Let's start at the very back. As the most loyal readers of the Times Literary Supplement do every Friday when the London weekly comes out for book reviews. On the last page there is space for what is left: collected reports from literary life. The heading has a very short title, because there should really be space for everything: NB, the abbreviation for notes. At the foot of the page there are only two capital letters with dots, because the author of the collective column, like the authors of this gloss in the past, when the features section was still at the back of the newspaper, is hiding behind an abbreviation. For almost a quarter of a century, outside of very tight vacation periods, the same two letters were read there: JC And the constancy of the signature was enjoyed because the cipher JCstood for the opposite - variety as the highest literary virtue.

Patrick Bahners

Features correspondent in Cologne and responsible for “humanities”.

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    JC fulfilled his chronicler duty through continuous glossing, whereby he never forgot that the text behind the imperative nota must mainly provide information.

    Literary editors and certainly readers of this newspaper sometimes suffer from the number of literary prizes to be reported.

    JC had fun keeping track of the endless series of fame sheet deliveries by introducing categories.

    The sociology of literature owes it to him for the knowledge that there is a type of prize that the authors who have already received all the prizes get. Consequently, he demanded that a prize should also be created for authors who had never been awarded a prize. “All must have prizes”: In accordance with this law of market-like literary production that he had formulated, he increased the mass of price reports by writing out invented prices such as the Jean Paul Sartre Prize for the rejection of a price.

    He himself withdrew from the favor of the juries, as there was no indication of what to add after the first letter. On September 18, 2020, his full name was at the end of the column for the first time. The new editor-in-chief had deposed him. At the beginning of each year, JC compiled a list of upcoming, round, author's birthdays. In a company governed by the routine of the new, calendar events offer the chance to be led astray. The reading world is also grateful for this memento to James Campbell, who will turn seventy this Saturday.