A round up of paperbacks in brief
Due Considerations: Essays and Criticism
John Updike
Penguin, £14.99
“I have remained something of a Harvard Boy, handing in term papers but by mail to editors in New York”, Updike says of himself. He continues to live in New England, which for him “still has a place within it where a man can breathe and a writer can write”. To feel at a single sitting the heft and warp of writers’ thoughts is the essay’s forte and this book delights, engages, arouses, amuses and informs – sometimes simultaneously. The range of topics is enormous. There are reviews of biographies, reviews of reviews, articles, and opinion pieces, and from their opening sentences they beckon. Religions, writing, and current American mores matter for Updike. In ‘The Future of Faith’, he agitates at the, big, big questions. What is it to be a moral human being, conscious of the overhang of death and beyond? This is a book for many seasons and reasons – including entertainment.
Kate Bateman
Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear
Dan Gardner
Virgin Books, £8.99
Risk is an optimistic book. Gardner reminds us that we’ve never had it so good: greater life expectancies and freedom from deadly diseases such as smallpox. One of his central themes is that the scare stories about increasing rates of cancer are unjustified; we are simply living longer.
Gardner believes we live, unnecessarily, in a climate of fear: fear of terrorism, disease and even chemicals in food, all grossly exaggerated by the uncritical media. His analysis is based on old-fashioned statistics; he shows how the 1990s silicon breast implant scare in the US could have been avoided if the authorities had taken a cool, scientific approach. Risk is a stimulating read even if occasionally repetitive. The chapter on the Bush administration’s disastrous, fear-driven response to 9/11 is particularly good. Gardner doesn’t analyse or dismiss the risks of global warming, however, and that’s a bit worrying.
Tom Moriarty
Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice
By Janet Malcolm
Yale, £7.99
In her investigative biography, Malcolm attempts to decipher the curious relationship between Gertrude Stein and Alice B Toklas. Understanding Stein’s experimental novels doesn’t much interest Malcolm. Instead, she focuses on Stein’s life and her reputation, which was heavily influenced and crafted by Toklas, especially after Stein’s death. This book is an absorbing read not only because of Stein’s extraordinary situation – an American-Jewish lesbian living in Vichy France – but because Malcolm allows herself to become a character as well, interspersing her interviews with Stein scholars with long excerpts from Stein’s letters and novels. The melange of voices is crafted in such a way that Malcolm not only presents Stein’s creation of her own personal mythology, but deconstructs the ways in which biographers participate in such creation too.
Emily Firetog
A Little History of The World
By EH Gombrich, translated by Caroline Mustill
Yale, £6.99
The original German language version of this wondrous, passionate history book for children was written during six weeks in 1935, and it has been a beloved classic ever since. Gombrich moves swiftly through mankind’s past, giving us glimpses of prehistory, the great ancient civilisations, the age of chivalry, Napoleon’s conquests, and the other events that mean the most to him. He concludes with a description of his own experience of the second World War, and his hopes for the future.
The history of the world is, sadly, not a pretty poem, the author tells us, and his account dwells with sorrow on the bloody story of humanity. It is a compassionate history full of personal observations, common sense and wonder; a style far removed from the world of scholars and academics, but one which is an inspiration for children, and a refreshment for adults. His greatest achievement is writing so clearly about complex matters without producing a simplistic book.
Colm Farren
The Billionaire Who Wasn’t: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away A Fortune
By Conor O’Clery
Public Affairs New York, $15.95
“We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.” While Churchill may have written it, Chuck Feeney not only understood it but, more importantly, practised it. And by the billions. By all accounts a regular guy, and none too fussy about his attire, he certainly knew how and where to make vast sums of money – and how to give it all away. Roughly four billion dollars in fact. Most of this fortune was made through his world-wide duty-free shops. While other philanthropists make certain their generosity is well publicised, this Irish-American went to extraordinary lengths to conceal his identity - it became almost obsessional. Very few knew of his extreme generosity. The chapters on his Irish largesse are real eye-openers, especially his involvement with the peace process and Sinn Féin and of course the universities. O’Clery deserves great credit for earning Feeney’s trust and this book positively sparkles. Thoroughly researched, this is a riveting read – the pages simply fly by.
Owen Dawson