What we've been enjoying this week:
David Killen:
I recommend Cyril Power Linocuts: A Complete Catalogue. Amazingly, I hadn't heard of this wonderful artist until a few days ago. I came across him by accident while researching pictures for this month's issue—and was completely knocked out. His linocuts are extraordinary: full of movement, colour and bold, writhing shapes—somewhere between Futurism and Art Deco. A number of them are currently on show at the Osborne Samuel Gallery and I'll be heading there as soon as I get the chance.
James Macintyre:
I'm currently rereading Paul Foot's brilliant 1971 book Who Killed Hanratty, about the A6 murder and execution of suspect James Hanratty in 1962. Despite recent DNA evidence, no reasonable person can absorb the book and emerge doubt-free about Hanratty's guilt, the case for capital punishment and the approach of the police. It is also a gripping and beautifully written read.
The London Mayor's latest book, Johnson's Life of London is also an interesting read, not least because it sheds light on the vanity as well as talent of its author. The cover depicts Boris leading a line of cycling Londoners, with Churchill at the back. Inside, Johnson quotes Roy Jenkins as saying, regarding the great wartime PM, that all great men have an element of "comicality."
Ollie Cussen:
The short film called City of Samba,a collaboration by Australian photographer Keith Loutit and Brazilian musician and filmmaker Jarbas Agnelli, is pretty much the coolest thing I've seen this week. Loutit is a pioneer of the "tilt shift / time lapse" technique. His aim is "to create a sense of wonder in our surroundings" by distorting perspectives of scale and time, apparently. Combined with Agnelli's Disney-like score, and applied to a setting and event as arresting as Rio in carnival, the effect is cinematic and surreal. People going about their daily business resemble manipulated plasticine miniatures; Rio itself looks like Tracy Island; the pagan rituals of the carnival procession seem straight out of a George Lucas CGI-fest. In all this beautiful other-worldliness, it's easy to forget that it's all real: that this is actually what real people do and what they have made—even the 40-foot tortoise truck.
Annalies Winny:
The short story is having its moment now, and I think the essay should be next. Edward Hoagland is a master of the form, and his essay The Courage of Turtles has it all. I’m jealous of the balance he’s achieved between fanboy enthusiasm and a calm, reasoned argument. And there’s heartbreak, too. Hoagland patiently observes the habitat of the beloved turtles in his local mud pond, as it dries up at the hands of suburban redevelopment. The heart sinks as he magnifies their demise: “The snappers and the little musk turtles, neither of whom leave the water except once a year to lay their eggs, dug into the drying mud for another siege of hot weather, as they were accustomed to doing whenever the pond got low. But this time it was low for good.” He takes time to explain his argument against non-turtles, and it's bang-on. “Snakes are drily silent and priapic… Frogs are depressingly defenseless: that moist, extensive back... hold a frog and you’re holding its skeleton.” But a turtle staring into the sun, “what could be more lionlike?”
Tina Nandha:
This week I discovered Taqueria, an informal Mexican restaurant on Westbourne Grove, London. We got off to a bad start when the bartender told me they don't serve gin and tonics, but all was forgiven once I'd tried one of their Margaritas (nice selection, good kick) and an incredible main course involving cheese wrapped in cheese. This place is definitely worth a trip.
David Wolf:
I do not have a smartphone and I haven't played any games on my mobile since the heady days of "Snake 2," but Sam Anderson's New York Times piece on the rise of "Stupid games" (eg Angry Birds and its assorted cousins) is a complete must-read for stupid-game addicts and non-gamers alike. It's an ingenious mixture of pop culture history, personal essay, magazine profile (of indie game designer Zach Gage), and even a kind of enquiry into human nature. Mainly, though, it's really fun to read. Here, for instance, is what Anderson has to say about Tetris:
"Tetris was invented exactly when and where you would expect—in a Soviet computer lab in 1984—and its game play reflects this origin. The enemy in Tetris is not some identifiable villain (Donkey Kong, Mike Tyson, Carmen Sandiego) but a faceless, ceaseless, reasonless force that threatens constantly to overwhelm you, a churning production of blocks against which your only defense is a repetitive, meaningless sorting. It is bureaucracy in pure form, busywork with no aim or end, impossible to avoid or escape."
Jay Elwes:
At the moment I'm especially enjoying Seasons in the Sun, the Battle for Britain 1974-79 by Dominic Sandbrook. When Wilson came back to No. 10 in 1974 he inherited a failing, crumbling, washed-out country. Under Heath, the so-called "Barber-boom" had caused an economic pick-up, before the economy came back down with a thump. Wilson tried to spend his way out and the results were outright disaster. Sandbrook catches brilliantly the sense of a country coming apart at the seams. Wilson was ineffectual, the unions thought they ran the country, the Empire was long gone, other countries—Japan, Germany among them—were booming with almost mocking efficiency. Added to which, the telephone lines didn't work, nothing ran on time, the food was bad, tax rates were crippling, the movie industry had collapsed, unemployment and inflation were both rising and, perhaps worst of all, Northern Ireland had descended into a savage sectarian war. Hundreds were being murdered each year in the Province. Then came the bombing campaigns—the Loyalists in Dublin and the IRA in London. The psychological effect of the bombs in mainland Britain was shattering. The last time many Londoners had heard a bomb explode was during the blitz. It's worth noting that we overcame all that. Right now that's a rather heartening thought.
David Killen:
I recommend Cyril Power Linocuts: A Complete Catalogue. Amazingly, I hadn't heard of this wonderful artist until a few days ago. I came across him by accident while researching pictures for this month's issue—and was completely knocked out. His linocuts are extraordinary: full of movement, colour and bold, writhing shapes—somewhere between Futurism and Art Deco. A number of them are currently on show at the Osborne Samuel Gallery and I'll be heading there as soon as I get the chance.
James Macintyre:
I'm currently rereading Paul Foot's brilliant 1971 book Who Killed Hanratty, about the A6 murder and execution of suspect James Hanratty in 1962. Despite recent DNA evidence, no reasonable person can absorb the book and emerge doubt-free about Hanratty's guilt, the case for capital punishment and the approach of the police. It is also a gripping and beautifully written read.
The London Mayor's latest book, Johnson's Life of London is also an interesting read, not least because it sheds light on the vanity as well as talent of its author. The cover depicts Boris leading a line of cycling Londoners, with Churchill at the back. Inside, Johnson quotes Roy Jenkins as saying, regarding the great wartime PM, that all great men have an element of "comicality."
Ollie Cussen:
The short film called City of Samba,a collaboration by Australian photographer Keith Loutit and Brazilian musician and filmmaker Jarbas Agnelli, is pretty much the coolest thing I've seen this week. Loutit is a pioneer of the "tilt shift / time lapse" technique. His aim is "to create a sense of wonder in our surroundings" by distorting perspectives of scale and time, apparently. Combined with Agnelli's Disney-like score, and applied to a setting and event as arresting as Rio in carnival, the effect is cinematic and surreal. People going about their daily business resemble manipulated plasticine miniatures; Rio itself looks like Tracy Island; the pagan rituals of the carnival procession seem straight out of a George Lucas CGI-fest. In all this beautiful other-worldliness, it's easy to forget that it's all real: that this is actually what real people do and what they have made—even the 40-foot tortoise truck.
Annalies Winny:
The short story is having its moment now, and I think the essay should be next. Edward Hoagland is a master of the form, and his essay The Courage of Turtles has it all. I’m jealous of the balance he’s achieved between fanboy enthusiasm and a calm, reasoned argument. And there’s heartbreak, too. Hoagland patiently observes the habitat of the beloved turtles in his local mud pond, as it dries up at the hands of suburban redevelopment. The heart sinks as he magnifies their demise: “The snappers and the little musk turtles, neither of whom leave the water except once a year to lay their eggs, dug into the drying mud for another siege of hot weather, as they were accustomed to doing whenever the pond got low. But this time it was low for good.” He takes time to explain his argument against non-turtles, and it's bang-on. “Snakes are drily silent and priapic… Frogs are depressingly defenseless: that moist, extensive back... hold a frog and you’re holding its skeleton.” But a turtle staring into the sun, “what could be more lionlike?”
Tina Nandha:
This week I discovered Taqueria, an informal Mexican restaurant on Westbourne Grove, London. We got off to a bad start when the bartender told me they don't serve gin and tonics, but all was forgiven once I'd tried one of their Margaritas (nice selection, good kick) and an incredible main course involving cheese wrapped in cheese. This place is definitely worth a trip.
David Wolf:
I do not have a smartphone and I haven't played any games on my mobile since the heady days of "Snake 2," but Sam Anderson's New York Times piece on the rise of "Stupid games" (eg Angry Birds and its assorted cousins) is a complete must-read for stupid-game addicts and non-gamers alike. It's an ingenious mixture of pop culture history, personal essay, magazine profile (of indie game designer Zach Gage), and even a kind of enquiry into human nature. Mainly, though, it's really fun to read. Here, for instance, is what Anderson has to say about Tetris:
"Tetris was invented exactly when and where you would expect—in a Soviet computer lab in 1984—and its game play reflects this origin. The enemy in Tetris is not some identifiable villain (Donkey Kong, Mike Tyson, Carmen Sandiego) but a faceless, ceaseless, reasonless force that threatens constantly to overwhelm you, a churning production of blocks against which your only defense is a repetitive, meaningless sorting. It is bureaucracy in pure form, busywork with no aim or end, impossible to avoid or escape."
Jay Elwes:
At the moment I'm especially enjoying Seasons in the Sun, the Battle for Britain 1974-79 by Dominic Sandbrook. When Wilson came back to No. 10 in 1974 he inherited a failing, crumbling, washed-out country. Under Heath, the so-called "Barber-boom" had caused an economic pick-up, before the economy came back down with a thump. Wilson tried to spend his way out and the results were outright disaster. Sandbrook catches brilliantly the sense of a country coming apart at the seams. Wilson was ineffectual, the unions thought they ran the country, the Empire was long gone, other countries—Japan, Germany among them—were booming with almost mocking efficiency. Added to which, the telephone lines didn't work, nothing ran on time, the food was bad, tax rates were crippling, the movie industry had collapsed, unemployment and inflation were both rising and, perhaps worst of all, Northern Ireland had descended into a savage sectarian war. Hundreds were being murdered each year in the Province. Then came the bombing campaigns—the Loyalists in Dublin and the IRA in London. The psychological effect of the bombs in mainland Britain was shattering. The last time many Londoners had heard a bomb explode was during the blitz. It's worth noting that we overcame all that. Right now that's a rather heartening thought.
