This derives from two prompts:
Now I'm putting them together, in the hope of finding a conclusion.
Take those 'prompts' one at a time:
Malin Hay tells us more than we need to know about the production of the LRB, how it is:
Fascinating as the piece was, I assumed it was a fore-warning of a change in LRB production quality, or format, or subscription pricing, or all three.
Early afternoon, Amazon delivered me Graham Robb's latest: France, an Adventure History.
Robb is not, primarily a historian, or — more correctly — not an orthodox historian. He is a literary critic of great distinction, and one of our experts on French literature and culture.
He started with The Discovery of France, back in 2007-8 (my copy is a 'slightly-foxed' paperback — after which I tended to invest in the hard-backs), and then continued with Parisians (a sequence of pastiches so good even the French awarded prizes). To which this latest completes something of a trilogy.
In between such efforts, he extended his range with the quite extra-ordinary attempt to rediscover Celtic western Europe, The Ancient Paths (flogged to the susceptible Americans as The Discovery of Middle Earth) —this is predicated to the Via Heraclea, a notion there is a 'ley-line', from the winter solstice sunset seen at Cabo de São Vicente to the summer solstice sunrise seen at Col de Montgenêvre. More recently he has retreated from his Oxonian dreaming spire to the Scottish border, and celebrated that with The Debatable Land, the Lost World between Scotland and England.
None of that is my immediate concern here.
What alerted me, and reminded me of that LRB piece, was the Amazon package I received yesterday. It was a solid box, not the usual book pouch. What came out was equally hefty. The latest Robb is 520-odd pages, more than Parisians (470-odd), same format but 540mm deep (versus 460mm). And weighs in (literally) at over 1280g (versus 840g). The difference is the quality of the paper. Although, for now, it looks clean-and-decent, it is a different weight and feel. Different type-setter; different printer.
I am not too happy about these changes.
Take those 'prompts' one at a time:
Malin Hay tells us more than we need to know about the production of the LRB, how it is:
printed on a matte lightweight coated paper. The specifications are exact: it needs to be heavier than newsprint, resistant to heat and the effects of ageing, and good at reproducing colour. It is called ‘improved newsprint’: the paper quality is slightly higher and the ink doesn’t come off on the reader’s hands.
The paper originates in Finland, where the manufacturer is in a long-running dispute with its employees. Until COVID there was over-production of paper, until those factors reduced the supply. As soon as the economies re-opened, there was under-production, and paper manufacturers went for price hikes. All predictable. All wishing Marxian definitions of cyclical supply-and-demand. In particular, the strike at the UPM paper mills:... has prevented the production of more than a million tonnes of coated graphical paper – about 25 per cent of the total European supply. At the end of January, the European federation for print and digital communication, Intergraf, estimated that 40 per cent of the paper that would be needed from mid-February onwards would be impossible to procure.
Fascinating as the piece was, I assumed it was a fore-warning of a change in LRB production quality, or format, or subscription pricing, or all three.
On to the second prompt.Robb is not, primarily a historian, or — more correctly — not an orthodox historian. He is a literary critic of great distinction, and one of our experts on French literature and culture.
He started with The Discovery of France, back in 2007-8 (my copy is a 'slightly-foxed' paperback — after which I tended to invest in the hard-backs), and then continued with Parisians (a sequence of pastiches so good even the French awarded prizes). To which this latest completes something of a trilogy.
In between such efforts, he extended his range with the quite extra-ordinary attempt to rediscover Celtic western Europe, The Ancient Paths (flogged to the susceptible Americans as The Discovery of Middle Earth) —this is predicated to the Via Heraclea, a notion there is a 'ley-line', from the winter solstice sunset seen at Cabo de São Vicente to the summer solstice sunrise seen at Col de Montgenêvre. More recently he has retreated from his Oxonian dreaming spire to the Scottish border, and celebrated that with The Debatable Land, the Lost World between Scotland and England.
None of that is my immediate concern here.
What alerted me, and reminded me of that LRB piece, was the Amazon package I received yesterday. It was a solid box, not the usual book pouch. What came out was equally hefty. The latest Robb is 520-odd pages, more than Parisians (470-odd), same format but 540mm deep (versus 460mm). And weighs in (literally) at over 1280g (versus 840g). The difference is the quality of the paper. Although, for now, it looks clean-and-decent, it is a different weight and feel. Different type-setter; different printer.
I am not too happy about these changes.
