Clive James reviews David Thomson’s new book and considers the best moments in the history of cinema:
“Movie critics in old age can be excused for remembering a moment from any given movie, rather than the whole thing. They might even decide that they never experienced anything except as a collection of fragments, and that all those old coherent memories were an illusion. Certainly I, when I learned that David Thomson had written this book, thought he might be on to something, Just recently I switched to the Film4 channel and found the screen full of a man’s thigh. I knew immediately it was Brad Pitt in Troy.”
Stefan Collini reviews Fire and Ashes: Success and Failure in Politics, Michael Ignatieff’s memoir of his disastrous spell in politics:
“What makes Ignatieff’s book more poignant than he intends, is that it is not obvious that he has learned that much about politics from this experience. Of course, he can now write about and teach the subject with both the benefit of first-hand anecdotes and the authority of the battle-scarred veteran. But he repeatedly uses the verb “learn” when referring to things he either must have been fully aware of beforehand or else not really have understood since.”
Evelyn Toynton reviews Private Lives of the Ancient Mariner: Coleridge and his Children by Molly Lefebure and asks why Lefebure fell out of love with Coleridge towards the end of her life:
“There are few biographers who can claim such a long, intense engagement with their subjects as Lefebure. If she sometimes writes as though convinced she has cleared up all the complex mysteries of Coleridge’s character, perhaps it’s because she lived with him, metaphorically speaking, longer than his children, his wife, or any of his other biographers ever did. And whatever her slant on him, she never renders him as less than a vivid human presence. Even if, at the end, she could not forgive him, she somehow makes it possible for us to do so.”
Thomas Meaney asks why nuclear weapons have lost their hold on the popular imagination:
“The rituals and artifacts of the nuclear age have never seemed more distant. Black and yellow nuclear fallout signs that once adorned public buildings are now collector’s items. People store wine in what were once atomic shelters. Hollywood has known the well went dry years ago: natural disasters and terrorism draw more of an audience than mushroom clouds.”
Plus, Books in brief:
Bettany Hughes on Cristina and Her Double: Essays by Herta Muller
John Kay on The Great Escape: Health, Wealth and the Origins of Inequality by Angus Deaton
Jonathan Derbyshire on Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life by Hermione Lee
David Wolf on The Book of Job: A Biography by Mark Larrimore
“Movie critics in old age can be excused for remembering a moment from any given movie, rather than the whole thing. They might even decide that they never experienced anything except as a collection of fragments, and that all those old coherent memories were an illusion. Certainly I, when I learned that David Thomson had written this book, thought he might be on to something, Just recently I switched to the Film4 channel and found the screen full of a man’s thigh. I knew immediately it was Brad Pitt in Troy.”
Stefan Collini reviews Fire and Ashes: Success and Failure in Politics, Michael Ignatieff’s memoir of his disastrous spell in politics:
“What makes Ignatieff’s book more poignant than he intends, is that it is not obvious that he has learned that much about politics from this experience. Of course, he can now write about and teach the subject with both the benefit of first-hand anecdotes and the authority of the battle-scarred veteran. But he repeatedly uses the verb “learn” when referring to things he either must have been fully aware of beforehand or else not really have understood since.”
Evelyn Toynton reviews Private Lives of the Ancient Mariner: Coleridge and his Children by Molly Lefebure and asks why Lefebure fell out of love with Coleridge towards the end of her life:
“There are few biographers who can claim such a long, intense engagement with their subjects as Lefebure. If she sometimes writes as though convinced she has cleared up all the complex mysteries of Coleridge’s character, perhaps it’s because she lived with him, metaphorically speaking, longer than his children, his wife, or any of his other biographers ever did. And whatever her slant on him, she never renders him as less than a vivid human presence. Even if, at the end, she could not forgive him, she somehow makes it possible for us to do so.”
Thomas Meaney asks why nuclear weapons have lost their hold on the popular imagination:
“The rituals and artifacts of the nuclear age have never seemed more distant. Black and yellow nuclear fallout signs that once adorned public buildings are now collector’s items. People store wine in what were once atomic shelters. Hollywood has known the well went dry years ago: natural disasters and terrorism draw more of an audience than mushroom clouds.”
Plus, Books in brief:
Bettany Hughes on Cristina and Her Double: Essays by Herta Muller
John Kay on The Great Escape: Health, Wealth and the Origins of Inequality by Angus Deaton
Jonathan Derbyshire on Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life by Hermione Lee
David Wolf on The Book of Job: A Biography by Mark Larrimore
Prospect is available in all good newsagents. To subscribe, click here.
