The sedge is wither'd from the lake, And no birds sing.

It's now almost 50 years since the publication of Rachel Carson's seminal book, 'Silent Spring;' documenting the wholesale detrimental effects of pesticides on the environment, especially on birds and the flora and fauna symbiotically associated with them.

Carson wrote her book to highlight not only these deleterious effects on avian populations, but also, in looking at the wider environmental implications per se, to draw attention to large chemical conglomerates' profligate use of these synthetic chemical pesticides to control both actual and, crucially, perceived threat from biological pests.

As a marine biologist, Carson was aware of the need for balanced ecosystems - her earlier 1951 work 'The Sea Around Us,' argues the importance of this need and fundamental understanding; communicated with the poetic insight and intensity and clarity of vision that became a trademark of all of her subsequent writings.

Throughout her writing career, Carson was vilified by many in the scientific community - and, almost without exception, by agribusiness CEO's, politicians and political commentators on Capitol Hill - as an alarmist, as an extremist, and, by some commentators, as dangerous (witness, as recently as 2007, John Tierney's vituperative assault on Carson whilst writing in the conservative New York Times [on DDT and its use as an anti-malarial agent in Africa]).

Of course, being a hysterical woman hasn't helped...

Despite those rallied and railing against her, Carson remained convinced that she was right.  Although mortally ill, she testified, in 1963, before US Senate committees/sub-committees, on the misuse of chemicals in the environment - leading, eventually, to the curtailing and subsequent banning of DDT agricultural spraying in the United States in 1972 (something that Carson was opposed to - as a scientist she believed that chemicals/their compounds should be investigated for, amongst other things, their aetiological properties).

Rachel Carson 1907-1964.  Biologist.  Writer.  Ecologist.  Read everything she wrote.

Chemical Heritage Foundation

NRDA

silentspring.org

Books of 2011 - Part 2 (But it's January...)

2011 was a standout year for non-fiction books of all misshapes and argumentative sizes...it's even more difficult to put these into critical context than it is fiction writing.

Nevertheless...

Norton publishing released R P Crease's marvellous 'World in the Balance;' a history of weights and measures, their attribution and their adoption, or not, by various countries. Or not. Crease makes a potentially dry subject highly amusing, fun even, emphasising the differences, highlighting the similarities. Hell, there's even a section on brassiere measurement - and that's incontrovertibly no bad thing.

'Hemingway's Boat,' as reviewed by Allan Massie, is as quixotic a read as the man himself. Tremendously entertaining, the book is, in many ways, similar to Hemingway's own, 'A Moveable Feast,' written when he was a young objet d'art living in Paris (the book begins after Papa's formative years spent carousing there).

What differentiates Paul Hendrickson's book from so many other biographies is that it counterbalances the warts and the all of a man often beleaguered by life, at odds with his crucial self, with his headstrong humanity - in all its rumbustiousness.

Paul Shaw has written a delightful book about an even more delightful subject - the New York City Subway System or, more specifically, its signage. For years, New York's underground signs were an indecipherable mess; difficult to read, nigh impossible to follow. Impeccably researched and gracefully written, it's the story of how a font changed a small, imperfectly formed part of the world for the better and to a new way of seeing.

Paul Shaw 'Helvetica and the New York City Subway System' MIT Press



Jon Ronson has written a number of entertaining, enlightening and informative books. Ronson's latest, 'The Psychopath Test,' follows in these footsteps - albeit following them wearing a pinstriped suit, a pair of Trickers brogues and a mePad. Above all, as Ronson says and writes, it shows how eager many of us are to recognise the marks of madness in other people, and to steadfastly ignore these hallmarks in ourselves.

There have been other great books this year, too:

Daryl Gregory's collection of short stories, 'Unpossible and Other Stories,'

'Dream Repairman: Adventures in Film Editing by Jim Clark with John H Myers'

James Gleick 'The Information,'

In closing, it would be impossible not to mention Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon's magnificent 'Day Tripper,' published by Vertigo. Undoubtedly one of THE books of this or any other year, the story, unlike so many graphic novels, grabs and gripes you from the start and never lets go - Ba and Moon have been rightly compared to another Vertigo alumnus, Neil Gaiman; both in terms of story-telling and, crucially, realisation - but their visions are undoubtedly their own.

So, finally, an end to 2011. And a beginning to 2012.

502. Bad gateway..

'If it's all the same to you, I'll stay indifferent.'

2011 has seen a return to musical form for artists new and vehemently old. Some of the best new music was cultivated from some old people - over 25 - some, such as the mightily angry Iceage, made Howard Devoto seem a bit Johnny Mathis. Christmas Johnny Mathis.

I listened to more records this year than I have done in many years. All sizes and shapes, it's been a great year for pushing boundaries downstairs, for pressing Play-Doh into pigeon holes and for artists generally fucking about with genres and the levels of expectation associated with them.

Bill Orcutt and About Group showed that the oldies can still (re)mix it with the best of them - making, then breaking, some marvellous music.

Kate Bush. Fuck me.



Without a doubt, '50 Words for Snow,' is the finest record Kate has ever made - and bookends seamlessly, perfectly, with her earlier 2011 offering - the exquisite 'Director's Cut,' where previously released recordings were reworked and made impossibly more beautiful.

In many ways, Kate is the star of 2011...

But she ain't. This woman is...



'Let England shake,' in all its glory, was reviewed earlier this year on this blog. It's magic, will ennoble your soul. Listen to it. Buy it.

More records shone like pissballs in a hallowless sky...hey, hey, hey...

Beach Fossils John Maus
Boston Spaceships Mark McGuire
Chelsea Wolfe St Vincent
Nicolas Jarr Unknown Mortal Orchestra
Leyland Kirby Oneohtrix Point Never
Aidan Moffat & Bill Wells Roots Manuva

Teebs, like Toro Y Moi, Beastie Boys, Frank Ocean, Death Grips, Thundercat, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble and The Roots also made wonderful records that took established music forms and injected new throbbing, spilling, life and light into them, creating a zoetrope of sound, revolving beats and spinning energy.

So they did.



And, of course, Jim O'Rourke had a new record out...

Career retrospectives abounded. John Fahey's earlier Fonotone recordings were collected, rather wonderfully, rather idiosyncratically, by those autodidacts at Dust to Digital. The 40th anniversary edition of Can's 'Tago Mago,' was released through Mute and Edsel felched 1985 alloveragain with the sweetest honey in any rock - 'Psychocandy,' by a band from East Killbride...(sick).

However...these were the best archive releases of 2011:

El Rego through Daptone Records, 'El Rego.'

Tav Falco's Panther Burns reissued through Stag-O-Lee records, 'Behind the Magnolia Curtain.'

and, Mickey Newbury's marvellous 'American Trilogy album reissued through Saint Cecelia Knows records.

An incredible year. More records?

Richmond Fontaine Richard Swift
Twin Sister Tim Hecker
Willy Tea Taylor The Spaceape
Bon Iver Carbon Based Lifeforms
Kitty, Daisy and Lewis Colin Stetson
Girls M83
I D A H O Tom Waits

The list, I'm sure you're all beginning to think, is bloody endless. But, it isn't. Good years and shit years spew forth the same number of records as each other. Artists, writers, painters, poets, film makers, cinematographers, photographers, pornographers - all work their collective arses to the nub of the bone to make this world a better place, a more gnarly place, certainly more bitter and twisted, calculating, sometimes, cynical, more full of love, loveliness and lovelessness.

Thank fuck for them all.

Books of 2011 - Part 1 (yes, really...)

2011 has been, in many ways, a seminal year for books. It's been a tougher than the rest year - full of shouts of disquiet, increasingly loud and discombobulated grumblings about the futures of book-selling, and the remnants of the publishing industry, amid protestations about writing, new and old, being shit and shiteful.

None of this is true - 2011 has seen some marvellous books published.

I've been a fan of Jeanette Winterson since the publication of her semi-autobiographical debut novel 'Oranges are not the only fruit.' A truly terrifying tale of religious fanaticism and emotional sublimation, its horrifyingly personal exigencies are examined and explained further in Winterson's actual recently published autobiography 'Why be happy when you could be normal?'

The mighty Dalkey Archive published the most criminally unsung novel of the year. 'The faster I walk, the smaller I am,' by Kjersti Skomsvold, translated by Kerri A Pierce, is a beautifully unforced gem - 140 pages of unrelenting misery, loneliness and despair. Of course I loved it. (Nothing, in 2011, came barely close - although Patrick DeWitt's glorious, and gorily anarchic, 'The Sisters Brothers,' almost, tantalisingly, very near stole this particular show).

There has been some remarkable fiction published this year - much of it by writers who continue NOT to know better...

Alice Munro continues not to know better. Her recent collection of selected short stories, published by Chatto and Windus, confirms her as a short story practitioner of the first rank - forget about the often and reedy comparisons to Chekhov.

Alice Munro is Alice Munro. Read everything she has written.

Others, whether alive or dead, also continued not to know better....Saramago, DeLillo, Nabokov, Murakami, Foster Wallace and, gloriously so, as per the re-issue of his western themed novella, the young(er) Denis Johnson, in his 'Train dreams;' a wonderful, and wonderfully human, elegy to an America unrecognisable today.

Lynne Tillman's new collection is available to read in its entirety here - 'Someday this will be funny.' It's her first new writing in ages and belies her reputation as a dour and rather rigid post-modernist. It is funny. And it's funny now.

There are three more fiction titles that have destroyed the heart this year...

Yannick Murphy's, 'The Call,' is a magical story. In many ways reminiscent of the 1990's TV show, 'Northern Exposure,' Murphy's novel of ordinary characters drawn into intoxicatingly extraordinary situations, is a readily readable treat.

Donald Ray Pollock's first novel continues the same themes as those contained in his 2008 short story collection, 'Knockemstiff.' 'The Devil all the time,' is very much in the five minute hard boiled bracket of crime fiction - populated by outsiders, freaks and the mightily disposessed...eager to introduce a whole new world of suffering with a shrug and a twisted smile.

This twisted smile becomes an all too profound grimace in the hands of one of the great writers working today. Daniel Woodrell's latest collection of short stories 'The Outlaw Album,' is, at turns, a conflicting and confounding read. Containing all the hallmarks associated with his stark, intense prose, each of the stories jars incessantly, confusingly, with the other, the pieces don't seem to fit. Or fit together. It is this apparent disjointedness, apparent desire for disunity, that makes each of these blazing stories; in all their height and breadth and depth and languorousness of soul, a separate sweet entity in themselves.

And what makes all these books a profound pleasure to read.

Part 2 to come...

My, my, my DeLillo...

Donny DeLillo.

I say 'Donny' because, possibly for the first time, in his most recent and first collection of short stories, DeLillo has let his hair down. And let it run excitedly, youthfully almost, inhuming the cautionary excesses of his most recent work.

'The Angel Esmerelda: Nine Stories' is tentatively marvellous. There is a master at work here - as there always has been. With this striking collection however, DeLillo seems to be enjoying himself, swaddling himself in the stickily exotic (and erotic) paraphernalia of living and life.

His characters sing. And each song is starrily alive.

In a recent review of 'The Angel...' for The New Yorker, Martin Amis confessed his admiration for this apparently strident change in DeLillo's direction. I disagree. I think fun and extrospection has always been a part of 'the Don's' work. It's just that underneath all the grimy grimness and importuned propheteering finding the sootily camouflaged mirth has been a tough act indeed.

And 'The Angel Esmerelda: Nine Stories' will be a tough act for Donny to follow. Or anyone else for that matter.

'The Angel Esmerelda'

Rock Hard...

Def Jam has been the defining record label in Hip hop music for over 27 years.

Much has happened in that time - including, as early as 1988, the departure of co-founder Rick Rubin to set up Def American leaving Run DMC impresario, Lyor Cohen in charge.

The label is synonyomous with many of the great names in rap music. Everyone will have their own favourites - whether dancing to LL Cool J, marvelling at the lipchronicity of Beastie Boys or being moved to anger or action by the turntabling terrorism of the, then, nascent Public Enemy.

The definitive history of Def Jam is packed with anecdotes and recollections from the main players in the story of a record label that, quite literally, from LL to Jay-Z, revolutionised our musical listening...







This blog entry has chosen to focus on the early years of Def Jam. This is not to
detract from the work that followed - marvellous, genre-defying and creating
records from artists as diverse as Redman, Method Man, Warren G, Jay-Z, Rihanna and....

Return to server...

Marcus Gray has been writing about The Clash for an awful long time - since 1997 in fact, when the publication of his seminal, 'Last gang in town,' recalibrated the myth and the method for a newer, less tousled generation.

In 'Route 19 Revisited: The Clash and London Calling' Gray has revised the 2009 version of his book, further contextualising, for today's stridently, politically apathetic ageneration, the importance of music and art in changing our inner and outer lives.

Opinionated, political, polemical - much like the record it so unequivocally champions, Gray's book is a marvellous read for fans of music and its heralded abilities to inspire and uplift.

Our way to fall

Crewdson has been mesmerising us with his highly sensitised photorealistic images for the past 25 years. His work shares convincing similarities to that of film-makers, David Lynch and Todd Solondz - unsettling, claustrophobic, hyperreal - and artists, Edward Hopper and Diane Arbus - both of whom contributed their own highly stylised, occasionally nightmarish, versions of an intrinsically American landscape.

Abrams is publishing a new volume of his pictures.

You didn't understand a word, but you said you did...

Pauline Black's autobiography has been a long time in the writing.

Lead singer with seminal 2 Tone band The Selecter, it's an entertaining read full of anecdotes about the nature of the music industry and the combustible near contemptibles who inhabit it.

Where the book really comes into its own - and where it so differs from other offerings - is when Black describes her childhood. Growing up mixed race, and adopted to a not entirely empathetic middle-aged white couple, the book describes how she finally came to terms with being who she was, even at so comparatively an early age; a young black girl desperately striving to understand herself and the many cultures she was intrinsically part of and culpably attracted to.

It's a marvellous read.

Two of a rare kind...

Mickey Newbury is one of those unique artists who changes your life with every song of his you hear. He is famous for his arrangement of 'An American Trilogy,' recorded by him for his 1971 release 'Frisco Mabel Joy,' even though it's Elvis Presley's 1972 version that everyone remembers...

Newbury's style is almost impossible to categorise - 'An American Trilogy,' is hardly indicative of his, overwhelmingly, devastatingly beautiful, heartbreaking songs of the inevitable losing of love.

More than a thousand artists have covered Newbury songs and his influence on near contemporaries such as Gene Clark, Kris Kristofferson and John Prine, as well as current songwriters of the calibre of Will Oldham, Ryan Adams and Steve Earle is near immeasurable.

A retrospective of his early albums has recently been reissued on St Cecelia Knows Records. If you're a fan of Townes Van Zandt, Bruce Springsteen or David Ackles - and, yes, he more than deserves to be in their company - then treat yourself to the criminally underrated songbook of Mickey Newbury...






Flannery O'Connor is, quite simply, one of America's greatest writers. Later this year, some of her early drawings are to be published in book form - details of the publisher remain unclear at the moment.

The one or two teaser illustrations that have found their way on-line show similarities with her prose - highly evocative, resolutely individualistic, tenderly tragi-comic.

Here's to their publication.

Flannery O'Connor - Guardian 05/07/11

Life with a star

Outsiders, especially in literature, are rarely accorded the recognition their work deserves during their lifetime.

The Czech writer, Jiri Weil was vilified for his 'cosmopolitan' narrative and characterisation; a common feature of his work, and a common criticism of writers and artists writing and being artistic in those countries formerly ideological satellites of the Soviet Union.

Weil's best work - to date only two of his works have been translated into English - concerns itself with the Nazi occupation of Prague and the unspeakable effect it has on the cities Jewish inhabitants.

'Mendelssohn is on the roof,' his last published work, was made available again earlier this month (Daunt Books). It's a marvellous read - similar to Kafka, in many ways, it quietly summarises the lives of ordinary people attempting to live through extraordinary times.

Weil's novels are about the essential dignity of humanity and about the dehumanising extents to which some people will go to extinguish it. Despite his 'outsider' status, his themes are universal: understanding, compassion and love.

Read all of his books.

Dog bites Man

Guardian article - Human Centipede 2

Guardian article - Teen fiction accused of being 'rife with depravity.'

Much has already been written about the BBFC's decision to ban director Tom Six's sequel to his 2010 film, 'The Human Centipede.' The adjudication aside, the decision has reignited the debates surrounding the subject of censorship in the Arts - a welcome thing as it allows complex ideas and conflicting views about gender, sex, race, violence and aspects of morality generally to be discussed openly and, and this is the hope, intelligently and in context.

The prohibition of anything certainly accomplishes one thing. It makes it news. It confers temporary, sometimes longer lasting, notoriety on the film, book, play, whatever - irrespective of how vile, trivial, banal, poorly executed it is.

Crucially, often unfortunately, the same criteria applies to works of importance -
Cronenberg's film of J G Ballard's 'Crash,' Wes Craven's 1972 'Last House on the Left,' and Russell Mulcahy's docupic 'Derek and Clive get the horn,' which was banned on its original theatrical release.

There are many more examples, across all genres, not just films, encompassing all of the means of artistic expression - see the second of the above very recent Guardian articles for more.

TB has not seen Tom Six's film. Based on reports of it it is unlikely that a review of it, good, bad or tantalisingly indifferent will ever appear on these pages - its subject matter just does not appeal. What remains crucially important however, is that if the writer of this blog WANTED to see it, WANTED to review it, WANTED to give his/her own opinion of it, however biased or (ill)informed, then they could.

The BBFC should reconsider their blanket banning decision - at the very least to allow the films flaws, virtues and more to be discussed and to foster genuine dialogue between film fans, commentators and makers.

Film4 - Banned movies

Houses on the Hill..

Edward Docx's deranged characters in fiction

This is a nice article written by Edward Docx (writer of 'The Calligrapher') in The Guradian.

I suspect many would agree with the characters Docx has chosen as his favourites - they're all wonderful examples. Any of the three marvellous novels written by the late, greatest Edward Wallant feature protagonists whose own descent into madness accompanies an equally strong desire to save others from their own, 'fate worse than life.'

And, of course, there's Robert Wringhim........................

Colin McLaren's adaptation of Gogol's 'Diary of a Madman.'
'Part 2'
'Part 3'

Also,
the wonderful Skip Spence - himself tortured/equally inspired by his own personal demons...
'Diana

'What are we doing in there?'

Grove Press has been around for over 60 years now, publishing all kinds of books. Ostensibly a hardcover and paperback imprint of Grove Atlantic, its history of championing groundbreaking writing is an illustrious one - Grove's owner, Barney Rosset Jnr, famously challenged and changed temporarily forever the American literary landscape when, in the 1950's and early 1960's, he published Henry Miller's, 'Tropic of Cancer,' and D H Lawrence's, 'Lady Chatterley's Lover.'

Grove continues its iconoclastic tradition of publishing today - witness recent books by such diverse writers as Dubravka Ugresic, Karl Marlantes, Michael Knight and Bryan Charles - whose latest memoir (see above) is often eerily reminiscent of James Brown's marvellous 2005, 'LA Diaries.'

LA Diaries download

TO HAVE FUN WITH.........

Shimmer...

It's been thirty years since the formation of seminal American rock band, Throwing Muses. One of the hallmarks of this most original of bands is the lyrical starkness and unaffected candour of one of its main songwriters, Kristin Hersh.

Hersh, early diagnosed with schizophrenia, uses her experiences as a sufferer of mental illness to comment on, amongst many things, stereotypical attitudes towards mental health. These conflicting and contrasting attitudes, and her own familiarity with them, are clarified and enlarged upon in her latest memoir, 'Paradoxical Undressing,'

Evocative, brave and impressively well written, Hersh has written one of the most startling, most impassioned books of early 2011.

'Me and my charms'

Every day isn't like sunday...

From the 16th to the 30th of January, the GFT in Glasgow is showing three wonderful films as part of its Cinematic Americana series.

'Wise Blood,' based on the 1952 novel by Flannery O'Connor, is an unheralded classic - featuring magnificent performances from Brad Dourif and Harry Dean (Stanton). Peter Bogdanovich's breakthrough film, 'The Last Picture Show,' released in 1971, deserves its considerable reputation as one of the benchmark films of the New Hollywood era whilst, 'Heartworn Highways,' the third in the trilogy, shows documentary film-making at its most challenging and intimate.

All three films are marvellous examples of the film industry at its most creative and are well worth seeing either individually or as a genre embracing whole.

andalusiafarm.org

Alfred the great...

'Seeing things;' the autobiography of the late Oliver Postgate, was released to unanimous critical acclaim (and unconcealed delight) in 2009. Two years later sees the publication of the biography of Alfred Bestall - the illustrator of the children's perennial classic, Rupert Bear.

Bestall's life is chronicled by his goddaughter Caroline Bott and it's a life full of unexpected surprises - Bestall fought in the first World War, and had a more auxiliary role in the second, however, his belief in the unequivocal goodness of humanity shines through, in this generously written, wholly unsentimental account.

Bestall's art, like Postgate's, seems to have a timeless wonder about it. It belongs firmly to the tradition of great children's storytelling - where amazing worlds are inhabited by beautiful princesses, talking animals, and strange, often frightening creatures...

Included in this post is Jackie Lee's wonderful performance of the theme music from the early 70's claymation series.

'Life and works of Alfred Bestall,' by Caroline Bott

Rupert the Bear

Wrapped in plastic...

Although we shouldn't really be reading anymore, for those of us who still are 2010 has been something of a transitional year. New books by Philip Roth and Don DeLillo were entertaining rather than soul changing (although DeLillo's book was funfully fun.) Jonathan Franzen surprised less than a few people by writing probably the most highly regarded novel of the year - scabrously funny in parts, a call to a farewell to arms, it's scope and eloquent grandeur was not surpassed in 2010...

...except perhaps by the collected stories of Lydia Davis.

Some of the best books of 2010 were not fiction titles. Bill Clegg's 'Portrait of an addict as a young man,' was a startling memoir - a wholly unsensational account of addiction and the tragedy that accompanies and encompasses it. Susan Compo's marvellous biography of Warren Oates - one of the finest actors ever to act finely - was an undoubted highlight of the year as was Stewart Lee's, 'How I escaped my certain fate,' a book about how to be a stand-up comedian whilst sitting down...

The Dalkey Archive published some of the most interesting fiction of the year. In, 'Dolly City,' by Orly Castel-Bloom, a son named, "Son," is saved from a premature end of life by the eponymous Doctor Dolly...the resulting satire is as ingeniously grotesque as it is hilarious. John Toomey's, 'Sleepwalker,' invaded and occupied similar territory - the Patrick Bateman styled protagonist lurching from one barely concealed catastrophe to another...

Patrick Ness, Sam Lypsite, Daniel Clowes, Kenzaburo Oe, Willy Vlautin, Philippa Perry, Gilbert Hernandez...Roger Sterling...all wrote books of varying degrees of excellence in a year of contrasting quality.

However, somewhat surprisingly, two of the incontestably finest books of the year were music titles. Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton's story of Dance Music and its DJ's, 'The Record Players: DJ Revolutionaries,'was as encyclopedic as it was readable - a real labour of turntabling love - containing honest and intimately revealing portraits of the culture, its progenitors, and its accompanying hedonism.

Alex Ross was roundly applauded for his magnificent 2007 treatise on modern music - 'The Rest is Noise.' 2010 sees its successor in the form of, 'Listen to this,' published by Fourth Estate. This is the music book many of us had been waiting for - scholarly without being rarefied, entertaining without being superficial, a masterly account of music and musicality in its many and myriad forms. From Bach to Bjork and then Bach again...er...

So, 2011, only 28 days to go...



This post is dedicated to all book-sellers past and present - for all their hard work, their dedication and their loyalty and for making the world, if only for an instant of an instant, a better place.

A new box of truths...

Although the scheduled release for 'Nemesis,' is October 5th, any new Philip Roth release deserves to be given an early mention. His last three novels, some of which have engendered no little hostile criticism, involve similar themes of loss, physical and emotional impairment and psychological estrangement. Overlying 'Nemesis,' is a humanity that extends beyond the usual Rothian boundaries of tentative secularism and incisive social commentary - in fact, it is one of his strongest, even affable yet. Roth has always been overtly autobiographical in his writing - something which has tempered the sometimes savage satire central to many of his works. For those more at ease with his version of American idealism, 'Nemesis;' with its central tenets of community and the role the individual plays in ensuring the community endures, will prove a satisfying read.

Sex Happens...

It is very welcoming indeed to see the publishing again of Marshall Berman's seminal work on modernity, 'All that is solid melts into air.' Berman spent ten years writing his defining work - a treatise on the multifold aspects of modernism and modernity, specifically, but not entirely, concerning itself with the social and economic conflicts created by it. As Berman asserts in his introduction, 'to be modern is to live a life of paradox and contradiction.' That he attempts to illustrate and demonstrate these through interpretive literary devices - examining Marx and Marx's writings, for instance, to illustrate the inherently self-destructive nature of modernism - without self-aggrandizement, gives the book one of its many accomplishments. It is, quite simply, unique. Verso are to be congratulated for this re-issue.

'Preservation Institute

doxiadis.org