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Nicolas Sutro's avatar

Hey, I caught your recent Note about the (at times, rather thankless) schlep of building subscriber numbers and now, here you are, brilliantly fascinating on Schama and politics and art and journalism and intellectual life (my hunch is you can be both…it’s just that journalism demands one’s intellect to be forced through a different prism, a much more restraining one than writing a book [as per Clark]). And I just don’t know why, when you write such good sense in such a fab way, your numbers aren’t vast.

But…as per @Maria Haka Flokos’s reply…I think the numbers shtick is in one way an impediment and, in another, a completely understandable variable in the cash matrix element of Substack (@Emma Gannon was recently very interesting about the positive aspects of paywalling).

I dig Schama, and I dig Clark. And I think you’re right here that it is the medium, not the man, which plays a very strong and distorting hand. What I don’t dig is the apparent leaning into what looks like ad hominem doing down of Schama by Henderson. Too shallow, too easy and mean a quick win. Schama’s scholarship has not gone, nor has his particular gift for relating that to the rest of us who may not be so scholarly; but the demands of an industry and the reflection of politics in that industry are distorting.

And, as for staying afloat on Substack, I - for one - would dig it if you did.

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Richard Locke's avatar

Agreed that it is possible to be both journalist and intellectual, though not always both at the same time!

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Maria Haka Flokos's avatar

This has been on my mind a lot too, recently, ever since joining social media. 'Staying afloat,' 'attracting engagement,' becoming 'user friendly and catching attention all in one,' all aspirations of anyone entering this battlefield. Unless one uses it as a private journal. Like writing.

Because all the social media tropes are an impediment to original writing. An author does not cater to their public. They attract it. Trying gimmicks is like undergoing cosmetic surgery in order to win the heart of one who might never have noticed you otherwise. As many do, for the financial benefits are not to be ignored. But that isn't writing. It's marketing. And as such, has nothing to do with words. It's a numbers' game.

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Anders's avatar

Of course, good stuff that also helps the reader to stay afloat

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Peter Harkness's avatar

Both can be true, in a way - or neither. Sometimes the saintly Schama can be irritatingly posey and didactic but, as with a favourite teacher who I blamed for bouts of inattention, I suspect it's more down to my being lured by a mobile phone message as he gets to a challenging bit. Just as, at school, it was the 5th form hockey girls wandering red-faced and glistening past the classroom window after practice. You really need to concentrate on Schama, just as with Ernest (Chus) Toye's account of the Norman Invasion. Chus's solution to juvenile inattention was to keep a cricket ball on his desk and break off at intervals to demonstrate the differences in finger position for certain classic bowling grips - the difference between leg and off spinning I recall more clearly than the events of October 1066. As for arts (sorry Arts) on the BBC, give me Sky three times out of five. You can be popular AND worthy, if you get the mix right, BBC. And you, too Simon.

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Tim Lieder's avatar

Simon schama is delightful. The spectator is nasty jealous.

https://marlowe1.substack.com/p/how-dare-you-even-think-these-things

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Claire Ivins's avatar

I have never been bored by Simon Schama. Which is not to say he could not potentially BE a bore in a particular situation, as indeed any of us could, perhaps when discussing potholes or traffic jams or the settings of our central heating. But in his writings and TV programmes? No.

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Rosie Millard's avatar

I agree

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Helen Gordon's avatar

I don’t find Simon Schama the tiniest bit boring. I’m really fed up with this sort of attack in newspapers. Writers think they are being clever, clever by saying such things. Like female writers attacking women because, I suspect, they want to sound different and edgy.

My grandmother said that people who were bored were only bored because they were stupid. She could be right…

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Anne Odling-Smee"'s avatar

No he is fascinating x

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Michael Twist's avatar

While I haven't (yet) seen the program, I would say he's not a bore. Why not learn something along with your TV arts programming? I enjoyed reading Landscape and Memory.

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Mark Diacono's avatar

Fascinating, thank you. Landscape and Memory came along just as I was writing my uni dissertation and blew my small mind

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Rosie Millard's avatar

What was your dissertation on?

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Alan Munro's avatar

Thanks for introducing me to T.J.Clark!

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Rosie Millard's avatar

Pleasure. He is brilliant and very insightful (if that's not a tautology) x

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Sarah Harkness's avatar

NEVER!

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