The bard celebrates two other fine practitioners of the art, and laments a lost brewer
Latest editorial
A litmus test in France’s roiling hostilities
‘Delivered in quantity, a light marinade of pouty dialectics douses the book,’ writes FIONA O’CONNOR
RACE HOSTILITIES: Pan-European white supremacists of Generation Identitaire march in France in 2017
[Pulek1/CC]
This right-wing conspiracy theory is used to justify the coercive measures against gender, race and labour rights that best serve capitalism, attests GAVIN O’TOOLE
KENNY MONROSE recommends a new exhibition that highlights the significance of Black British music
ANGUS REID is bowled over by an exuberant film about the making of Keith Jarrett’s legendary concert
MARIA DUARTE, FIONA O’CONNOR and ANDY HEDGECOCK review Savage House, Enzo, Madfabulous, and Erupcja
CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
Annihilation
by Michel Houellebecq, translated by Shaun Whiteside
Picador, £11
FRENCH master in the art of dissing everyone, Michel Houellebecq has written his longest book and claims it will be his last.
Published in France in 2022, Annihilation has taken a while to emerge in English. It reads somewhat like a Covid project — that lockdown feel of ennui, aimless and boring for long, long passages is there.
Approaching his retirement, Shakespeare imagined every third thought being of death. For Houellebecq, now 68, every three pages or so gets animated by thoughts of sex.
Similar stories
RON JACOBS recommends a book that charts the disparate circumstances that defined the lives of two prominent black Afro-Americans — one a communist, the other an anti-communist
ANDY CROFT welcomes the publication of an anthology of recent poems published by the Morning Star, and hopes it becomes an annual event
Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet