This week's new releases...
Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Living, Declan Kiberd, Faber, £9.99
This major new homage to Joyce’s masterpiece is appropriately dedicated to John McGahern. McGahern insisted that literature is better experienced than analysed, and Kiberd explores what the experience of reading Ulysses should mean for the experience of life. There is plenty to disagree with: the enduring assumption that the stream-of-consciousness device accurately represents everyday mental life; the standardised postmodern typifying of contemporary culture through the limited negative symbol of the shopping mall. But provocative interest is integral to Kiberd’s advocative approach, and his motivation and aim are resoundingly true. In the increasingly dismal academic scene where literature is widely used only as fodder for the next arid conference paper and subsequent CV filler, and microspecialisation replaces breadth of communicative knowledge, and where class-conscious certainties and cherished jargons mean that new reading changes few minds, we should hope for more books such as this, where, instead, the art of literature becomes relevant, accessible, lively and wise.
Tormented Hope: Nine Hypochondriac Lives,Brian Dillon, Penguin, £8.99
Why was Henry James’s sister obsessed with death? Did Florence Nightingale have brucellosis? Was Michael Jackson really a junkie? This book makes a captivating study of unlikely-looking material: the morbid mindset of the hypochondriac. Patiently, stylishly, Dillon unpicks the psychosomatic knots in which some of the biggest names in western cultural history have entangled themselves, not just willingly but, in some cases, with apparent enjoyment. Here, in various stages of fevers, vapours and dishevelment, are James Boswell, Charlotte Brontë, Charles Darwin, Andy Warhol and Glenn Gould. Dillon examines the history of what was once, he says, a “real” disease but is now seen as a kind of elaborate malingering, and uncovers some very eccentric torments, such as the “glass delusion” – the belief that one is made of glass. We may laugh, but we suffer from anorexia, morbid obesity, flu phobias and the rest. Our bodies, it seems, are still a long way from being our own.
How to Drink, Victoria Moore, Granta, £12.99
Wine and whiskey aside, books about alcohol tend to be glossy hardbacks on the bargain shelves in the bookshop, filled with photos of Day-Glo cocktails you couldn't ever imagine making. This guide, by the Guardian's wine writer, Victoria Moore, is published by Granta, and it comes with that publisher's literary kudos. It has no photos, and while it has a recipe for every drink you could imagine (and some you couldn't), from a sundowner to a cucumber martini, equally important are the essays that go alongside each recipe. They tell the story of the drink, with literary references, entertaining personal anecdotes and enough nitty-gritty details (how to chose the right juniper berry for sloe gin) to keep a "drinkie" intrigued. (Well, food lovers are "foodies".) There's much to amuse and educate in this book. It won't have you drinking more. But it might have you drinking better. Cheers.
TurbulenceGiles Foden, Faber, £7.99
The hapless chaps at the centre of this edgy novel are experts in the infant art of meteorology, and they've been drafted in to provide accurate weather forecasts for the D-Day landings. The only problem is that a rogue column of air means their predictions never quite seem to agree. Giles Foden is an old hand at turning historical material into nail-biting drama. He's particularly good at ratcheting up the stakes as the final reel approaches – remember the graphic closing scenes in The Last King of Scotland? – and here he pulls out all the stops as the huge Allied flotilla of ships, planes and gliders hits the French coast with a heart- stopping bang. There's a superfluous and confusing 1980s framing device, and his love story is a complete washout, but Turbulenceis a moving meditation on the scientific method, on volatility and incompleteness and the role they play in everything from our bloodstream to the movement of galaxies.
Strange Days Indeed: The Golden Age of Paranoia,Francis Wheen, Fourth Estate, £8.99
In presenting the 1970s as a decade of ubiquitous conspiracy and endemic paranoia, Wheen delivers a supremely gripping history, full of weird details and outlandish stories of a time when “the grotesque and fantastical had come to seem almost commonplace”. Wheen does a masterful job of weaving an overarching thesis by zooming in on different illustrative situations. Richard Nixon, like a dictator fearing a violent coup, barked at his subordinates that his enemies (usually reporters or intellectuals) must be crushed by any means. Harold Wilson secretly enlisted two journalists to investigate threats against British democracy from South African intelligence, the CIA and MI5, whose assistant director was convinced the prime minister was a Soviet puppet. Genocidal African rulers such as Idi Amin and President Macias of Equatorial Guinea played pranks on diplomats and murdered their populaces with equal vigour. Scintillating study of a strange decade.
