There is a story that Gershom Scholem, the scholar of Jewish mysticism, was being introduced at a lecture in New York. Mysticism, the introducer said sarcastically, is nothing; but a history of nothing - well, that is science. The same can be said, multipliedly, of Derwent May's book, which is essentially a history of the book review, a genre of such tiny dignity that its life might better be left unexamined. Over large portions, this book is about nothing - or, nothing more than the weekly phut-phut of the English literary establishment. It is a book in which the reader learns how to endure, if never quite outwit, a dark regime of sentences such as 'One feature for which the Lit Supp has always been famous is its cantankerous letters,' or 'One of the happiest events for the Lit Supp in 1916 was Virginia Woolf's return in the spring to health, and to its reviewing team.'

LRB 27 June 2002 | PDF Download