A round-up of the latest paperback releases.
How to Read Wittgenstein, Ray Monk, Granta, £6.99
Wittgenstein's thought, like the thought of all the great philosophers, is simple; it is the expression of it that presents difficulties for his readers. Ray Monk, Wittgenstein's biographer, here presents what is surely the best short introduction to the work of this wonderful thinker, who believed that "philosophy ought really to be written as a poetic composition". The premise of Granta's new "How to Read" series is that each author selects some 10 emblematic extracts from his or her thinker's writings and subjects them to illuminating scrutiny. As the series editor, Simon Critchley, emphasises, the aim is not to provide a thumbnail sketch of the-life-and-the-work, but to offer a "masterclass in reading". But be warned: some labour is required: these deceptively slim volumes really are a course in "How to Read", not "How to Pretend to Have Read".
John Banville
Ireland: A Social and Cultural History, Terence Brown, Harper Perennial, £9.99
On its publication in 1981 this book was welcomed as a clear, account of the interactions of politics, social development, culture and ideology in the independent state. It is now reissued with a new section about the last 20 years. If much of the cultural energy of the mid-century came from those who challenged the de Valera-ite idea that spiritual grandeur could co-exist with material scarcity, the last two decades have seen the abolition of severe poverty in tandem with the virtual disappearance of any concern with non-material values, with the possible exception of "craic". Brown charts our rake's progress through scandals clerical and political, our growing appetite for more drink and bigger cars and the creeping realisation that the new Ireland is not going to be in the image of Mary Robinson but of Charlie McCreevy. Sobering reading.
Enda O'Doherty
The Promise of Happiness, Justin Cartwright, Bloomsbury, £7.99
After the wide open South African spaces of his enthralling previous novel, White Lightning, Justin Cartwright returns to the more domesticated arena of rural England, where Charles and Daphne Judd are coping with retirement and the unpredictability of their childrens' lives. Most worrying is Juliet, her father's favourite, whose golden youth has been interrupted by a jail sentence in the US. With Juliet's release imminent, her brother is sent to bring her home for a family reunion. The novel opens out once the action moves to New York and London, but it is hampered by tired devices, such as all the younger characters over-using the word "like". Maybe the familiarity of the terrain is the problem. As Juliet observes of the landscape on the train down to Cornwall: while America is still "unfinished business", in England "it's as if the picture was hung on the wall years ago and can only be lightly dusted".
Giles Newington
Modern Ranch Living, Mark Poirier, Bloomsbury, £9.99
It's the beginning of a hot, humid summer for 16-year-old Kendra Lumm in the desert town of Rancho Sin Vacas, Arizona. As if having to attend therapy sessions to combat her growing temper, and her brother Thomas's increasingly odd behaviour aren't enough to contend with, the disappearance of her childhood friend, and occasional boyfriend, Petey, only adds to her problems. Her neighbour, Merv, thirty years old and still living at home, has his own issues to deal with amidst the sweltering heat. His insomniac mother is driving him crazy, while work and women are getting the best of him. Poirier sets his novel in the months leading up to 9/11 and he successfully explores the anxieties of growing and the dangers of inertia, creating characters to root for and a deeply unsettling Arizona landscape burning in the background.
Tom Cooney
Autumn of the Moguls: My Misadventures with the Titans, Poseurs, and Money Guys who Mastered and Messed Up Big Media, Michael Wolff, Harper Perennial, £8.99
This is a quick-witted firecracker that illuminates the sometimes scary individuals who dominate the world's most powerful multi-media corporations. Roaming close to his subjects, Wolff observes in wickedly amusing detail the characteristics, foibles, misdemeanours and achievements of a litany of chief executives, presidents, chairpersons and media-friendly/unfriendly manipulators/creators/producers/performers. Jerry Levin, Barry Diller and Sumner Redstone, Martha Stewart and the Murdoch clan, among others, hover, eagle-like, in penthouses, constantly scavenging for the next big idea, orchestrating predatory take-overs, and generally playing monopoly with outrageous sums of money, while seeking not just our attention but our approval.
Paul O'Doherty
University of East Anglia, UEA Creative Writing Anthology 2004: Concertina, Pen and Inc Press, £6.99
Along with the usual suspects - prose, poetry, drama and screenwriting - this anthology from the highly respected University of East Anglia's Creative Writing MA course introduces the genre of life-writing, with the tale of 'Prisoner Number 204', amongst others, justifying its inclusion. The prose writing ranges from short, refined pieces to extracts of novels such as the intriguing 'Blank Spaces'; the drama is often fresh and revealing, as in 'Muswell Hill', a sympathetic and humorous take on one man's inherent fear of life and death. The poetry, too, contains a few gems like Ben Borek's 'Donjong Heights'. While many of these promising writers might remain just that, there is something very exciting in the possibility of reading the work of the next Ian McEwan, one of UEA's graduates.
Tom Cooney