The year got started with King Leopold’s Ghost,
About the Belgian monarch who decreed
He owned the Congo. I got so engrossed
In tracking his abominable greed,
And its effects on those who suffered most
That by the end I felt no evil deed
That fiction could invent would further darken
The heart that strolled through palace grounds in Laeken.
Convenience Store Woman, picked up next,
Was ghostly in itself. Narrated by
A character perpetually perplexed
By human interactions, it’s a wry
Outsider’s take on humans: oversexed
And difficult to please. It made me try,
Despite my reservations, to commence a
Liaison with my local Marks & Spencer.
Once poet, wit, and know-it-all Clive James
Had kicked The Crystal Bucket late last year,
I tore through his reviews. Much fun and games
Await the uninitiated here,
And though I couldn’t confidently claim
His smirk never devolves into a sneer,
I’d be content to write one phrase as fine as
The tamest of his blistering one-liners.
If you grew up as I did, in Geneva,
The year 1602 had just one meaning:
For that was when, one cold December’s eve, a
Savoyard gang, with clocks in need of cleaning,
Tried to invade and were rebuffed. The fever
Of civic pride burned through the intervening
Years, culminating in my firm conviction
That it would make a stellar work of fiction.
The truth, alas, was rather more deflating.
Geneva never figures in it once –
Instead, Queen Liz the First’s X-men in waiting
Fight off all sorts of hideous affronts
To law and nature. While there’s no debating
It’s very clever, I still felt a dunce:
What are the odds a fracas on the Arve’ll
Be seen as hot IP by folks at Marvel?
Trick Mirror’s essays offer a critique
Of life online and how it warps our selves.
The outlook for our mental health is bleak,
But just how deeply Tolentino delves
Into her own experiences – eek!
She’s baring things the lesser mortal shelves.
“Now that’s a much-examined life,” says Socrates
Dismissing hacks like us as mediocrities
Mistakes are better teachers than successes,
Yet countries mostly recollect the latter.
It’s rare to see a nation’s worst excesses
Acknowledged in a forum where they matter.
Before the Germans wept for the SS’s
Aktionen, all of Deutschland had to shatter.
That process should be learned from – so determines
The deep, insightful Learning From the Germans.
A roll call of the scientists who fled
The Nazis forms the meat of Hitler’s Gift.
With Einstein serving as their figurehead,
There wasn’t one at whom you would have sniffed –
If it were paired with all the talent dead,
The list would be impossible to sift.
Their depth of bench just bristles with surprises –
The second-raters still won Nobel Prizes!
When John le Carré died, the breadth of grief
That crossed my Twitter stream was a surprise.
My own obsession with his work was brief,
Not giving me the time to realise
The timelessness of his preferred motif:
The dangerous seductiveness of lies.
It seems few modern novelists have written
So well about the slow decline of Britain.
All these le Carrés later, I confess
I don’t recall the plotlines of A Murder
Of Quality. But if I had to guess,
I’d say it wasn’t one of his absurder
Creations. No spy chiefs in great distress,
No mission to assassinate a birder
Who stumbles on a missile launching station
Or any tripe like that. A nice sensation.
To move to espionage non-fiction books,
I thoroughly enjoyed Frank Close’s Trinity,
In which I learned of super-spy Klaus Fuchs,
Manhattan Project mole with an affinity
For communism. Close’s detail brooks
No protest: endnotes numbered to infinity
Reveal the author’s truly a phenomenon –
Albeit one inclined to going on and on.
I wrote one of my Masters’ dissertations
On “Jewish Physics” – once the term of art
For those quantum mechanical equations
The Nazis called Talmudic at their heart.
In Germany, alone of modern nations,
Your faith made your mathematics stand apart.
I simplify – the years have made me sloppy –
But I can always email you a copy.
This stake in matters sciencey and Nazi
Made Philip Ball’s Serving the Reich a must:
The sort of book to make one cry out “Yahtzee!
This ticks all of my boxes.” I was just
Despondent, if that’s not too artsy-fartsy,
That I had missed the window to entrust
My own research to publisher and printer.
The memory still rankles each midwinter.
We’re back to John le Carré, I’m afraid,
But now The Secret Pilgrim’s is the plot
That totally eludes me. I’ve repaid
His kindness very poorly – such a lot
Of happy reading time, and it’s all made
So little impact. Jesus, I would not
Make a good Secret Man with such poor memory
For what the web suggests are called ephemerae.
The AI Does not Hate You, says Tom Chivers,
A cracking title, if a bit misleading.
On crunchy tech this book underdelivers –
Instead, it does some self-aware cheerleading
For an assortment of San Fran free-livers
Amenable to childless interbreeding
And interesting thoughts about intelligence
As overblown as they are shaped with elegance.
Kurt Vonnegut is lauded for his wit –
And let’s be clear, that was one funny man –
But I would say that empathy’s the bit
Of his persona that defines him. Can
His irony be overmuch? No shit,
But it’s the soul behind that deadest pan
That makes his better work so sweetly lyrical.
His Bluebeard is a miniature miracle.
When I read Crashed by Adam Tooze (about
The world’s financial crises since ‘08),
I felt I’d bounded off the Shard without
A safety net. Although the book is great
At capturing what happened, there’s no doubt
The acronyms and jargon start to grate.
They made me feel a V. B. A. S. A. B.
(A Very Big And Stupid Adult Baby).
That feeling of stupidity would linger –
One Hundred Years of Solitude was next,
A book I read with one obliging finger
Propped in the page of this beloved text
That told me who was who. The only thing a
Book ever needs to do to leave me vexed
Is give me lots of names of lots of characters
(It has the same effect on me that arak does).
Two characters alone are in Professor
Maxwell’s Duplicitous Demon (it fits
The rhythm awkwardly – oh what a messer
That demon is). It’s whimsical in bits,
The demon writing footnotes, an assessor
Of his creator. In conclusion, it’s
The story of a famous thought experiment
That’s not ashamed to sprinkle in some merriment.
Two figures likewise dominate A Tale
Of Love and Darkness. Firstly Amos Oz,
Whose youth it chronicles in some detail,
And secondly the Israel-that-was,
The country he grew up in, young and frail
And full of promise. Could it be because
I’m an Israeli that I found it great or,
Because my boss’s dad was the translator?
Facebook (the book, by Steven Levy), is
At times too smug about its hard-won access.
That’s not to say the anecdotes lack fizz,
But headlines offer ample prophylaxis
Against the faith in Zuckerberg and his
Achievements that one gets from reading. Praxis
(As a synonym for practice contra theory)
Has given us good reason to be leery.
In March I read a beautiful edition
Of Iris Murdoch’s book The Sea, The Sea.
Its vile narrator, in the best tradition
Of novel-writing, shone a light on me
And gave my faults a brutal exhibition.
I worry how much time it took to see
The recipes he’s constantly adjusting
Are meant to be inedibly disgusting.
It’s great to work with people you admire –
They help you up your game and give you drive.
The downside, though, is that you quickly tire
Of seeing their successes nine to five.
“Have Helen Thomson’s book sales grown yet higher?”
I ask, affecting nonchalance, “Well I’ve
Not even read Unthinkable.” A lie:
I loved it. Please excuse me while I cry.
My in-laws bought me Night Boat to Tangier
For Christmas. Lean and beautifully sparse,
The author has a mesmerising ear
For conversation. Hints of classic farce
Blend in and out of darker fare. I fear
Its tale of men between whom feelings pass
Uneasily through rocky isthmuses
Was not my bag. Let’s hope for future Christmases.
At this point – March – the year would take A Turn.
Our holiday abroad, too ill-advised
As we would only subsequently learn,
Was swiftly ended once we realised
That lockdowns might inhibit our return.
Returning to a London paralysed
By fear and doubt, I soon found myself needing
The solace of a frenzied pace of reading.
I was surprised by Enemies and Neighbours,
A history of Arabs and Israelis
Which chronicles the clattering of sabres,
Ascents of mottes and ravaging of baileys
That marked the past ten decades. It belabours
None of the truisms that flood the dailies,
And though, of course, it struck me as selective,
I benefited from its fresh perspective.
A State at Any Cost was not half-bad.
The story of the late David Ben-Gurion,
My country’s founding father, who once had
A plumy scalp to rival a centurion
Paired with a self-belief both iron-clad
And positively pungent as a durian.
If there’s a lesson that his story teaches,
It’s that one’s fits of rage are winning features.
When I was younger, I was dazzled by
The story of a ‘60s writers’ room
Where Woody Allen, Mel Brooks and – thought I –
Neil Simon all collaborated. Doom
To those who pass it on: it was a lie.
That hasn’t dimmed my love for Simon’s bloom
As comic playwright – his Collected Plays
Helped filter out the headline news for days.
Menachem Begin clearly had his faults,
But still, did he deserve a book so meager?
Its fawning tone would bring out Oy Gevalts
From loyalist Herutniks. I’m uneager
To be uncivil, hence my wary waltz
Around specifics. Safe to say, beleaguer
None of your loved ones with this book and, golly,
Won’t everyone have reason to be jolly.
Another book, another Jewish notable.
This time preserved in Einstein: On the Run.
No scientist more famous, none more quotable,
And few with lives so overwritten. One
Finds piles of volumes – granted, few so totable –
About the man, and most, I guess, more fun.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I read it,
But less for pleasure – more for bookshelf credit.
At times I grieve for my own lack of grandeur.
The sweeping prose of volumes like Transcendence
Now leaves me cold. I’m pretty sure a dandier
Compendium of Homo’s (and descendents’)
Intelligence does not exist (no bandier
Of idle praise am I), but my dependence
In science writing terms is on a writer
Whose tone and style are just a little lighter.
It’s April, and you know what that means? Yes!
Le Carré’s here to make the lockdown cheery.
With A Small Town in Germany, no less,
A masterclass in his trademark world-weary –
Or, rather, disillusioned – tone. The chess
Game plotting back-and-forth is rather dreary,
But I enjoyed his planting something verminy
Amidst the politics of post-war Germany.
While on the theme of sleazy politicians
(A segue not apparent at the time)
In Bibi one can gawp at the ambitions
That fuel Netanyahu. In his prime –
And who’s to say it’s past – no greater Titians
Of spin, or Michelangelos of slime
Have pulled so shamelessly at power’s levers,
And wool to hug the eyes of their believers.
Kurt Vonnegut the writer Armageddon
In Retrospect does not do much to flatter,
With essays that are seldom less than leaden.
But still, the illustrations that bespatter
Its pages are well-drawn enough to redden
A reader’s cheeks with laughter. I could natter
On Vonnegut for absolutely ages –
As will become apparent in these pages.
How strange a story is Escape From Earth!
It tells of the remarkably unholy
Formation of the JPL. The birth
Was witnessed by “The Beast” Aleister Crowley
And L. Ron Hubbard. That alone is worth
The sticker price. The other grim and wholly
Outrageous facts show even jet propulsion’s
Not safe from human beings’ worst compulsions.
If humble butterflies can flap their wings
And cause tornadoes half a world away,
Mosquitoes can do worse. Misfortune clings
To all who near them: it appears that they
Have ruined armies, caused the fall of kings,
And shaped the modern world. I’m loath to say
That The Mosquito’s claims are overblown,
But if you thought it too, you’re not alone.
If you work at a magazine, as I did,
You’ll know a key attraction is the chance
To sneak home books arts editors decided
Weren’t good enough for them. Though at first glance
They’ll seem like A-1 choices, how misguided
Will they appear when you cannot advance
Into your living room for tomes in stacks
So high they give your termites heart attacks.
The fruit of one such smuggling expedition,
Dan Hooper’s At The Edge of Time explores
The universe’s early days. Its mission,
It seems, is to top up its readers’ stores
Of cosmic wonder, and to give permission
To make one long for that great Great Outdoors
That stretches to infinity. It’s creditable,
But also, dare I say it, highly editable.
It’s deathly unoriginal to say,
But say I must, that post-war era Paris
Enchants me. Roll the Hollywood clichés:
Let film noir music à la Anton Karas
Float through the pipe smoke of the cabarets
While Inspecteur Maigret looms near to harass
A Georges Brassens who strums a humble ditty
Within this dark, imperishable city.
That hardiness of spirit we admire
Was forged through years of brutal occupation.
Les Parisiennes ignores the occupier
And shows instead the moral devastation
Wreaked on the women occupied. The fire
Of Résistance lured some, collaboration
Gave hope to others. Laying out their choices,
Anne Sebba lets them talk in their own voices.
Though English is my mother tongue, my first
Words were in Hebrew. Thirty years on, I’m
Embarrassed to admit that I’m the worst
At speaking in my family (the time
Long gone when I could pip my niece). Accursed
With The Bilingual Brain that’s past its prime,
I found Alberto Costa diagnosing
Bilingualism thoroughly engrossing.
Republic of Numbers just doesn’t scan
(I need three iambs, not two amphibrachs).
That’s not the author’s fault - when he began
This book about Americans with knacks
For numbers, title rhythm wasn’t an
Important issue. That aside, it lacks
A certain verve, but anecdotes aplenty
Await the calculating cognoscenti.
Turned On is pleasingly mature about
The impact of technology on sex.
That’s not to say it’s joyless or without
A sense of fun, but open to complex
Analysis. There shouldn’t be much doubt
That any danger in such coming techs
Lies less within them and more in the manner
They’re used (the same is true, say, of a spanner).
Maybe it’s Maybelline, maybe it’s age,
But I cannot recall Do Dice Play God?
I know I must have read through every page,
Yet not a fact remains. It’s very odd.
My Instagram review suggests a sage
Non-fiction book with tendencies to plod,
But who am I to carp at stodge and density
When, after all, I have the same propensity.
A book as full of hope as it is tender,
Persepolis, the graphic novel, charts
Marjane Satrapi’s childhood. As a slender
Though hopeful shaft of light, she steals our hearts
In pages of determined non-surrender
To censorship. She’s paid the price: in parts
Of her Iran it’s banned. The price of candour
That dares to raise the Ayatollah’s dander.
Come April’s end, I’d had enough of reading
Non-fiction out of gloomy obligation.
On Instagram my friends were interceding
To urge me to read more for recreation.
And so with joy I soon found myself speeding
Through Song of Solomon, an affirmation
Of Toni Morrison’s sublime facility
At capturing humanity’s fragility.
A swathe of science Twitter gets its kicks
Debating Ada Lovelace’s credentials.
The world’s first programmer/programmatrix,
Or twit who’d struggle parsing exponentials?
More fun than such entrenchment is to mix
The maxima of her unplumbed potentials
As theorised in The Thrilling Adventures
Of Lovelace and Babbage. Now: clear the trenches.
I then turned to a rather bleak conceit.
If all of human wisdom were to vanish,
From how to cure one’s food or harvest wheat
To how to write a limerick in Spanish,
Would we recall it, or admit defeat?
Faith in the former’s not too Pollyannish
For Lewis Dartnell. With his book The Knowledge,
You’d ace your post-apocalyptic college.
My in-laws have a private WhatsApp group –
That I’m excluded from – wherein they share
Their crossword-solving times. A daily whoop
Of triumph from my wife confirms it’s there,
But any move I make to try and snoop
Yields nothing. As I’m still locked out of there,
She purchased me a crossword book called Thinking
Inside The Box to stop my tearful drinking.
Gravity’s Rainbow is, if you don’t know,
A work of legendary length and density.
A tale of World War II deceit and woe
Through which one can’t escape Pynchon’s propensity
For paranoia. Soon the undertow
Of weirdness, so strong in its intensity
Will drown you. “If you liked this, well then, sissies,”
Says my edition, “then you’ll like Ulysses”.
Of all the subjects I’m unqualified
To write about, high on that list must be
The history of how Biafrans tried
To break off from Nigeria. Those three
Brief years of tragedy and wounded pride
There Was a Country tells so movingly
One’s moved by that most retrograde of forces:
The instinct to ignore all other sources.
By May, when normal life had been adjourned,
And going outdoors signalled impropriety,
I finally, though with reluctance, turned
To Snowden’s Epidemics and Society,
A book I was initially concerned
Would only serve to heighten my anxiety.
Instead it left my synapse endings humming
With disbelief we didn’t see this coming.
Some writers – I myself am of their number –
Feel most at home within the comic mode.
It seems to us ill-mannered to encumber
Our fans with sorrows by the bucketload,
Such gloom might well inspire them to slumber
Or turn away. These worries never slowed
Down Philip Larkin. His Collected Poems
Pours melancholy out in jeroboams.
As the New Yorker’s Alex Ross points out,
Trump’s final days bear some resemblance to
A much more meme-y Untergang. Without
Belabouring the point, there’s much that’s new
And timely on the way dictators sprout
In Volker Ullrich’s Hitler, Volume II.
An ever more dispiriting position
As we approach the end of the transition.
So much of any job is learned by doing,
It’s easy to lose track of what you’ve learned.
From pitching stories through to interviewing,
I know I’m not alone to be concerned
I’m journalisting wrong. So in pursuing
Some reassurance I must say I burned
Straight through the splendid Craft of Science Writing:
It made the day job reappear exciting,
The Great Cities in History inspects
The great cities in history. Alas,
The Great Cities in History injects
The great cities in history with sass-
Expunging pompousness. It disrespects
The cities and the reader, to be crass.
Though maybe I should try to be forgiving -
I’ve also written badly for a living.
The more entrenched the myth, the more defiance
It should be met with. Up there with the most
Corrosive must be that “Great Men of Science”
Discover things alone. It takes a host
Of helpers to build shoulders fit for giants,
And get a so-called genius past the post.
That is the motive force of The Glass Universe,
A work deserving better than this puny verse.
The book Jungle of Stone recounts the story
Of two explorers who revealed the wonders
The Mayans left posterity. The glory
Is theirs alone (the Mayans’) – if that thunder’s
Pinched by posterity, then a furore
Will rightfully break out. For there are plunders
More damaging than those of gold or emory:
The pillaging of our collective memory.
In this our age of doggos and of puppers,
It’s hard to cast one’s mind back to an age
When feeding rabid street dogs poisoned suppers
Was all – excuse the pun in French – the rage.
How much this chequered past behaviour scuppers
Our pact with man’s best friend is hard to gauge,
But if you think both man and dog are corkers,
Steer clear of Mad Dogs and Other New Yorkers.
By June it was becoming a disgrace –
In light of the importance of the topic –
That my existing literature on race
Could fairly be described as microscopic.
And so began a mission to make space
For books that broached the subject. If your top pick
Does not appear, the chances are I’m well aware:
The books I mean to read could carpet Delaware.
The Souls of Black Folk, credited to W.
E. B. Dubois is moving and enlightening.
Though much has dated, what has not will trouble you –
Some modern parallels are simply frightening.
Of course, it’s only new within my bubble – you
May well be well ahead of me. But heightening
One’s own engagement seems a worthy mission,
So long as one eschews false erudition.
In Thirty Years with G. B. S., which I
Have owned unread for twelve, George Bernard Shaw
Is profiled by his secretary. The guy
Is hard not to make fun of and adore:
So interested in new ideas, so wry,
Yet capable of being such a bore:
His Man and Superman goes on for hours
(It’s great, but tests one’s bladder superpowers).
In Waterland, by Graham Swift, the fens
Become a backdrop to a troubling tale
Of youth and innocence; of nows and thens;
Of secrets, death, and eels; of love and ale.
And just enough enchantment too to cleanse
The palate from a 2020 stale
With ruthless truths and endless harsh reality.
I wallowed in its artificiality.
At last I got to Midnight in Chernobyl
By Adam Higginbotham. It’s a great
Companion volume to Netflix’s global
TV phenomenon. It may well grate
To learn the show got details wrong, but noble
Intentions often crack beneath the weight
Of life’s complexities. I’m no detractor –
There’s too much going on in a reactor.
Jeffrey Boakye’s book, Black, Listed, guides
Us through his English language. Every term
In which the plague of racist thinking hides,
Or which is used by contrast to affirm,
Is playfully defined. When he decides
To make us laugh along and not to squirm,
I wonder if I’m being let off lightly:
Awakenings are seldom quite so sprightly.
I found Another Country hard to read,
But any fault is mine. James Baldwin’s prose
Can cut when he intends to make you bleed,
Or peel if he desires to expose,
But either way its edge is sharp. If he’d
Been half as good a writer, Heaven knows
I’d still be slack-jawed at his perspicacity
His thoughtfulness, his wit and pertinacity.
Next, Candice Carty-Williams’s Queenie
Was full of life and of infectious jollity.
A decadent and sparkling peach bellini
Robust in flavour and assured in quality.
It spilled outside my comfort zone, but teeny
Forays beyond that line are what equality
Depends on. Making novel reading choices
Is how one learns the world has other voices.
I couldn’t stay away from Baldwin long.
The Fire Next Time (two devastating pieces
On what it means to be and not belong,
And live a life society polices)
Was moving and enraging. Such a strong
Poetic voice, its strength only increases
With every year his message goes unheeded.
So many decades on, it’s still much needed.
In Liberalism at Large, one Alex Levin
Examines The Economist’s worldview.
Although the book is pretty close to heaven
For those who disapprove of what they do,
I struggled with his tendency to leaven
His censure with opprobrium. But to
Say more than that about my new employer,
I’d need a consultation with my lawyer.
The valuable distinction that exists
Between combating racism and just
Expressing disapproval has, its fists
In tatters, seemed to penetrate the crust
Of discourse. Partly due to reading lists
That boldly labelled as a total must-
Read How to be an Antiracist by
Ibram X. Kendi. I can well see why.
In Lost in a Good Game, Pete Etchells writes
About his hobby. That is no small thing:
To read an author’s work when he delights
In what he writes about can make hearts sing.
On top of that, the literature he cites
Suggests that gaming might not be a spring
Of mindless evil. That is a relief
To those whose childhood gaming garnered grief.
Your Silence Will Not Protect You, written
By Audre Lorde, contains those essays, speeches
And poems that, to quote from Bulwer-Lytton,
Were mightier than swords. Her insight reaches
Across all barriers. Once you’ve been bitten
By empathy that elevates and teaches
As hers did, you start itching with desire
To raise your consciousnesses even higher.
Spike Milligan, as every schoolchild knows,
Had “Told you I was ill” engraved upon
His tombstone. That desire to thumb his nose
At common-sensibility is gone
But will not be as quick to decompose.
The Little Pot Boiler’s a boxed bonbon
Of his characteristic wit and japery.
It’s edible, I think, but rather papery.
Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal forces
The reader to confront their own demise.
As print bestsellers go, horses for courses,
But I would once have though the choice unwise.
In memorable writing, he endorses
A move towards approaching death with eyes
Wide open. He sees our collective terror
Of death as a remediable error.
I know I’ve railed on Einstein books before
(See April if you need a brief reminder)
But Matthew Stanley’s version, Einstein’s War,
Was really quite enjoyable. A kinder,
More gentle me? Or was it simply more
Well-written? At this point, with no reminder
To hand of its appealing phraseologies
I’m going to have to fudge it. My apologies.
The Dictionary Wars (the martial theme
Continues) I cannot recall a word of.
Such idiocy makes me want to scream –
Incompetence like this should be unheard of.
Perhaps every so often, in the stream
Of books one reads, a few within the herd’ve
No choice but to recede into the scenery -
But still, I need to oil my brain’s machinery.
What kind of quondam physicist am I
That cosmic vastnesses can leave me cold?
Perhaps I write too much about it: my
Reaction when I’m ordered to “Behold!”
Is to suppress a yawn. I’m sure the sky
Is full of wonders, though – or so I’m told
In Secrets of the Universe, which praises
The purer sort of genuine stargazers.
In Show Your Work, the artist Austin Kleon
Tells readers they must all promote themselves.
If not – and this I’m sure we all agree on –
No army of fair-minded little elves
Will do it for us. Resting mournfully on
A discount rack or on remaindered shelves,
The answer is to make more works, and show ‘em!
I guess that’s why I chose to write this poem.
The heart of Einstein’s Jewish Science (were
You really not expecting there’d be more?)
Is quite a brave attempt to own the slur
That Nazis flung at him. One can deplore
The bigotry yet labour to infer
If “thinking Jewishly” has meaning. More
Of worth nestled within than I expected,
Alongside much I scoffed at or rejected.
I could have chosen more escapist fare
Than Hit Makers, a book about the ways
That things go viral. There’s not much in there
About pandemics, but I’m full of praise
For how it tells its anecdotes with flair
And outlines what it takes to start a craze.
Perhaps if I can practice what it preaches,
I’ll manage to quintuple what my reach is.
The Royal Society (make that six syllables,
Not seven) tells the history of that
August establishment. Its key distillables
Are pretty anodyne. It’s rather flat –
I hope the author’s rate per hour billable’s
Enough to justify his time at bat.
The world’s no worse for having this book in it,
But still, I hope he milked them for each minute.
My best friend lives in Finland, which has made
This year of isolation that much tougher.
I bought a book to make the distance fade:
A History of Finland. I’m no bluffer
But ask me what I learned, and I’d evade
The question. I’m sure there’s a lot of stuff a
Helsinki resident would find intriguing,
But all these miles away, it’s quite fatiguing.
C. L. R. James, in The Black Jacobins,
Writes movingly of Haiti’s liberation.
Unsparing in his list of France’s sins,
He shows how L’Ouverture, the greatest Haitian,
Does battle with Napoleon and wins.
Despite his ultimate incarceration,
The state he founded still survives: a feat
That Bonaparte himself could not repeat.
I don’t think that I read a book all year
As necessary as The Condemnation
Of Blackness. It charts centuries of fear
Of Black licentiousness, and the fixation
On generating data that appear
To warrant high rates of incarceration.
I finished it enraged at the disparity,
Khalil Gibran Muhammad charts with clarity.
Throughout The Loneliness of the Long-Distance
Cartoonist Adrian Tomine shares
The soul-destroying seconds of existence
That mortified him most. It makes one’s hairs
Stand up on end, and then, without resistance,
One’s own decades of cringe creep unawares
Into the viewing rooms of one’s own psyche.
To quote one’s inner Bertie Wooster: “Crikey!”
Army of Shadows tracks the Palestinian
Collaboration with the local Jews
Pre-‘48. The court of mass opinion
Declared it treason: after all, who’d choose
To help establish Israel’s dominion?
The truth, of course, is complex. My own views
Are coloured by my background and my history;
If you’re still reading, those should be no mystery.
The ash cloud formed when Mount Tambora blew
Kept skies in Europe dark a summer later.
The weather meant that crime and squalor grew
(Or so at least suggest the author’s data),
And helped to midwife Mary Shelley’s new
Creation, Frankenstein, that great creator
Born in a fizzing fug of cabin fever
A monster’s stone’s throw back from Lake Geneva.
Charles King’s The Reinvention of Humanity
Lays out how anthropology was born.
Disdaining what he saw as Western vanity,
Franz Boas and his colleagues put to scorn
The notion that Judaeo-Christianity
Had any right to judge a culture torn
From its own context. Our own eccentricities
Lie hidden by our own ethnocentricities.
Carl Zimmer’s book She Has Her Mother’s Laugh
Lets him display his chops as a reporter.
Allegedly composed on the behalf
Of a no doubt highly embarrassed daughter,
It packs a punch with every paragraph
Thought I’d have loved it were they somewhat shorter,
Or at least somewhat less profuse in number:
My copy could be used to dam the Humber.
There’s no doubt that the mathematician Euler
(Leonhard Euler, as the man was known)
Was brilliant, but, please forgive the spoiler,
This book is for the superfan alone.
No mild diverting read or quick pot-boiler,
It’s decades of research – a cornerstone
Of future Euler scholarship. I guess
900 pages augurs nothing less.
Exploratory Experiments, again
Intended for an academic crowd,
Profiles Ampère and Faraday, two men
Who did electromagnetism proud.
Exactly what they knew, and how, and when,
Is what this book examines. Having ploughed
Straight through it, I am full of admiration
For all the author’s drive and dedication.
The randomised control trial ends the year
As everybody’s favourite bit of science,
Enabling vaccines strong enough to steer
The world away from lockdowns. Our reliance
On this clever innovation is made clear
In Randomistas (which, in bold defiance
Of edicts against overreaching, reaches
Too far for me to take in what it teaches).
Our culture’s weirdly durable fixation
With purity, in terms of food, at least,
Is diagnosed in Pure Adulteration,
Which offers up a fascinating feast
Of anecdotes that show the separation
Between “pure” and “adulterated” ceased
To have much meaning centuries before
The founding of the world’s first health-food store.
I’d always thought that oracles and seers
Were turning profits through misrepresentation.
I may have been too hasty. It appears,
In Peter T. Struck’s book on Divination
And Human Nature, prophets through the years
Were trying to interpret a sensation
Today we’d call a hunch or a gut feeling.
Let’s face it – “hearing God” is more appealing.
Who knew that there could be so much to learn
About the wind! So insubstantial yet
So strong. In Heaven’s Breath one can discern
A fascination with the subject. Wet
By the monsoon, and withered by the föhn,
Its author, Lyall Watson, casts his net
Around the world to write this quaint prospectus
Of how its breezes bother and affect us.
To anyone who’s ever read The Meaning
Of Liff, its follow-up will be familiar.
John Lloyd and Douglas Adams do more gleaning
Of silly place names, paired with even sillier
Cod definitions. In The Deeper Meaning
Of Liff this puerile toponymophilia
Is, no surprises, getting rather tired,
But let’s admit the concept is inspired.
Four times a year I get the latest issue
Of Past & Present. What a chocolate box
Of oddities. A history of the tissue
Rubs knees with essays on the coloured socks
In vogue in 1400s Mogadishu.
It’s wonderfully eclectic, and it rocks.
The yearly themed edition’s tighter compass
Means it's much denser – and it feels more pompous.
When G.H. Hardy wrote A Mathematician’s
Apology, his goal was to explain
What mathematicians do. That worthy mission’s
Sidetracked at times by quite a boring vein
Of cricket talk, but if you had suspicions
That higher maths was mostly done in vain,
Then, without winning literary prizes,
This meagre essay may well hold surprises.
In 2014 Iceland mourned the loss
Of its first glacier. They put up a plaque
To mark its death and get the point across
That climate change had done it. It’s a stark
Reminder that our coal-based mishegoss
Has consequences. I was in the dark
About these giant ice forms and their plight
Till I read Glacier by Peter G. Knight.
What’s really troublesome with quantum theory
Is not that it means things that don’t make sense,
But that there are still many long and dreary
Debates on what it means. Tim Maudlin’s dense
Philosophy of Physics treads this weary
Path using prose I’d fail in a pretence
Of following, but if you’ve got the training,
I’m sure you’ll find it wildly entertaining.
For Science, King and Country celebrates
The life of chemist Henry Moseley. He
Was killed in World War I, the book relates,
Astorm the beaches at Gallipoli.
Though young, he ranked already with the greats,
And had potential no one could foresee.
As altogether not that nice a person,
It’s possible, of course, that he would worsen.
My grandfather, who died in Ashkelon,
Was born in London. The East End he knew
Before the war, its schmaltz and shmattes gone,
Lived on in tales he told. How much was true,
And how much fancy overlaid upon
Sense-memory I don’t know. In Journey Through
A Small Planet, which he loved, I got to touch
The borders of a world he missed so much.
While talking family matters, in The House
On Garibaldi Street, which tells the tale
Of Eichmann’s capture, we hear my aunt grouse
The operation forced her to curtail
Her time in Argentina with her spouse.
Unknowingly involved, she left a trail
Eich’s exiled Nazi buddies could have tracked
To wreak revenge – and so, in haste, they packed.
I’m grateful that the friend who recommended
My Year of Rest and Relaxation thinks
That I’m a man of such refined and splendid
Taste. Secretly, I sort of think it stinks.
It’s just as alienating as intended,
And dark enough to make me Google shrinks.
Alas, unmasked as having zero culture,
I fear she’ll chuck our friendship in the mulcher.
The Beauty and the Terror gives a gripping
Account of the Renaissance. It rips up,
Apparently, those tropes that needed ripping,
And shows that only war could forge the cup
That so much art was drunk from. At this whipping
Of sacred cows I shrug and murmur “yup,”
It’s past in which I’m much too poorly grounded
To be what I’d call suitably astounded.
When Berlin fell, the Allies had to know:
How certain could they be the Führer’d died?
Though finding proof was difficult and slow,
Hugh Trevor-Roper was the man who tried.
In The Last Days of Hitler he would show
As many details of the suicide
And subsequent cremation as you’d like,
That marked the tawdry downfall of the Reich.
I don’t know what to call this next book. S.
By J. J. Abrams is its proper title,
But on its spine a well-wrought letterpress
Has stamped The Ship of Theseus. It’s vital
That I don’t give too much away, but yes,
This is deliberate. An epiphytal
Relationship exists between both books:
One blossoming within the other’s nooks.
The man revealed in The Autobiography
Of Malcolm X is mythically compelling.
In writing much more vivid than photography,
Reporter Alex Haley’s storytelling
Establishes the man’s moral topography
And how he carved it out. The drives propelling
Him were so radioactive in their fury
You’d have to write their strength in Megacurie.
There’s no denying Byron’s very clever -
Two thousand stanzas in ottava rima
Is really a remarkable endeavour,
But does Don Juan lose its head of steam? A
More understanding critic might cry “never!”
But I must disagree. And break my femur
Or take an iron poker to my dodgy knee
If I should ever parrot such misogyny.
I can’t admit I’d ever really noticed
How blatantly our world is built for men.
The hardships that seemed worthiest of protest
Were trousers without pockets. Foolish then,
Unpardonable now that anecdotist,
Reporter, activist and trenchant pen
Criado-Perez brought to mass awareness
(In Invisible Women) such unfairness.
Virginia Woolf once said of Middlemarch
That here was literature for adults. One’s
Assumption is she wasn’t being arch,
Implying that no child would have the guns
To carry it. She’s right of course. The starch
Of manner masks a prose that overruns
With empathy, intelligence and care
That makes its weighty burden light to bear.
By mid-September, I for months had drooled
Small dewy puddles over my edition
Of R. R. Palmer’s classic Twelve Who Ruled,
About the men who led, in coalition,
Post-Revolutionary France. I cooled
Quite quickly. While not short on erudition,
It wears it rather heavily, insistent
On being altogether rather distant.
So much of John le Carré’s trademark skill
Lay in the way he bounced along a plot
Through conversations. He could make you thrill
With one interrogation scene, the knot
Of tension tight enough to make you ill
As you learned what was known and what was not.
The Constant Gardener’s plot goes to great lengths
To let him play to these specific strengths.
Armistead Maupin’s More Tales of the City
Is so delightful I implore you: buy it.
The chapters are so ravishingly bitty
It’s quite a slimming literary diet,
And Maupin’s writing sparkles; it’s so witty
His every second sentence is a riot.
Alas, though, in these days of Zoom and Cisco
Webex, who can set off for San Francicsco?
The tension there was between P. G. Wodehouse
And Hollywood was legendary. He
Resented lounging in his Hollywood house,
The goose that laid the golden eggs, unfree,
His cage admittedly a rather good house,
But treated still like some performing flea.
I would have rathered more of his psychology
Than was forthcoming in this bland chronology.
Among the books the Nazis turned to smoke
Were many of the author Irmgard Keun’s.
That’s no surprise: the way her womenfolk
Are free to feel the fire in their loins
Or relish tellings of a dirty joke
Goes counter to what Nazi law enjoins.
The Artificial Silk Girl, too, is sodden,
With so much sex it frankly feels quite modern.
Haruki Murakami, in translation,
At any rate, is temperate and tender.
Norwegian Wood’s my first, but its narration
Was sweet enough to lead to my surrender.
I can’t say I’m awash with admiration
At how it handles talk of sex and gender,
But when it comes to mental health he’s gentle,
And, to my mind at least, quite non-judgemental.
Few books have had so promising a blurb
And been so disappointing in their selves
As Monday Starts on Saturday. Superb
In concept (as the USSR delves
Into the magical, its works disturb
All sorts of genies, gremlins, orcs and elves)
It’s borderline unreadable. A shame,
But who knows, maybe you won’t feel the same.
I got a glimpse of Murakami’s range
With The Elephant Vanishes, a set
Of stories, some macabre, mostly strange,
Whose quiet surfaces reflect the threat
That people are impossible to change.
His images aren’t easy to forget:
Especially the central, stomach-churning
Vignette on barns and those who set them burning.
The Little Drummer Girl the BBC
Produced two years ago surpassed the book.
Le Carré fans are free to disagree,
But I prefer the world of Park Chan-wook:
The past he conjures up has such esprit
And opulence is its distinctive look.
The novel’s still deliciously exciting,
But my edition had less lustrous lighting.
October. With a Browning in my pocket,
I drain a whiskey sour at a bar.
His left eye looming large out of its socket,
A goon approaches, grinning, with a scar.
I loosen off the safety on my rocket,
And spot I’m in a Raymond Chandler noir
Like The High Window. It’s so entertaining
I let him sock me twice without complaining.
How beautifully written is The Bell
By Iris Murdoch? Every sentence sings;
The characters are realised so well;
And care is given to the little things,
Like knowing what to show and what to tell
And tying plotlines up with little strings;
Although I could have managed with a smidgen
Less animated talk about religion.
The better Vonneguts already read,
I turned to Slapstick. Though some lines are great,
It’s still a lousy novel. In its stead
Turn to the prologue, which will demonstrate
His moral fibre, and reveal a head
Unbowed beneath intolerable weight.
If they gave Nobel Prizes for compassion,
Kurt Vonnegut would soon exceed his ration.
Like all of A. B. Yehoshua’s work,
The Lover looks at things that go unsaid
When people talk. The silences that lurk
Rank and unnoticed in the marriage bed,
What-might-have-beens that indiscreetly irk
When hearts get mistranslated by the head.
It starts off slow but A. B.’s good at pivoting
Abruptly from “I can’t be arsed” to “riveting”.
In Muriel Spark’s small novelette The Ballad
Of Peckham Rye some choicely comic bits
Rub up against dispiritingly pallid
Attempts to raise a laugh, while sudden fits
Of violence, like grapes in a fruit salad,
Add textured pops of flavour. Mostly it’s
An entertaining read, with laughs and revelry,
And oddly fable-like flashes of devilry.
Jane Austen is not only very funny,
But in the way she makes best friends behave,
All these years on she’s still bang on the money.
Northanger Abbey’s no exception. Fave
Can turn on fave, and dispositions sunny
Can quickly turn as icy as the grave
And #BFFs turn #fake
When cash or clout are seen to be at stake.
With Absolute Friends, John le Carré whiffed.
There’s still an awful lot to like, but much
Of what one must refer to as his gift
Is wasted. There’s a crass ham-fisted touch
That sets his central characters adrift
And makes for frequent baffled eyerolls. Such
A novel’s not how I want to remember
The master who expired this December.
Compared with John le Carré, Graham Greene
Is more experimental in his prose.
His imagery is sharper, and a sheen
Of literary merit overglows
His turgid plots. That said, there is a mean
Anti-Semitic vein which coolly flows
Through Stamboul Train I found so disagreeable
I won’t return to Greene for the foreseeable.
Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man tries
To make sense of the bigotry he faces.
If he could only prove himself, he sighs,
He’d overcome the gulf between the races.
Eventually he comes to realise
Acceptance rests on knowing what his place is –
A stark conclusion whose enunciation
Prompts his own quest for self-realisation.
Nobody writes, and no one ever has,
Like Toni Morrison. The world she built
For 1920s Harlemites in Jazz
Has prose that’s richer than a Vanderbilt
And images that burst with more pizzazz
Than Ziegfeld’s Follies. If it looks like gilt,
There’s gold beneath the surface too; a treasure
That guarantees you hours’ worth of pleasure.
The Nickel Boys, by Colson Whitehead, poses
A question that has never been more pressing.
As racism shoots up beneath our noses,
How should its victims handle it? Depressing
As it may be to some, Whitehead proposes
The notion of a “right” way is oppressing –
And in a country made and built by slavers,
Polite resistance will do you no favours.
An epidemic book I read by chance
Was Nemesis by writer Philip Roth.
As polio begins its dread advance
Through 1940s Newark, a rich broth
Of panic, anger, fear and circumstance,
And disregard for the almighty’s wrath
Combine to make an oddly timely double
For this, our time of deep, persistent trouble.
As style guides go, the one I’m paid to follow
Will always be the one I love the best.
At times, though, when its bells ring slightly hollow,
It doesn’t hurt to dip into the rest,
And I would recommend a good old wallow
In Dreyer’s English. I was well impressed
With much of its advice, and its inviting
Approach to simple tips for better writing.
So here we close the door on 2020,
And not a day too soon. The books I read
Gave much-needed relief – dolce far niente –
And though there’s much I could have done instead,
I’m satisfied that I accomplished plenty
Despite the fact I rarely left my bed.
Bring on next year! If folks aren’t telling whoppers it
(Thank Christ) will be its total polar opposite.