Oh, Babe, What Would You Say

The first essay in The Salt Companion to Mina Loy is called Futurism, Fashion and the Feminine: Forms of Repudiation and Affiliation in the Early Writing of Mina Loy. I'm sure it is worthy and valuable work and, in fact, the first section sets out Loy's very radical agenda to ensure that I will go back to it but it does also show that in pursuing poetry to the limit, it is possible to lose sight of poetry altogether. It will have to wait in the same way that the biography of Delmore Schwartz is patiently waiting, having been overtaken by more pressing reading soon after it arrived.
More pressing will be Ali Smith on a borrow from a mate who is a great admirer of hers, having asked him for a lend of anything after she topped the poll in the TLS last week that asked over 200 industry insiders for their nominations for the New Elizabethans. Along with Zadie, Hilary Mantel, Ishiguro and others, she is top of the league. I'm disappointed to see Alan Hollinghurst in there with Julian Barnes not mentioned but Sarah Waters is listed just outside the Top 10.
Perhaps Barnesy was overlooked because the question did ask those invited to take part to consider their most recent work and whose future work was most eagerly anticipated. But he need not worry. Love, etc. didn't convince as convincingly as Talking It Over, to which is was a sequel that perhaps didn't quite have enough to stretch far enough into a second book, but the rest of the short stories in The Lemon Table will be saved up for later, after a break for Ali. If the remainder of the stories are anything to compare with The Story of Mats Israelson, they will be worth waiting for. It is very rare for me to downright insist that you absolutely must read something, hear a record or anything quite so imperative but The Story of Mats Israelson struck me on first reading as one of the finest such things in the genre or language, and if it doesn't surpass Joyce's The Dead that is in some part due to it not being on the same scale.
But lists are just lists and arguably the less valuable for being polled across a wide constituency rather than expressing an individual point of view. Look what happens when a country holds a General Election. It takes places with the sophistication of France or Canada to get it right. So Julian Barnes need not fret. The Story of Mats Israelson is a further reminder, when by now no more are needed, never to attempt to write prose fiction. One would never be happy, knowing that you could be judged against such a masterpiece.