NB by J.C.: A Walk through the Times Literary Supplement

by James Campbell

NB by J.C., a collection of James Campbell’s best columns from the TLS, is a guide to the literary pleasures and absurdities of the past two decades.

For over twenty years, James Campbell wrote the popular NB column on the back page of The Times Literary Supplement, signing it “J. C.” The initials were not intended as a disguise, but to provide freedom to the persona. “J. C.” was irreverent, whimsical, occasionally severe. The column had a low tolerance for the literary sins of pomposity, hypocrisy, and cant. It took aim at contemporary absurdities resulting from identity politics or from academic jargon. Readers of NB by J. C. will find not only an off-beat guide to our cultural times, but entries from The TLS Reviewer’s Handbook, which offered regular advice on the cultivation of a good writing style. “Above all, aspire to the Three E’ elegance, eloquence, and entertainment.”

The Introduction offers a history of the TLS from its beginnings through its precarious stages of adaptation and survival.

“The secret of J. C.’s weekly column is its unique mix of anonymity with this ‘stranger’, whom we meet over our morning coffee, is the most discreet and delightful of guides to what’s happening―good or mostly bad―in the literary world, with all its pretensions, follies, and occasional triumphs. I especially relished J. C.’s prizes―for the worst prose or the silliest blurb. Then again, leave it to J. C. to find the rare edition, the forgotten book of poems that deserves another look. True wit, coupled with it’s the rarest of writerly feats.”―Marjorie Perloff, author of The Vienna A Memoir

“I receive immense pleasure from J. C.’s columns. Something more than warmth, laughter, gratitude (especially when he is nailing academic unreadability).”—Vivian Gornick, author of Unfinished Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader

"For many years, Campbell appeared each week in the Times Literary Supplement, where his back-page essay—ironic, bookish and irresistibly entertaining—was every subscriber’s favorite feature."—Michael Dirda, Washington Post, on James Campbell's NB column

Genres: Nonfiction

425 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2023

About the author

James Campbell is a Scottish writer. He left school at the age of fifteen to become an apprentice printer. After hitchhiking through Europe, Israel and North Africa, he studied to gain acceptance to the University of Edinburgh (1974–78). On graduating, he immediately became editor of the New Edinburgh Review (1978–82). His first book, Invisible Country: A Journey Through Scotland, was published in 1984. Two years later, Campbell published Gate Fever, “based on a year’s acquaintance with the prisoners and staff of Lewes Prison’s C Wing”.

Campbell's other books include Talking at the Gates: A Life of James Baldwin (1991, 2021), Paris Interzone (1994), Just Go Down to the Road: A Memoir of Trouble and Travel (2022). He worked for many years at the Times Literary Supplement and wrote the column 'J.C.' A collection of these appeared as NB by J.C.: A Walk Through the Times Literary Supplement in 2023.

Reviews

[Michael Reilly · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Times Literary Supplement is a serious weekly book review. It is mostly serious people reviewing serious books in a serious tone.

The last page of the review is the "NB" column, which is typically a break from the seriousness. From 2001 to 2020 the column was written by James Campbell, an editor at the TLS. The column was signed by " J. C".

This is a selection of his columns. NB is short for the Latin "Nota Bene", meaning "note well". Each column had three of four short pices on bookish subjects. Campbell insists that it was not a gossip column, it was more of a grab-bag column.

This is the type of things he discussed;

Who was the last professional white actor to play Othello?

A series of pieces on the "Jean Paul Satre Award for Prize Refusal", awarded by J.C. to artist who refused prizes. Satre refused the Nobel.

Notable log rolling in book reviews. He names names of authors writing glowing reviews of books by their employer, friend, etc.

Samples of spectacular academic gobbledygook. Some of his quotes from Academic publications are stunning in their incomprehensibility.

What was the first mention of a telephone in a work of literature? It looks like it was in Gilbert and Sullivan's "HMS Pinafore".

TLS Obituaries. When an author dies, he would discuss that author's reviews and writing for the TLS, Camus and Hitchins get that treatment, or a report on a visit to the aging author close to death, Gore Vidal and V. S. Naipaul get that treatment.

Updates on the fictional "TLS Reviewers Handbook" where he collects his writing pet peeves.

Campbell at times has a snarky tone. He has firm views against organizing writers by race or gender. He scoffs at the idea that a writer writing about a character from a different race or gender is doing something wrong and he is uncomfortable with awards that are limited to particularly racial or sexual groups. He points out that deciding who is a, for example, a black author, is not self-evident. He mocks organizers who use the old racist assumption that a single drop of blood makes you ''black".

This is great bookish fun from an opinionated guy who writes well.

[Lila · Rating 5 out of 5]

The back page of the TLS is where I go first with each new issue. Divided into three parts, the reader finds reports on what can be had at used book stores in England (with a look back on publishing history); unreadable academic prose, and other topics in poor writing; the overabundance of prizes going to the same few authors; and the latest on virtue signaling and censorship; among other topics told in a light amusing voice. I hoarded issues until the piles became too large.

Now here is a lovely bound collection of those columns, with an introduction to the TLS--and an index!

[James S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

The selections are readable and witty and occasionally completely wrong, as when J.C. critiques Elmore Leonard's rules of writing. You can judge your own degree of sympathy to Campbell's taste by the fact that, in the same critique, he holds up Henry James as his exemplar of good writing. I side with Naipaul, who called Henry James "the worst writer in the world" and "an elephant trying to pick up a pea." I suppose these essays could never escape the orbit of the TLS and its presumably canonical taste.

[Kidlitter · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you adore James Campbell's unique tone of snark, savoir-faire and the sort of enviable erudition that only seems to exist in the TLS, you have a new bedside reading companion for the discernible future. If you don't, you simply won't get why some of us feel a pang every week at the appearance of yet another edition of the paper without "J.C." on the back page where it belongs. What a consolation this book is then - though it is not a complete encyclopedia of his pieces, alas.

[Alex Bozzo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyed from beginning to end, I only wish it were longer.

[Ian Lea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprisingly fun. For book nerds only.