Eugene McCarraher, The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity
reviewed by Stuart Walton
If it were possible to pinpoint the originary moment of capitalism, the long-deferred process of dismantling it might begin. Was it inaugurated when the accumulated profits of trade began to be invested in greater technological means of productivity in western Europe's late Middle Ages? Is trade itself, the selling of products at greater return than the cost invested in recovering, obtaining or manufacturing them, inherently capitalist? Is the act of exchange itself, which can be traced back to... [read more]
Michael Glover, Thrust: A Spasmodic Pictorial History of the Codpiece in Art
reviewed by Anna Parker
Of all fashion trends, the codpiece is one of the most bizarre. From the 1540s to the end of the century, men in Renaissance Europe put their genitals in a prominent, heavily embellished pouch which stuck out proudly from their breeches. The world ‘cod’ means scrotum, which originated from the Anglo-Saxon for a small bag. Unsurprisingly, writers much enjoyed riffing off the meanings of the ‘cod’, which was repurposed as slang for a clergyman or for a large sum of money. As a visual... [read more]
Alex Niven, New Model Island: How to Build a Radical Culture Beyond the Idea of England
reviewed by Thom Cuell
Addressing his people after the destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima by nuclear bombs, the Japanese Emperor Hirohito stated that ‘the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage, while the general trends of the world have all turned against her interest’. Similarly, for those of us invested in the project of redefining modern British culture beyond the sense of ‘narrow Englishness’ that has dominated the early 21st century, the electoral situation has developed not... [read more]
Towards the end of JM Coetzee’s novel Age of Iron (1990), Mrs Curren, an elderly white South African professor, becomes newly aware of the stacks of old photographs filling her home. Studying a family photo taken in the garden, she wonders:
‘Who are the ghosts and who are the presences? Who, outside the picture, leaning on their rakes, leaning on their spades, waiting to get back to work, lean also against the edge of the rectangle, bursting it in?’
Photographs are used in everyday... [read more]
Sophie Seita, Provisional Avant-Gardes: Little Magazine Communities from Dada to Digital
reviewed by Douglas Field
What was – or is – the avant-garde? As Sophie Seita discusses in Provisional Avant-Gardes: Little Magazine Communities from Dada to Digital, ‘it is a label that most scholars of avant-garde work either leave unquestioned or theorize to the point of limiting is application.’ And since, as Seita claims, the term is ‘popularly understood to refer to an individual or group with an anti-establishment attitude, producing stylistically innovative work, often with political aims in mind,’... [read more]
Paige Lewis's debut collection Space Struck is a study in introspection: it probes the complexities, anguish and joy of interpersonal relationships. Drawing on a range of influences, Lewis creates an intense and richly realised interiority. Part melodrama, part fairytale, Lewis's jaded confessionals create a kind of poetic noir that is nevertheless decidedly contemporary in register.
The collection begins with 'Normal Everyday Creatures' whose speaker invents a game in which identifying... [read more]
March 2020. This was the month our world changed. As a country, we have by and large kept calm and carried on, following the same stiff-upper-lip stubbornness and conspiratorial suspiciousness that made it impossible for the Labour Party to win the 2019 election. My grandparents email me obviously fake ‘news’ items (‘Hold your breath for 10 seconds. If you can do it, you don’t have the virus!’; ‘Is COVID-19 a bio-attack?’). Each new conspiracy has been forwarded to them in... [read more]
‘What sick shit within you responds to him?’ asks a girlfriend of Frank Baltimore, the protagonist of Tom Lutz’s debut novel, Born Slippy. She’s referring to Frank’s intermittent friend/failed co-worker Dmitry, and it’s a good question. Because Frank is a humble man, a carpenter who builds homes with his hands to save money for his estranged children. Dmitry is at best a shallow chauvinist, at worst a sociopathic and misogynistic pig. A man who slips out of any knot, who lives... [read more]
Rosanna Mclaughlin, Double-Tracking: Studies in Duplicity
reviewed by Eleanor Green
Double-Tracking is, aptly, side-splitting. Its discursive structure and its cynical tone place it as a diametrically opposite text to, for example, Andrea Long-Chu’s Females (Verso, 2019). Whereas a review of Females entitled ‘The Limits of the Bit’ in the LA Review of Books criticised how seriously it took, and was able to take, a subject that seems absurd (‘everyone is female and everyone hates it’), Double-Tracking takes a very straightforward subject and refuses to take it... [read more]
Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House is a novel that stares back. The burning gaze of the young woman who adorns the front cover is transfixing. It is Maeve Conroy, sister of narrator Danny, painted as a young girl by the artist she is in love with. It promises a lot on first sight: intimacy, connection, aesthetic beauty, the compelling pull to look. This book, in its cover alone, promises so much of a story that I couldn’t help but hold it to those expectations and judge.
Although Patchett... [read more]
