All Reviews

An Actually-Useless Guide

Andrew Hugill, Pataphysics: A Useless Guide

reviewed by Robert Kiely

The French writer Alfred Jarry (1873–1907) is best known for his play Ubu Roi, staged in 1896. The play managed to upset almost everyone who saw it, thereby securing a lasting legacy; recently revisited by Tom Jenks and Chris McCabe’s adaptation, Ubu Boris. His life appears to have been a string of anecdotes, many involving guns and pregnant women. A list of those he influenced would be terrifyingly imposing; suffice to say that a major web-archive of the avant-garde is called Ubuweb.... [read more]

'Someone like me - an old prof.'

Benoît Peeters, trans. Andrew Brown, Derrida: A Biography

reviewed by Marc Farrant

There is something inherently strange, peculiar even, about the 'auto' in 'autobiography'. On the one hand, it implies the automatisation of the self, that one would act autonomously, as oneself, in the writing of oneself (from the Greek autos, 'self'). On the other hand, this action or acting-out would seem to take place automatically, im-mediately, without the mediation of others but also without the mediation of the self; since any act that is purely autonomous, purely an act of the self in... [read more]
 

‘I’m just wondering if it gets a bit Grand Guignol?’

Nicholas Royle, First Novel

reviewed by Sara D'Arcy

Nicholas Royle’s First Novel is a cunning piece of metafiction which blurs the bounds between fact and fiction - a pedantically self-conscious take on the campus novel. Taking inspiration from Vladimir Nabokov’s campus novel-cum-murder mystery Pale Fire (GP Putnam’s Sons, 1962), Royle’s seventh novel follows a creative writing lecturer who may or may not like having sex in cars and who may or may not be a murderer. The central protagonist, Paul Kinder, is the author of a failed... [read more]

Armies Can Crack

Mike Gonzalez & Houman Barekat (eds.), Arms & the People: Popular Movements & the Military from the Paris Commune to the Arab Spring

reviewed by Ian Birchall

The British government is planning an elaborate and expensive commemoration of the First World War for its centenary next year. We shall doubtless hear a lot about what Wilfred Owen called ‘the pity of war’; we may be told that the war was a tragedy, and even a mistake. But I am prepared to wager a substantial sum that we shall hear very little about desertion, mutiny and the shooting of officers. So we should enthusiastically welcome this new book which offers an alternative history of... [read more]
 

The ‘Realist’ School of Apology

John Darwin, Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain

reviewed by John Newsinger

According to John Darwin, even today there are still historians of the British Empire who ‘feel obliged to proclaim their moral revulsion against it, in case writing about empire might be thought to endorse it.’ There are still historians who consider it ‘de rigueur to insist that for them, empire was evil.’ And there are even some apparently who ‘like to convey the impression that writing against empire is an act of great courage, as if the supporters of the Empire were lying ‘in... [read more]

Mass political Jiu Jitsu

Paolo Gerbaudo, Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism

reviewed by Jemma Crew

In October 2010, the journalist Malcolm Gladwell claimed controversially that ‘The revolution will not be tweeted’, in response to an overwhelming wealth of commentary celebrating the ‘Facebook revolution’ and the perceived transformation of political activism through online social media. The role that sites such as Twitter have played has been so important to political activism that in 2009 the US State Department asked the site to postpone a planned maintenance closure, given how... [read more]
 

Contrived Machinery

James Robertson, Republics of the Mind

reviewed by Frith Taylor

In the title story of James Robertson's Republics of the Mind, a Scottish woman, enraged by a Conservative victory on an unspecified election night, throws an empty wine bottle at her television screen. The television promptly explodes, bringing a swift and unexpectedly satisfying end to an interview with a government minister. The incident dramatises feelings of disappointment and frustration shared by many Scots. Her husband's means of protest are quieter - he retreats into what he calls... [read more]

Fuck the Objective Correlative 

Kate Zambreno, Heroines

reviewed by Kate Gould

Kate Zambreno's Heroines is a tumbling great tale of silenced women. Originating in her blog, Frances Farmer Is My Sister, it is a paean to ‘the mad wives of modernism’, Vivienne Eliot, Zelda Fitzgerald, and Jane Bowles whose work was, and still is, considered secondary to that of the men whom they married and inspired: Vivienne was a figure who both inspired and revolted her husband, Tom, until he left her to be committed to an asylum by her family where she died aged 58; Zelda, desperate... [read more]
 

Between Truth and High Fantasy

Vladimir Nabokov, The Tragedy of Mister Morn

reviewed by Douglas Battersby

In recent years, fans of Vladimir Nabokov have been treated to a steady supply of treasures dug out from the fabled Montreux vault. The unfinished and lavishly produced The Original of Laura (Penguin, 2009), complete with perforated facsimile index cards for the Nabophile to rearrange at will, was greeted with much fanfare from the popular press and ivory tower alike. However, despite the critics’ ardent wrestling with its relative literary value, few could claim Laura to be a masterpiece in... [read more]

Theory for Everyone

Jodi Dean, The Communist Horizon

reviewed by Samuel Grove

The latest book of Verso's 'Pocket Communism' series sees Jodi Dean attempt to deliver a lesson to the political left that the political right already learned long ago: that 'Communism' is the horizon that configures our political landscape. For the right, the communist threat is everywhere. Barack Obama is communist, single payer healthcare is communist, anti-war protest is communist, the regulation of markets is communist, taxing the rich is communist. Superficially of course this invective... [read more]