John Merrick
@johnpmerrick
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Writer, critic, historian, etc. Editor: @versobooks , @NUJBook johnphilipmerrick @gmail .com / john @verso .co.uk
London/Crewe
Joined December 2019
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First copies in of the new collection of Raphael Samuel’s historical essays! Out January, from
@VersoBooks
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They’re eating what now … pret sandwiches? Alright that’s it, you won me over. the innocent children must die
The Columbia protester diet: Students munch on Pret sandwiches, pricey nuts and sip Dunkin’
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this is an amazing quote from a 26-year-old Chinese man Luo Huazhong taken from a vital post on Baidu protesting the stagnant wages and poor work-life balance in the country
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Sorry but have we returned to a preliterate age or something? Since when did “landscape has ideological content” become controversial?
Looking at landscape paintings now problematic, experts determine
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being a writer is just googling "synonym for xxxx" 100 times a day
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Ah yes, “cancelling” people who express solidarity with Palestine famously has never happened before this week, and is merely an offshoot of “cancel culture”
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some really wild responses here to this interview with a respected historian of the DDR. anti-communism is back baby!
In 1990 the experiment of communist East Germany came to an end.
Yet for a time it was a successful project, raising living standards against the odds.
@aaronbastani
speaks to
@hoyer_kat
about Europe’s most successful communist country, the DDR.
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A really bad essay from Zadie Smith this, which in doing a nice humane liberal even-handedness ends up reproducing the most bad faith reading of the supposed opinions of the student protestors possible.
Why, yes, Zadie, it is just rhetoric. But it’s your rhetoric.
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Today would have been Eric Hobsbawm's 106th birthday. To celebrate this giant of C20th history, here's his stunning essay on the the Historians' Group of the Communist Party, published online for the first time
@VersoBooks
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About a month ago i got a promotion at work and i didn't put it on twitter at the time as i was trying to avoid the website – right now i'm not though. So: I got a promotion! I'm now an assistant editor at Verso Books!
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This is honestly the most abhorrent, racist piece of writing i have read since the start of the war in Gaza.
(i'd rather not give it extra clicks by linking to it)
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One of the worst sentences I have ever read, taken from their essay on Milei published yesterday
Every time I read something from The Critic I want to forcefully take my red pen to every sentence. Awful prose, for the most part.
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Imagine getting done like this on the first line of the introduction to your book
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Back in Crewe for Xmas and shocked to see a “flat white” on sale in a coffee shop. The locals are obviously perplexed. Nearly a riot here as they bang their fists and demand their usual gravel in hot water.
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And a reminder that the Verso Blog is always open for submissions. Essays on cultural/political/intellectual topics considered – please do send a pitch if you have an idea to blogeditor
@verso
.co.uk
We pay for contributions, and usually take essays of 1,500-2,500 words
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What are the load-bearing posts of our time? Obviously 'facing god and walking backwards into hell' and 'miette' are up there. Does Ed Balls still count? PS if you can parse this you should probably log off
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this is utterly abhorrent: the deputy editor of the jewish chronicle here saying, without being challenged, that it’s “debatable” whether the nazis were right or left, in order to tarnish the left with the brush of antisemitism
'Over the last decades, there's been a steady stream of anti-Semitism coming in from the left.'
Jake Wallis Simons warns many universities have been 'gripped' by anti-Semitism after the Israeli envoy Tzipi Hotovely was mobbed by LSE students after a debate.
@NickFerrariLBC
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Mike Davis's beautiful, moving. inspiring thoughts on death from earlier this year
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the idea that a nice middle class jaunt to a literary festival is somehow comparable to a public library is both bizarre and so detached from reality that it's almost offensive
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Why would anyone choose to write and publish this? Beyond the grotesque opener about Lea, it then becomes a story about the author visiting a Chinese sex worker??
Advice for scholars: next time you lecture on Kant and revolutions at “Downing” (
@DarwinCollege
) Cambridge, make sure your hair is neatly tied and that you’re not blonde. Or else your research impact will be on the
@spectator
libido section.
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A reminder that for anyone who has ideas for short, original essays, the
@VersoBooks
blog is always open for submissions: blogeditor
@verso
.co.uk
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One of the more exciting books coming out early next year from
@VersoBooks
, the first major biography of Thomas Muntzer for decades. Brilliantly written, it's a superb biography. Let me know if you want a pdf for review!
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Finished copies in of what I can almost guarantee is the best historical biography you’ll read all year!
@VersoBooks
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UK state pension age will soon need to rise to 71, say experts
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Very excited to receive copies of Culture and Politics, a new collection of the writings of Raymond Williams expertly edited and introduced by
@philorbrian
! out soon from
@VersoBooks
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E.P. Thompson, the great historian and author of The Making of the English Working Class, was born 100 years ago today
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As thousands of people die and hundreds of thousands more face death and brutal collective punishment, all now preventable, this guy thinks the best approach is scolding those calling for peace as anti-semites and “Soviet” propagandists (?). Grim, morally bankrupt sophistry
I wrote an article
@TheAtlantic
on History of Israelis & Palestinians, the urgency of 2 states, the use of Decolonialization to back Hamas barbarity dehumanize civilians & stop 2-states of Israel & Palestine. Plse read it all. Its key to be able
to hold 2 thoughts at one time.
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Whenever i hear anything about the 2023 publishing sensation Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, i think of this brilliant, if a little bonkers, Australian socialist novel from 1947 of the same name – now sadly out of print.
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Very sad to hear that Dan Georgakas, co-writer of one of the great works of left history Detroit I Do Mind Dying, has passed away. RIP
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This is an absolutely brilliant essay by Sam Kriss on Rene Girard, which also does a great job of anatomising the new Very Online Post-Left Right
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For
@softpunkmag
i have a long essay on class, home, returns and the impossibility of ever fully reinventing yourself
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you know where has a really complicated history, but is never described in these terms? Belgium. I wonder why
Astonishing how many intellectuals are willing to insult their own intelligence by repeating the preposterous idea that some parts of the world have a more "complex" history than others
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This is a wonderful – and incredibly relatable - essay by the great Rachael Allen, on being working-class, the anti-intellectualism and snobbery of the middle-classes, and the deep-seated problems of contemporary publishing
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moved house and finally got all my books out on shelves! (also featuring
@broseph_stalin
’s books - not all mine)
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Solidarity with my comrade Ernest Moret, from
@Ed_Lafabrique
, who was arrested yesterday evening by British police at St Pancras station. There will be a protest tonight at the French Institute in London at 7pm to call for his release
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has anything ever died (and survived) as much as neoliberalism? here’s hobsbawm diagnosing its death throes in 1998
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I'm currently reading Joyce's Ulysses for the first time, after long being put off by people saying how hard it is to read, how difficult it is – and you know what, it is tough but it's also one of the funniest books i've ever read!
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I have a three month old daughter and even the thought of her getting a slight scratch fills me with a profound existential fear. I’m not sure I even have the words to describe how the news of the continuing horrors coming from
Gaza makes me feel.
Utterly unimaginable
BREAKING| Israel's army kills the eldest daughter of professor Refat Al Areer, Shaima'a, along with her husband and newborn baby, in a strike on an apartment in Al Rimal neighbourhood in Gaza.
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Every time i see another bad faith take from some liberal stooge of US foreign policy asking those showing solidarity with Palestinians under constant bombardment "but where is your outrage over Sudan, Somalia, XXX" i think of this paragraph of
@joshua_craze
in The Baffler
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Is Labour the party of British capitalism, or of Sunak-Trussism? Reupping this as Labour decides on £28bn
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For
@thebafflermag
i reviewed Terry Eagleton’s latest, Critical Revolutionaries, and tried to assess the legacy of mid-century criticism and the contemporary status of literary and cultural studies
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Your perennial reminder if anyone has ideas for short, original essays for the
@VersoBooks
blog, we're always open for submissions: blogeditor
@verso
.co.uk.
Info on what we're after here:
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One of the wilder things about that appalling Atlantic article is the number of seemingly smart people praising its nuance and erudition — its main shtick is calling everyone who disagrees with him Stalinists and antisemites. Literally the furthest from nuance you can get
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Even more exciting books forthcoming from Verso. for anyone interested at all in the history, politics and culture of England and the North, this will be an essential read
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Let me know if you want to see the pdf proofs of this!
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This is obviously goofy as hell, and so badly written to make it near incomprehensible, but the idea that runs through this stuff that there was once a left that was proletarian before a bunch of middle class kids with daft hair moved in, is utter nonsense
Why are so many left-wing people losers?
Ben Ughetti discusses the factors behind the left's repellent image 🤢
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as a writer, the worst thing is the world is pitching. genuinely a horrible experience, just soul-crushingly terrible and bleak
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A sharp essay by J. Arthur Boyle on "Dimes Square", BAP, Curtis Yarvin, Madeleine Cash, and what all of this tells us about the idea of the avant-garde today
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what are the best novels about political commitment? golden notebook, middle of the journey types – people wrestling with what it means and its consequences
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Wonderful to get a copy of the forthcoming PMC edition of Love’s Work, a book that’s meant so many different things to me in the decade since i first read it
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we can all quibble with the definition of "character from a book" being used here, but i reckon we can also all agree that my nephew makes an exceptionally cute Mo Salah
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When you’re trying to have a conversation about the moral claims of historical categories and the Germans barge in
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this is genuinely, shockingly, evil. the more i hear about the spycops scandal, the more i hate every single cop.
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This is a brilliant interview with the great art historian T.J. Clark by Daniel Ward – on Pasolini, neorealism, the influence of the Communist Party on post-war Italian culture and much more
@VersoBooks
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this is amazing! Mike Davis talking about the influence of the great Welsh historian Gwyn Williams and how he wanted LA to be his Wales
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For
@the_point_mag
i wrote about the work of the great Alan Garner, the ideology of the British countryside, working class histories, and what it means to be from Cheshire
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A brilliant and suitably grotesque essay for
@VersoBooks
by
@James_ARobins
on the new cinema of ultra-rich excess (Triangle of Sadness, The Menu, Succession, Infinity Pool) that asks: can fiction ever match the moral bankruptcy of the really existing rich?
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i’ve never felt more strongly about a cause before! help save one of the last good bits of soho from going the way of all the rest
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I can’t believe that someone has given Paul Mason a contract to write a history of communism lol
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This is the opinion of too many people on the left too, imo
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If you were to, say, start a London-based left literary/cultural magazine — a British n+1 or something like it — how much initial money do you reckon you’d need?
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Very happy that Culture and Politics, a new collection of the writings of Raymond Williams expertly edited and introduced by
@philorbrian
is published today!
Available for 30% off on the
@VersoBooks
site:
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For the Guardian, I wrote about one of the defining questions of British life and politics: whether to stay in your hometown or leave it all behind
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Incredible to see
@jckchd
in the New Yorker! An great essay on a lost classic of working class British writing.
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“An essential primer for the new era of Natopolitanism”,
@adam_tooze
Out very soon from
@VersoBooks
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If anyone is working on a Marxist theory of crime fiction, hit me up asap!!!
I think one of the smart literary marxists should write as simple of a book as they can for the rest of us about what we should think of when we watch cop shows or read crime books.
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A typical brilliant, incisive and, for once, palpably angry Mike Davis essay for
@NewLeftReview
— a lament not so much for lost futures but for our entirely futureless era
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very excited to see Lin Chun’s book on China’s revolutionary century published at last. A stunning work of historical and social scholarship from a brilliant thinker! Out v soon from
@VersoBooks
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I'm now running the website for Dorothy and E.P. Thompson, and i'm going to try to add to it over the next few months. If there's anything missing from here, particularly secondary literature on either of them, then let me know
Verso created a useful website about the work of historians E.P. Thompson and Dorothy Thompson.
#historyfrombelow
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Yeah it’s probably phrased inelegantly — although I’d take - Telegraph article with a pinch of salt — but Jesus Christ even the artists themselves weren’t so deluded as to think this wasn’t the case
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bill nighy lives down the road from me and eats his lunch at a local italian spot. i can confirm he has very good taste in literature
bill nighy reading joan didion alone at lunch the only man i respect
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Please stop quote tweeting me, i really couldn’t care less!
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brilliant, perceptive little parenthetical comment on novelists and class from Rachel Kusher in
@Harpers
here!
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OUT TODAY!: Workshop of the World, the new collection of Raphael Samuel’s historical essay I’ve been working on for the past couple of years, is finally published!
Copies are available for just £20 at the
@VersoBooks
website
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one of the saddest aspects of contemporary publishing is just how many books whose sole frame of reference is twitter and it’s various controversies and beefs are published every year
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This, by
@AntonJaegermm
, is a stunning essay – a critical genealogy of the present that tracks the move from post-politics to hyperpolitics via the work of Tillmans, Ernaux, Eribon and Houellebecq
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This is actually a terrible picture of her but wanted to get the paper in lol, so here’s a better one
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big fan of this list of retired shirt numbers in football including pope john paul II
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As a fully paid up Eagletonian, I enjoyed his latest in the LRB immensely. Wide-ranging, wise-cracking: it’s pure distilled Eagleton
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All the Spiked/Unherd "culture is too woke and leftwing" have been very silent recently as artists, writers, publishers, galleries are threatened and hounded for expressing even slightly leftwing views.
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Really proud to have written an article for
@BostonReview
on plagues and the looming sense of an ending that the current pandemic has induced, and how that must make us reconfigure our optimistic faith in progress
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Thanks Lee for the nice bit of publicity 👍
Shocking the 'largest independent, radical publishing house'
@VersoBooks
now promotes Andreas Malm, who has previously written favourably of Hamas leaders, its military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and of Islamic Jihad.
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for me the most annoying trend in contemporary writing is the faux-apology for privilege followed by the appeal to the most marginalised. "as a straight, able-bodied, cis male whose daddy bought them a 3 bed in crown heights, i'm ok. but what for the [x-most marginalised]?"
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Fascinating essay on a newly discovered unpublished manuscript in Stuart Hall’s archive
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A great essay here from
@KatieAnneTobin
on the enigmatic, often contradictory work of Simone Weil and the current resurgence of interest in her work.
@VersoBooks
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