They Call Me Naughty Lola: Personal Ads from the London Review of Books Book

The self-contempt of the English is a great aesthetic achievement, like the Taj Mahal. (But when did it start? I don't see it in Shakespeare. Perhaps this emotional self-devouring began with the collapse of the British Empire…) The London Review of Books - in particular the enigmatic David Rose (who identifies himself only as "advertising director" of the magazine, who is "married and lives in London") invented a new form, just before the millennium (October 1998): "lonely hearts" ads for intellectuals - or people who want to sleep with intellectuals. This (anonymous) literary structure may be the "modern haiku" I've been searching for. Most of them are pretty funny. (Opening at random:

The pressure exerted on your body if you tried to read this advert in the hadal regions of the ocean would be enough to turn you into a hideous slime-thing with brains dripping out of your ears. Publicity exec. (F, 28) seeks any type of happiness afforded by this cold, desolate planet before, without food, without hope, and with too many Nick Hornby book endorsements to collect, I fall asleep forever. Could be gay for the right woman. Box no. 5212.

(A note identifies the "hadal regions of the ocean" as "Deep sea trenches beginning 6000 metres below the surface of the sea and deeper than the abyssal regions (4000 to 6000 metres deep). An extreme environment in which animal life is scarce." A second note identifies Nick Hornby as an "author.")

Rose has edited these pleas into a novelistic sequence, with a true "arc:" starting with stirring hopefulness, rising into heights of near-literary mastery, and descending - right at the end - into almost audible whimpering. Here's the third from the last:

Lacks imagination, talks too much, frequently absent. Look at me now, Miss Webster of Year 4. History professor, 56. Lacks imagination, talks too much and is frequently absent. Seeks woman. Box no. 8025.

And that whole era (the book is published 2006) is over. There are still a few personal ads in the London Review, but they are humorless, generic offers of companionship. I guess, like so much of Western culture, David Rose's solipsism-explosion was wrecked by the Internet.