Saturday: went to watch an Erich Kastner movie at the Goethe-Institute, where my girlfriend introduced me to an elderly Sri Lankan poet called Clive James. He informed her that he studied only the Romantic languages—the ensuing confusion was fun to watch. Went to meet an architect for advice on a book we’re writing on Geoffrey Bawa: he tells us that Geoffrey’s famously gay brother, Bevis, once killed a woman during sex (this was told to us in what you might call “Colombo confidence”: a story told in hushed tones but clearly intended for repetition).
Sunday: composed a poem in honour of Wendy Cope, and had a local design studio print it up as a postcard for distribution around Galle. I also sneaked into the festival’s official bookshop and slipped a few copies into Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis. Wendy Cope is my heroin(e)—a writer who showed me that poetry could be funny.
Monday: email from Wendy Cope, consenting to interview request. Score! (Question: what is the etiquette for presenting tribute poems? Should I go down on one knee, or climb something very tall?)
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William Skidelsky
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29th January 2010
This year's Australian Open champion? Think again
A predictable wave of patriotism has attended Andy Murray’s serene progress through this year’s Australian Open, and there seems to be a growing expectation that Britain is finally set to have a grand slam winner. But the inconvenient truth is that Murray is almost certainly going to lose. Why do I think this? Bias is probably a factor. I am a Federer fan, and so (unpatriotically) I don’t want Murray to win. Don’t get me wrong: I would like him to win a grand slam, I’d just rather he didn’t do it at Federer’s expense.
But even if bias is removed from the equation, I still think, objectively, Federer is the overwhelming favourite. Murray is undoubtedly playing extremely well, but I haven’t seen anything in his game over the past two weeks to make me think it has changed significantly enough. In terms of their head-to-head record, it’s true, Murray has the edge over Federer—he has beaten the Swiss six times, while Federer has beaten him on only four occasions. However, Federer made a revealing comment a couple of months ago, shortly before playing Murray (and winning) at the end of year ATP tour finals tournament in London. “It’s up to me whether I beat Murray,” he said.
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CityBoy
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27th January 2010
Goldman Sachs: everyone in the top 20 per cent
So Goldman Sachs are the first out of the traps to make it clear just how sorry they are for making so much darned money.
Partners at the firm have announced that they are rationing themselves to a meagre £1m bonus package each in a move which, I suspect, will be repeated across the financial sector as businesses aim to appease an angry electorate and increasingly belligerent political class.
While this will certainly leave their swollen pockets looking rather like a windsock on an eerily calm day, what is most interesting about this latest round of public self-flagellation is who it will not impact. If you guessed those very same traders who got everyone into the mess in the first place then give yourself a pat on the back.
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Colin Murphy
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26th January 2010
The world's media has been to slow to show Haitians helping each other recover from the earthquake
If Haiti was visited by an “apocalypse” or “Dantean” horror in the aftermath of the earthquake of 12th January, then there was one news story that perfectly captured it.
The streets of Port-au-Prince, the devastated capital, were littered with roadblocks made of corpses. Earthquake survivors, out of either anger or trauma, or perhaps Caribbean voodoo superstition, had piled bodies high across the streets, in protest at their neglect.
The story made headlines around the world. Oddly, though, for such a visceral image, the headlines didn’t appear to be accompanied by photos of the scene. Still more oddly, then, the story was attributed to a photographer, Time magazine’s Shaul Schwarz. Schwarz had told a Reuters reporter he had seen two such roadblocks on his travels across the city, and Reuters sent the story global.
By the time the story reached the Independent, it had acquired the further authority of being attributed to (nameless, but apparently numerous) “eyewitnesses,” rather than to a solitary photographer. Many papers distorted Schwarz’s comments to give the impression of these roadblocks being widespread, even as Schwarz himself was telling the BBC that he had seen one such roadblock, and hoped it might have been a “once-off.” The story fostered the impression of a city reverting to savagery in response to the savagery of nature visited upon it.
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