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Absolutely stunning!

Originally reviewed March, 2013, on Amazon UK. This version is slightly updated/revised.

Marcos Valle has been something of a musical chameleon over the years. Coming up in the second wave of bossa nova in the sixties, he could and did write in that form brilliantly, producing several albums, mostly in his native Brazil and sung in Portugese, but including Samba ’68 , recorded in the US and sung in English. As the sixties came to a close he and his brother, a songwriting team of rare excellence, began to experiment with broader ranges of sounds and lyrical themes, keeping bossa and samba in the mix, but gradually incorporating the broader themes of MPB*, various pop forms (rock, soul, soundtrack, funk), even psychedelia and Tropicalia.

* Music Popular Brazil!

Already he had behind him such eclectic masterpieces as his self-titled 1970 recording, and the utterly sublime Garra. With each new release there were increasing signs of a musically omnivorous diversity that would make categorising and describing Valle’s music ever harder. So far this hadn’t hurt his success, sales, or the critical reception that he was getting. Indeed, the brothers Valle were very busy commercially, writing music for the Brazilian franchise of Sesame Street (Vila Sesamo), an album for an airline (Fly Cruzeiro), and frequent commissions for TV and movie soundtracks, which often pop up on their albums.

Feeling the pressure of such demands, the brothers Valle (acc. to Allmusic) decamped to the hippie beach town of Buzios, where they continued to collaborate, and not just with each other, but a really quite broad collection of fellow Brazilian musicians, and Vento Sul (South Wind) was the result.

Personally I feel that Valle’s music between 1970-4 reaches a peak the likes of which is rarely attained in popular music. As I type this Bodas de Sangue is playing: the fifth track on the album, it’s a sublimely beautiful instrumental that moves through several segments, ranging from filmic, to classical chamber music. From this they effortlessly segue into the baroque pop psychedelia of Demoscustico, in which a very rhythmic and phonetic poem is declaimed, over a musical background that continually morphs from section to section, in a dizzying but satisfyingly homogenous way. It really is stunning!

The title track is gorgeous, a lush, slow, gentle waltz. Marcos takes the lead vocal on this track. And that highlights another remarkable thing about this album; Valle doesn’t dominate the lead vocal spot on this album entirely, as he normally would. Several of the other musicians are just as prominent vocally on certain tracks, and a keynote of the recording is the amount of collective singing, such as that which takes over from Marcos after the first verse of the title track. It’s a literal musical embodiment of a kind of dreamy, gauzy, diaphanous hippie idealism made concrete in musical terms. Astonishing!

The musical range is also flabbergasting, many of the pieces are like little sonic worlds, the richness and the transitions so natural and beguiling one doesn’t always appreciate quite how amazing the range of the music is. At times it is quite challenging, as with parts of Democustico, or Rosto Barbado (Red Beard, on account of Valle’s emerging facial fuzz, perhaps?). Voo Cegoo and Mi Hermoza exemplify the strands where other vocalists, and group harmonies, dominate, with Marcos generously stepping back from the spotlight. Both are from the dreamier, mellower side of the repertoire, with the former being amongst my personal favourites, and the latter showing how far off his usual musical map Valle and co. were willing to travel, with Vinicius Cantauria and the musicians of O Terco stamping a psychedelic rock vibe on proceedings, especially in the fuzzed out rock section, with its distorted lead guitar.

I got the Japanese import version of Vento Sul (via Chicago’s dustygroove.com) some time ago, and it cost me a bomb. But it was very definitely worth every penny. That version of the album appends the wonderfully sunny and goofily upbeat O Beato as a bonus track.

I like O Beato a lot, but it kind of breaks the mood of gentle reverie that was created by the original final track, Deixa O Mundo E O Sol Entrar, which is a gorgeous song. Sung by Marcos, accompanied by several acoustic guitars, piano, electric bass and percussion, there’s almost some kind of Pink Floyd-esque feel at work, but with that jazzy Brazilian vibe thrown in. Fabulous!

Apparently all of this fabulousness was too much for the critics and Valle fans back in the day, and, bizarrely to my mind, Vento Sul marked a dip in Valle’s success at home in Brazil. But it has stood the test of time very well. Yes, it certainly sounds very much of its time, but in a truly wonderful way, showing what a creative and open era this was, even under the heel of the Brazilian military dictatorship of that era.

The beautiful cover painting conveys perfectly the dreamy feeling of this incredible album. If you like Valle, or just music brave enough to go its own way, this is a must have.

An incredibly rich and diverse album.

I originally posted this review back in March, 2013, on Amazon UK. This version is slightly revised.

An enormously wide-ranging and varied album, this is one of the many reasons I love both Brazilian music of this era, and also just much of the music of the time as a whole. One can’t imagine many artists nowadays getting such a diverse polyglot explosion of artistic creativity past the record execs. Having come up as a second-wave bossa dude, all clean cut, with a beautiful wife and an armful of gorgeous bossa nova tunes, Valle and brother Paulo Sergio allowed themselves to move with the times, absorbing myriad sounds and influences and putting them all together in a unique and wonderful way.

I’m what I like to call a ‘naturalist and free thinker’, but opening track Jesus Meu Rei could almost have me back in the flock, it’s such a joyous piece of gospel-soused loveliness. Valle has a beautiful voice, and the music is just unlike anything else, ever. So too with Com Mais De 30, a bubbling cauldron of gentle breezy bossa/samba mixed with easy listening textures that’s a beautiful little musical bibelot, with excellent lyrics at once humourous and profound, about ageing. Roughly translating as ‘don’t trust anyone over thirty’, a popular hippy slogan of the era, both Marcos Valle himself and lyricist brother Paulo Sergio were by the time this was recorded, just into their thirties.

Track three, the title track veers all over the place, with a loping funky groove, one minute Valle sings breathless almost comic easy-listening style ‘ha-ha’s (on the offbeats, a favourite trick of his), the next it’s stripped down to strings, recorders and/or mellotron. Truly amazing music, without any recognisable boundaries, and utterly joyful. Next up, Black Is Beautiful, combines Brazilian lyrics with an English chorus, and once again flits across the musical map in a way that’s almost psychedelic, based around a slow, stately 6/8 rhythm, the music is drenched in easy listening horns and strings, and the lyrics seem to be a celebration of the diverse ethnicity so integral to Brazil, as well as, more obviously, a love song to black beauty, with references to the ‘sangue’ (blood) of Africa and Europe. Terrific!

Ao Amigo Tom is a gentle bossa, reminiscent of Valle’s early records, and I suspect the Tom may be Antonio Carlos ‘Tom’ Jobim. Jobim was slated to produce/direct Valle’s debut, but in the end couldn’t, and so the job devolved upon another Brazilian superdude, Eumir Deadato. Valle shows complete mastery of the ‘vialoa e voz’ medium, with gorgeous melody and harmony, a proper tribute to a beloved hero/influence.

Paz e Futebol and Que Bandira are more from the MPB end of the spectrum, big Brazilian pop productions, but once again indelibly stamped with the Valle genius. The next track that really scores for me (note cheesy football pun) is Wanda Vidal, an amazing slab of cosmic Brazilian funk. Nothing like any James Brown or US rare groove, and with a goofy easy-listening middle-eight, but the lazy loping bass and keys, and the chicken scratch guitar… It’s just brilliant, and largely ’cause it’s like no other music on Earth. Joyous!

Minha Voz Zira Do Sol Da America is a baroque pop instrumental gem, with that kind of transcendent uplifting joyfulness Valle excels at. If I understand it correctly Vinte E Seis Anos De Vida Normal, another MPB nugget, replete with strings and brass, is a song about wanting to make it, to get known, having spent ’26 years on the margins’. So, not only is the music great, but the lyrics are intriguing too.

O Cafona is another of the three tracks on this album (and there are others on other Valle albums) in which the lyrics use breathless offbeat vocal gymnastics to great if oddball effect. Try singing like that. If you’re anything like me, you’ll almost expire with the effort. But Valle makes it seem both effortless, and far more dignified than it ought to! This is one of several tracks with a loping, lumbering, almost funky rhythm section, and wonderful keys and guitars, layered in all kinds of unexpected ways. It’s not my favourite vein of his work – Vento Sul (mis-titled as Vento Soul here on Amazon UK) and Previsao Do Tempo are his masterpieces as far as I’m concerned – but this is truly unique and exceptional music.

The Japanese reissue adds Berenice, whereas the Light In The Attic US reissue ends with O Cafona. Some rate Garra as Valle’s best.As I say, I prefer Vento Sul and Provisao Do Tempo, but everything he did around this time is magical, really, and well worth having.

I loved this. Exciting, informative, thought-provoking.

Called the ‘the indispensable intellectual’ by his biographer, prof. Michael Scammell, and frequently described as a polymath, I have to confess that, for myself, I only know Koestler so far via this book. There’s controversy around the suicide pact he and his wife partook of, brought on by his terminal illness, and I’ve also heard that he’s been criticised by some in the sciences, though exactly what for I can’t recall.

Well, I can only say that I thoroughly enjoyed this, his book on the history of astronomy, enormously. Like Carl Sagan he has a gift for sharing his enthusiasm that is contagious, and these are colourful people and fascinating tales that he’s covering. Watching Sagan’s Cosmos, I grew hungry for more info on such figures as Tycho Brahe, Copernicus, Gallileo, and Kepler. And Koestler’s book has proven to be perfect for me, as that’s exactly the kind of thing it delivers.

His thoughts on the schism between the two poles of what one might simply call ‘the spirit’ and ‘the material’ (the kinds of ideas that produce such polarities as arts vs. science, and/or religion vs. science) are interesting, but are also areas I’m less clear on.

But when he’s simply telling the stories, such as that of Kepler and his family, and the times they lived through (Kepler’s father is thought to have been a mercenary soldier, they lived during the tumultuous Thirty Years War, and as well as working and moving around because of the war, Kepler had to defend his mother against charges of witchcraft!), it’s absolutely gripping stuff. Like a novel, only better, inasmuch as this is about real people, and the gradual unfolding of real knowledge.

I’d definitely recommend this to those wanting to learn more about our continuing fascination with our place in the cosmos. And I’ll definitely be reading more Koestler on the strength of this.

Mr Arthrobalanus: “a minute marine monument to mutability.” R. Stott.

Another archival review, once again from the period around or shortly after Darwin’s bicentennial (2009), brought over to my blog on account of recently reading and really enjoying Peter Burke’s The Polymath.

In this wonderful book Rebecca Stott relates the tale of Darwin’s foray into marine biology; how it came about and where it lead, setting it all in a beautifully rendered portrait of Darwin’s personal, family, and socio-cultural context.

Connecting the various epochs of Darwin’s life, Stott skilfully tells a fantastic story, of how the disaffected ex-medical student, embarked on studies for a career as a clergyman, instead pursued his natural-historical instincts, ‘transmutating’ himself (and indeed all of us) in the process.

Little did Darwin’s father realise, when he finally acquiesced to uncle Josiah Wedgewood’s support for Charles’ wish to join the Beagle expedition – “Natural History … is very suitable to a Clergyman” – where it would all lead.

As another reviewer (on Amazon UK’s website) notes, the barnacles themselves aren’t quite as prominent in this book as the title might lead one to expect, but they do nonetheless provide a fantastic central theme from which to tell a really very engaging story about what amounts to almost the whole of Darwin’s life and work, but from a new and refreshing perspective.

I loved reading this, and found it exciting, engaging, informative, entertaining, well-written, and just plain good old-fashioned fun!

Fascinating book about ‘a constellation of extraordinary individuals’.

Another archival review, from about a decade ago. Again, stimulated to post this now having just read Polymath, by Peter Burke.

The Lunar Men certainly were ‘a constellation of extraordinary individuals’, as Uglow herself concludes in her epilogue to this weighty tome.

It was reading widely about Charles ‘Origin’ Darwin, around the time of his bicentennial (2009), that lead, almost inexorably, to an interest in the Lunar group, with Stott’s book Darwin’s Barnacle sealing the deal, via the chapter on Charles’ grandfather Erasmus. Erasmus figures large in Uglow’s book too – something of a Titan, both literally and figuratively; a man whose interests (and physical girth) seemed to know no bounds! – and learning more about him is fascinating.

But then there are also the many other ‘Lunatics’: Boulton, Wedgewood, Watt, Priestley, Edgeworth, Whitehurst, Keir, Day and several others. Some of these others are very much Lunar Men, whilst others are just passing through their orbit, like American polymath Benjamin Franklin, or Joseph Wright (‘of Derby’) the painter. Whilst not strictly a Lunar Man, as such, Wright, like Franklin, nonetheless figures prominently in the book.

Some of these names will doubtless be familiar to those with a little general knowledge, Wedgewood for his pottery, Watt for his work with steam engines, Priestley for his politics as much his science, and so on. But the lesser known figures are often equally fascinating, from the fussy-in-love Rousseauian romantic and reactionary Day, to the perhaps a little hapless Withering, who gets into a scientific spat with Erasmus Darwin that reminds me a little of that between Dawkins and Gould in our own times.

One of the many fascinating things about the many subjects covered in this book is how they all mesh together at a particular point in time: coming out of Enlightenment thinking, and based (for the most part) far north of London, they represent a growing blurring of old feudal social distinctions and an increased independence (of both mind and pocket), whilst their voracious quest for knowledge connects them to both emerging ideals of political and personal liberty, and the birth of industrialisation and commercialisation, which would simultaneously lift levels of material wealth, and increase ‘alienation’ and the dependence and insecurity of the working population.

Largely pro-liberty, despite the ties of the patronage system many of them cooperated in and profited by, they initially embraced the French Revolution, but as The Enclosures bit deep into the land, and Britain reacted against the threat of revolutionary and then Napoleonic Europe, various aspects of the Lunar Men’s interests fared unevenly: Wedgewood thrived, advancing industry through increased chemical and practical knowledge, and (like Boulton) bringing higher levels of finish to ever wider markets, whilst Boulton and Watt’s steam power quite literally boomed, in every possible respect. And of course Erasmus’ interests in evolution would be picked up and developed by his son, Charles, with epoch-shattering revolutionary effect.

But Day’s reactionary politics and Priestley’s libertarianism (his fate in relation to riots and ‘anti Jacobin’ unrest is rather sad) would both succumb to the strange mix of the pragmatic advances of capitalist industrialism (what Day, along with the likes of William Blake – Uglow uses the lunar theme to connect the Lunar Men’s reaching ‘so eagerly for the moon’ with Blake’s engraving mocking scientific hubris [the famous ‘I want, I want’ with a ladder reaching to the moon] – feared was the pollution of an English Eden by the ‘dark satanic mills’) with the great reversals to emancipatory progress which had looked imminent (Keir’s progressive optimism re the ‘diffusion of a general knowledge … [a] characteristic feature of the present age’ contrasting with the anti-intellectualism of Burke, who saw science as ‘smeared with blood … arrogant and uncaring’) resulting, at more prosaic levels, in setbacks to British liberal reform.

And all of this occurs at a specific moment, at a time when the gentleman amateur was perhaps more common as a leader in science than the professional or academic, and when events in Europe would have immense impact here in the British Isles, both strengthening our own imperial position – although it looked terribly insecure at the time, as America fought for and won its independence, causing the axis of our power base to shift from west (America and the west-indies) to East (India and the East-Indies) – and setting back the course of reforming liberal politics at home by many decades. All of which developments continue to inform our culture life even now. From our pride in Darwin to our troubled and alienated relationship with Europe. Re-posting this post-Brexit this aspect seems even more poignant. .

Many of those in this story were also proto-capitalists, as well as industrialists, making and sometimes losing fortunes, speculating with their investments. Erasmus Darwin had to earn his own living, as a doctor. His desire to publish much of his scientific work anonymously, and disguised as poetry, was influenced by a need to secure his reputation and private practice. His involvement as an investor in canal building, speeding the pulse of British industrialisation in a manner akin to the effect steam engines would shortly redouble, was what ultimately meant that Charles Darwin could work on evolution as a gentleman of leisure. Fascinating!

Vast in size and coverage – so big – like Erasmus at his dinner table (which had to be modified with a semi-circular cutaway), I couldn’t always fit it into my reading rest – this is a very interesting, informative and enjoyable book. Whilst I kind of wish it had been a bit leaner, given how much Uglow covers it’s understandable that it should be a bit of a mammoth.

This is yet another archival post (and there are many, many more to come!). Slightly updated on being transferred here. Probably first wrote this over a decade ago!? I was prompted to get it posted here having just read Burke’s Polymath. There seemed to me some overlap/relation.

The Darwin bicentennial (2009) got me reading much more about science, scientists, and all sorts of similar related stuff, for which I’m extremely grateful.

After an orgy of Darwin related reading and viewing, I felt I needed to broaden my horizons, so I bought this. It’s a real tour de force, and makes for very compulsive reading. I was barely able to put it down to perform basic functions like eating and sleeping.

My favourite chapters were those that featured the Herschels, William and his sister Caroline. I love the idea of the ‘Renaissance Man’ (or woman, for that matter), or polymath. In my own humble way I work in several fields, as writer, musician and artist. I make no claims to excellence in any of these fields, nor pretend to compare myself with people like William Herschel, who was an accomplished musician, composer and teacher, as well as becoming one of the world’s leading astronomers and cosmologists.

But I do find the energy and industrious enthusiasm of people like him, his sister, and many others detailed in this superb book, enormously inspiring. Reading about Herschel’s obsessive casting, grinding and polishing of his mirrors, the construction of his ever larger telescopes, not to mention the drama of Caroline’s own discoveries, or her terrible injury sustained whilst working in the dark (you’ll have to read the book to find out what happened, but it makes me wince just to recall it), was truly exciting.

When I was at school the sciences seemed extremely drab. The more I educate myself about science, the more I realise what an amazing branch of human inquiry it is. This book helps capture the vibrant energy, the multifarious voraciousness for knowledge and understanding – not to mention the wonderful state of awe-inspired humility, almost a sublime trembling, if you will, in the face of nature and our experience of it (this latter part is what the books subtitle conveys; a little melodramatic perhaps, but it does convey how exciting it all is) – that lie at the roots of scientific inquiry.

Well done Mr Holmes: I’ll certainly be seeking out more of your work!

As someone with many and varied interests myself, the idea of the polymath has always exerted a powerful fascination.

Having read books like The Age of Wonder (Richard Holmes) and The Lunar Men (Jenny Uglow), and stuff by or on polymath folk like Darwin, Newton, Kepler, William Herschel and others, my appetite for more knowledge of knowledgeable bods of this ilk is always strong.

So, on a recent visit to a favourite bookshop (that I’d not been to in about three years, thanks to Covid and other things), this caught my eye. I’m very glad I followed my instincts and bought it. I’ve been glued to it ever since.

500 polymaths are covered from ancient Greeks like Eratosthenes, to Jakob ‘Ascent of Man’ Bronowski’s daughter, Lisa Jardine, who actually very briefly taught me, and a bunch of pupils from my VI form, many moons ago.

The biggest chapters are given over to different ‘Ages’, or eras, of polymathery (bagsy coinage of that word!). But the subjects are also considered by type – ‘fox vs hedgehog’ (read the book to find out what this means!), serial, cluster, etc – and character/habitat.

Such an ambitious and broad survey is necessarily brief in how it addresses its many individual subjects. But the daunting maelstrom of names, places, dates and so on, is leavened by the connecting or contextual materials.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. And have learned of many more polymaths than I knew before. I’m also inspired to do lots of follow up reading. Always a good sign, in my books (so to speak!).

Perhaps inevitably some of the polymaths I expected to read about didn’t make Burke’s list. Here are a few I was surprised not to find: Napoleon (his name appears at least twice, but neither as a polymath, nor even in the index!), William Herschel (his son and grandson, however, are included!), Isaac Asimov, Arthur Koestler and … Stephen Fry!?

But the cast is huge, and dazzling. From those I knew, Hooke, Kepler, Wren, Leibniz, to those I didn’t, Pico, Comenius, Kircher the two Rudbecks, etc. And the book fizzes with the omnivorous hunger and boundless energy of its subjects. Educational, inspiring, hugely enjoyable.

Oh dear oh dear oh dear. F*cking awful!

Teresa suggested we watch this. I don’t know how long we lasted, maybe 15-20 minutes? Maybe a little longer?

What awful dreck! When I announced the fact that my bile was rising, Teresa concurred, and we bailed. I googled the film, and discovered it’s a Baz Luhrmann thing. That figures.

Luhrmann has the budget to employ decent actors and technicians, so there are aspects of the overall production that have skill invested in them. But the whole thing is so ludicrously fake, and piles on the ‘effects’ as if they alone will carry the film. They don’t.

We didn’t even get to meet Fatsby (we did see his brooding back!). And I can’t even be arsed to change that mildly amusing predictive typo. This bilge doesn’t merit the effort. Like so much modern culture, the actual Gatsby story has been gutted, and what we’re presented is naught more than shiny reflective surfaces.

In some ways this suits or somehow echoes the slightness of F Scott Fitzgerald’s story. But as the Robert Redford version showed, even a will o’ the wisp type parable of an age of illusion, can at least have feeling, even if not great depth. There is at least a dreamy whimsical quality in the ‘74 film, akin to the actual text. Baz just gives us loud garish tinsel.

And the music? The appalling anachronistic sounds are, to my mind, illustrative of a retrogressive and solipsistic slide, backwards into ignorance. Possibly a sign of our times?

Traditions in art have typically recast other times dressed up in styles of their own era when they are in their intellectual infancy. At some point we realise the past is a foreign land, and make the effort to faithfully evoke that – or to at least try and do so – in our arts.

But here everything is subjected to a kind of kaleidoscopic free for all, in which only the slickest design aspects, mostly the costumes, pass through the digital machine, buffed and polished, brilliantine and dazzling, in their glassy mirrored lack of substance.

Has Baz actually triumphed as a latter day alchemist? Inventing a material that is all surface, that has absolutely no depth or substance whatsoever?

Both his alchemical invention of a new material, and his taking the visual and sonic anachronisms to such gaudy heights, bespeak a pre-renaissance world of illusion. Perhaps this makes his films suitable for our era’s wilfully gleeful dumbing down?

As art historian Kenneth Clark said, in his terrific Civilisation series, when criticising the ‘heroic’ aspect of renaissance classicism, when all actors are reduced to the ‘beautiful people’, something is lost. This movie is populated by mannequin like ciphers – himbos and bimbos, I call ‘em – not characters, and feels more like an endless pop video than a story.

Communism has long been lambasted in the so called democratic west, in no small part for the overt and bloody ways that the social engineers of the state-fascist versions of that creed often brutally liquidated their intelligentsia. How ironic is it if Capitalism achieves the same ends via self-inflicted lobotomies?

Truly appalling. Avoid.

Wow! What a great book. 

As the cover blurb and preface point out, the Battle of the Atlantic was really a campaign, or lots of battles, skirmishes, and so on, rather than a singular event, like, say, the battle of Waterloo, or even Kursk. 

Even whilst Britain endured the so called ‘phoney war’, conflict had begun in earnest from day one on the high seas. And it would only finally end, or at least the movement of the ships themselves would only end, after Germany had officially surrendered. This makes it the biggest and longest battle or campaign of the war, for the British/Allied forces. 

Thus many individual battles fall within the scope of this superb single volume account of what is a truly massive subject. From individual convoy battles, known by their convoy names/numbers, such as the calamitous PQ17, to larger scale actions, like the Battle of the River Plate, all the way through to huge operations, from Pedestal to Overlord. 

Dimbleby proves himself very adroit at that highly effective kind of contemporary history that zooms in and pans out from the micro to the macro, from the rolling brine-washed decks of individual vessels to fleet manoeuvres, and from housewives and lowly ratings to Admirals and world leaders. 

Rather oddly, perhaps, given the aforementioned ‘whole war’ scope of the subject, the book is most detailed on the 1939-43 period, which actually takes the reader to right near the end. The remainder of the war, including D-Day is somewhat rapidly glossed over. 

That is my only real gripe, re this otherwise utterly brilliant work (oh, a glossary would’ve been useful). And in a way it’s not even a gripe as such, as Overlord, Dragoon – the latter not even mentioned – etc, whilst connected, are outside of the remit of the books’ core subject. 

That said, over the book as a whole Dimbleby doesn’t baulk at including relevant stuff from other theatres. So the political horse-trading aspects, and what was happening in say the Pacific or on the Eastern Front, figure in this extremely wide-ranging and gripping account. 

As with any good book, this inspires further reading. I now want to read Dimbleby’s recently published account of Barbarossa (the Atlantic book is subtitled ‘how the allies won the war’; the Ostfront one, with a pleasing symmetry, ‘how Hitler lost the war’). I’m also keen, having read numerous hefty volumes on Hitler and Stalin, to read more on Churchill and FDR.

Anyway, this was a truly epic read. Brilliantly written, telling a fascinating and compelling story. Utterly superb, and very highly recommended. 

Occasionally interesting insights, lost, adrift in seas of postmodern academic claptrap.

Hmm? Pretty poor, in my opinion. I recently read and reviewed the much, much better critique of Capitalism, Post Growth, by Tim Jackson. Both books are published by Polity, who specialise in this sort of stuff.

First of all this is a collection of short essays, most (but not all) of which have been published elsewhere before. A consequence of this format is lots of repetition. Not great. These essays cover numerous topics, the chief of which is criticism of capitalism/neoliberalism. But other areas talked about include refugees, Europe, Covid and the arts. The first two thirds are short essays, the last part interviews.

Han is a South Korean living/working in Germany (so it’s all translated from German), as a philosopher and lecturer in an arts university. This embedding in such an institution is crucial, as it informs his language and points of reference, both of which are mired in the tediously opaque traditions of postmodernism. These are more or less unchanged from when I studied art/art history at Goldsmiths, with frequent use of buzz-words such as affect, and haptic, and references to Barthes, Adorno, Baudrilard, etc.

At certain points, in essays about contemporary arts culture, he discusses pornography vs eroticism, and rhapsodises about the latter, as being far better (capitalism favouring the ‘in your face’ m.o. of porn). And in these passages you get a glimpse of the crux of the postmodern problem (or rather one of many such problems), namely that obscuring is preferred to ‘unveiling’. Put another way, florid verbiage trumps understanding!

There are many valid insights, scattered throughout the text. But there are just as many vapid unfounded (or rather unsubstantiated) remarks. And the dominant register is negativity. Endless critique – neoliberalist capitalism isolates us all, and makes us internalise blame, and burn-out in hyper performance (he’s also written a book called The Burn-Out Society) – which might be true; but with no real suggestions of better ways out of such contemporary impasses, eventually it comes over as carping.

In the landmark ‘sledgehammer’ series Civilisation, stuffily patrician art historian Kenneth Clarke remarked, in his inimitable and oft very prescient manner, that the German language lacked a clear workable prose, such as English has developed, much to the ‘troubling’ of Europe. If one understands what Clarke was getting at, this book is – to my mind – a prime example, albeit from the left, as opposed to the right. And, ironically, by being so windily obscure, it plays into the hands of neoliberalist capitalism, effectively neutering itself. And, to use one of the buzz-words Han overuses, is all affect, to no effect.*

I find books on the topics this covers of interest. But I can’t say I either enjoyed or would recommend this one. It belongs, frankly speaking, to a tradition – the postmodern – that I hope will wither on the vine sooner rather than later.

*I also find it annoying when books of this ilk bandy round buzzwords with no attempt to define them. That’s the case with ‘affect’ here, amongst others. The sense of the word in postmodern-speak strikes me as closer to the meaning of the word ‘affectation’ than the normal dictionary definition of affect, as a verb, the doing of which produces the equivalent noun, or effect.