In the Critics section of this week’s New Statesman, American novelist Jonathan Lethem pays tribute to Philip Roth, who turns 80 this month. Reading Roth as a young man, Lethem writes, illuminated “something aggravated and torrential in my voice” – something specifically Jewish. “As Roth points out, the books aren’t Jewish because they have Jews in them. The books are Jewish in how they won’t shut up or cease contradicting themselves, they’re Jewish in the way they’re sprung both from harangue and from defence against harangue, they’re Jewishly ruminative and provocative.”
In Books, Steven Poole reviews David Hendy’s Noise: a Human History of Sound and Listening. “Hendy’s emphasis is on championing noise as a vehicle of sociality,” writes Poole. Hendy devotes a chapter to the noise of stadium crowds but, Poole notes, “does not mention the most notorious instrument of sporting mob dictatorship. I mean the vuvuzela, the plastic horn whose aggregated cacophonous buzz-farting ruined the auditory atmosphere of the 2010 World Cup”.
Also in Books: Alwyn W Turner reviews Mod: a Very British Style by Richard Weight (“Born in the affluence of Harold Macmillan’s Britain, mod was a cross-class coalition of youth, bringing together the art school and the assembly line …”); Lucy Wadham reviews Marcela Iacub’s novelised “memoir” of her affair with Dominique Strauss-Kahn (“There are moments when I feel that as long as I live … France will remain forever a mystery to me. Reading Marcela Iacub’s books Belle et bête … was one such moment”); Sarah Churchwell reviews O My America! Second Acts in a New World by Sara Wheeler (“Wheeler wants to claim more significance for these women than perhaps they merit”).
Elsewhere in the Critics: Ryan Gilbey reviews Danny Boyle’s Trance and Ken Loach’s The Spirit of ’45 (“That The Spirit of ’45 survives its simplifications is due to the sincerity and urgency of Loach’s argument. And, regrettably, to its pertinence”); Antonia Quirke listens to the first episode of David Hendy’s 30-part history of noise on Radio 4 (“this sounds like the most sub-avant-garde and brilliant new programme on BBC radio”); Rachel Cooke is disappointed by the BBC’s adaptation of The Lady Vanishes, though she concedes that the performances are “universally lovely”; Ollie Brock visits an exhibition of the archive of the writer Roberto Bolano in Barcelona (“For true Bolanistas … the most interesting items will be glimpses of … the ‘possible books’ to come, the unpublished manuscripts …”); Kate Mossman reviews What About Now, the new album by Bon Jovi (“Hair metal … has had a bit of a reassessment in the past few years …”.)
PLUS: “King Vulture”, a poem by Joe Dunthorne, and Will Self’s Madness of Crowds.
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