The Vanishing Point by Paul Theroux
Paul Theroux ought to know how to do it. The author of more than 30 works of fiction and some 20 of non-fiction, he has been writing for nearly 60 years. Nestled within his voluminous bibliography sit numerous collections of stories – including those written for Playboy in the 1970s and early 1980s. This new gathering displays plenty of the ease and adroitness garnered after all those years.
Some familiar traits are on display: far-flung locations such as Malawi and Hawaii, as well as Baltimore; characters itchy in their own skins; forays into Orwell and literary heroes; and much looking back, Philip Roth-like, at the figures who loomed large in the protagonists’ school life or love life, at summer camp or on the sports field. The title comes from the opening story, about the assistant of a famous artist who describes the vanishing point in a painting and what lies beyond it as “unreadable. A mystery.” Theroux narrates his working lives – teachers feature prominently – with efficiency (half a lifetime in half a page) leavened with nostalgia. All are on a path towards their own vanishing point, feeling either that it represents the end of their story or the real beginning.
By Michael Prodger
Hamish Hamilton, 324pp, £20. Buy this book
Gary Lineker: A Portrait of a Football Icon by Chris Evans
The cult of Lineker is continually expanding. This sporting biography, written by the journalist Chris Evans, is the latest to gild that lily, drawing the reader into the leathery world of Eighties English football, with its quixotic characters and hewn belligerence.
Lineker scored almost 300 professional goals for some of the biggest teams in the world, and was universally popular to boot. What Evans demonstrates, through a wide-ranging survey of former teammates and colleagues, is that the key was the player’s self-deprecating charm. (The author also did his time in the newspaper archive. Thanks to Evans’ rigour, the stentorian duo of the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph and Aberdeen’s Press and Journal can finally take their places in the Lineker saga.) His ability is theorised as the product of rapier social intelligence and a mental serenity that also explains why Lineker was never once shown a yellow card. Only the absence of reflections from the man himself, outside of the contemporary reporting that feathers this account, holds the book back – allowing space for future additions to the Lineker story.
By Barney Horner
Bloomsbury Sport, 288pp, £18.99. Buy this book
Why the Ancient Greeks Matter: The Problematic Miracle That Was Greece by Reviel Netz
Was there something exceptional about the ancient Greeks? A trick question – or perhaps, to borrow one of Reviel Netz’s favourite words, a “problematic” one. Problematic because the narrative of the “Greek miracle” has been used throughout modern history as evidence of the superiority of Western civilisation, and even white supremacy. This is uncomfortable for classicists who, Netz writes, find “classics entangled in a great many past hegemonic, hateful ideologies”. A recent temptation has been for scholars to deny the uniqueness of the Greeks’ achievements at all. This book is an attempt to set the record straight.
It is an academic treatise, not an easy read. Still, Netz – a professor in ancient Greek mathematics at Stanford University – is determined to make his argument relevant to other disciplines, so alongside the story of Archimedes’s breakthroughs are musings on President Trump’s executive order for federal buildings to be built in neoclassical styles. He tries to reclaim classics from the alt-right by concluding “the thing that makes the Greeks important is that their legacy was riven by contradictions”. In other words, enjoy their exceptionalism, but leave your ideology at the door.
By Rachel Cunliffe
Cambridge University Press, 188pp, £19.99. Buy this book
The South by Tash Aw
Conjuring up the vivid, tropical landscapes of southern Malaysia, Tash Aw, whose Five Star Billionaire was long-listed for the 2013 Man Booker Prize, returns with The South – his fourth novel, and, like his others, full of social commentary. After the death of his grandfather, 16-year-old Jay Lam’s family inherit a dilapidated farm. When they journey south from Kuala Lumpur at the end of the school year, they are forced to face up to who they truly are, their relationships with one another, with themselves and the world around them.
Although set in Malaysia, The South is a universal and mesmerising tale of family dynamics, first experiences of longing, and the subtle social and cultural changes that each generation has to grapple with. Told from first- and third-person perspectives, the narrative is not linear – just like the personal development, for better or worse, of each member of the Lam family. Confronted with their own regrets – and with their dreams and desires always just out of reach – they spend the stifling summer throwing “fragments of their past into the air as a way to reacquaint themselves with each other”.
By Zuzanna Lachendro
Fourth Estate, 304pp, £16.99. Buy this book
[See also: Visions of an English occult]
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This article appears in the 05 Feb 2025 issue of the New Statesman, The New Gods of AI