I’m quite fascinated by these literary magazines… London review, paris review... I never understand what’s going on. I never know _what_ I’m reading. Is it an actual review? A short story? An article? I find being in this state as a reader quite interesting. It’s what drew me to HN in the first place — programming seemed like a wondrous, mysterious new thing to me, a new frontier, and it’s quite clear the makers are very intelligent, just as the writers of these magazines seem like a notch over news journalists.
It's a fascinating form, isn't it? I mean, nominally they're book reviews. And they will at least mention and comment on the book. But the best of them are really a special kind of literary essay written by someone who knows the subject (of the book and of the essay) very well and is making their own argument. Sometimes the books 'reviewed' are merely a parenthetical jumping-off point.
So the LRB, for instance, might publish a review by Hilary Mantel of a book about Danton [0] which is actually a meditation on what it means to be a revolutionary and how place might fit into that. Mantel, having researched and written A Place of Greater Safety[1], is not exactly a historian but does have some fascinating things to say.
I subscribe to the LRB. I don't know tons about most of what is written, but having smart people who can write well pitching engaging pieces about all kinds of randomiana is, as you say, a wondrous thing.
It's probably fair to say that they're very different than news journalists. The journalist who is on the ground at whatever the interesting foreign bureau is at the moment (or even just covers domestic agricultural policy or whatever) and writes about it straightforwardly is very different from the person writing with flair about topics of historical or literary importance even if both doubtless involve significant research.
And I will say the latter often leads to people on sites such as this bemoaning the lack of the bullet points version.
"The persecution of Europe’s witches, by this account, becomes in part a way of disciplining a class of semi-autonomous beer producers into accepting the work and gender order of the domestic household."
"female brewers, bartenders and, most importantly, drinkers (...) have always been there, not just alongside men but usually one step ahead of them"
"The word bridal comes from bride-ale: an English tradition of raising money for a wedding whereby ‘a bride-to-be brewed a bunch of ale and threw a big party.’" (unsure if the bride herself was actually intended to brew this)
The bride-ale thing is at least partly true- it does come from bride-ale, but in Old English the word "ale" didn't only mean beer, but also a feast or party at which people drank it. There were other similar occasions, including the "church-ale" to raise money for repair of a church.
AFAIK the only survival of this term is the "Morris ale", which is a gathering of Morris dancers (who do tend to drink a lot of ale).
In terms of female brewers, it is interesting that the surname "Brewster" exists and specifically refers to an ancestor who was a female brewer. The "-ster" suffix in English used to be the female equivalent of "-er" (as it still is in Dutch).
The only regular English word in which "-ster" survives is spinster, but it also survives in other occupational surnames like Webster (a female weaver) and Baxter (a female baker).
Most things about witches and their persecution tend to owe more to myth than history, though...
Editor’s note, March 17, 2021: Last week, we ran this story that originally appeared on The Conversation, a nonprofit news outlet that publishes writing by academic experts from around the world. After publishing, we heard from multiple scholars who disagreed with the framing, analysis and conclusions discussed in the article below. They argue, in fact, that contemporary depictions of witches originated in sources other than women brewers and that the transfer from women to men of the work of brewing, in various geographic and historical settings, came about for economic and labor reasons. We addressed a number of factual errors in our March 10, 2021, editor’s note, found at the bottom of the page, and we have changed the headline from its original version.
