PHOTOJOURNALISM
THE EDITORS OF LIFE The Great LIFE Photographers
(Thames & Hudson) 00”
A picture, as the hoary old cliché runs, paints a thousand words. If that’s the case, then there may not be enough of them in all the languages of the world to cover the stories featured in LIFE magazine down the years. Created in 1883 by John Ames Mitchell, a thirtysomething New York illustrator with a large inheritance to spend, the magazine strove to have opinions about ‘politics, society, literature, the stage, the stock exchange, and the police station.’ In this collection of shots mainly culled from its years as a weekly publication (1936-72) there aren’t too many pictures taken inside cop shops, but the world’s battlefields, film sets and scenes
of nature are all well represented.
From the vivid horror of Larry Burrows’ Vietnam pictures to Hansel Mieth’s staggering shot of a Rhesus monkey in Puerto Rico and from Sam Shere’s capturing of the Hindenburg disaster to William Vandivert snapping the carnage of WW2, there is barely a page that goes by without your jaw plummeting. Perhaps the most effective images are the quieter ones, whether moments of contemplation (Hitchcock peering out of a window or John Lennon on a New York train) or the silent aftermath of terror (a Berlin rape victim being comforted or a Japanese soldier’s severed head). In his introduction, the magazine’s former picture editor John Loengard wonders whether such photojournalistic endeavours can ever be considered as art. If evocative, poignant, funny, moving and shocking is art, then LIFE’s rich tapestry was up to its elbows
in it. (Brian Donaldson)
Reviews
HISTORICAL THRILLER KATE MOSS Labyrinth: Illustrated Edition
(Orion) .0.
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Just in case Kate Mosse's phenomenally successful thriller. set in medieval and contemporary France. has passed you by. her helpful publishers have rushed out a hefty. hardback illustrated version to put a dent in your Christmas stocking. Previously referred to. rather patronisingly, as ‘chick lit with A levels' or ‘Harry Potter for adults'. Mosse's dual narrative (a kind of female Lord of the Rings with the Pyrenees Mountains near Carcassonne transplanted for Mordor) is enjoyable enOugh hokum.
She succeeds in conveying a strong sense of setting and atmosphere though at times her clear passion for the subject and meticulous research
threaten to oven/vhelm her tale, which is overlong and a touch humourless. anyway. While some of the drawings. manuscripts and scenes reproduced for this edition provide mildly diverting visual accompaniments to the text. there's very little additional material here to justify the $325 price tag. not to mention the kilo weight. Pick up a paperback instead. (Allan Radcliffe)
COLLECTED JOURNALISM
JON RONSON Out of the Ordinary (Picador) 0000
Throughout much of his journalistic career. Jon Ronson has played a bit part in his stories. occasionally stumbling about in the background while his subjects (fascists. fundamentalists and felons mainly), hang themselves on their own ludicrous acts and beliefs. In this frequently hilarious and often provocative collection of
Jon Ronson ()ul of the ()nlmary
Guard/an articles. Ronson appears more than happy to portray himself as petty. awkward and bumbling while seemingly less than afraid to show his wife and son in an unflattering light. Not for nothing is the book dedicated to 'Elaine and Joel'.
Separated into two parts. the opening segment has Ronson facing up to the oddities of contemporary life as a husband. father. son and neighbour as he confronts the hell of family portraits. Christmas cheer. sponsoring dogs and AWOL tailors. The contrasting second section features his investigations into celebrity paedophile rings. game show scandals and Christians who donate their kidneys while still very much alive. Funny and frightening.
(Brian Donaldson)
COMIC TRAVELOGUE AA GILL
Previous Convictions (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) OOOO
Enthusiastic wildlife- slayer. owner of a canary yellow Bentley. close friend of Jeremy Clarkson: AA Gill is enough to give the more mung bean-minded a coronary. Indeed. after a foreword encomium to criticrsm. he begins Previous Convictions
With a broadside against hippies. Glastonbury and ‘spiritual bollocks'. What sets Gill apart from the other upper middle-class politically incorrect pontificators is that he‘s interested in people (even if he doesn't always like them) and writes in a clear. economical. puissant style.
Divided into Here — home-based essays on family. art. theatre. natural history and wildlife — and There — travel dispatches straddling the globe — the book culminates in its two funniest episodes. Odd couple Clarkson and Gill (the petrolhead motormouth chino-man and the cultured aesthete 'hetero-gay') visit homo mecca Mykonos and pot'n'prozxy capital Amsterdam. In l_)etween. Gill discovers a new species of beetle. chats to Henri Cartier- Bresson. plunges down a goldmine and suppresses his laughter in Greenland.
(Robin Lee)
SOCIAL DRAMA ELFRIEDE JELINEK
Greed
lSerpent's Taiii .000
Like Austrian feminist writer Elfriede Jelinek's novel The Piano 722acher. Greed has taken almost five years to be translated. This. however. probably has more to do with our penchant for feelgood celebrity literature than the contempt for the human race exhibited in all of this Nobel Prize
Winner's work. For the reader. tenacity and endurance always pay diVidends.
The plot. involving the small town murder of a teenage girl and a promiscuous Village policeman so mired in j_)roperly greed he is almost a caricature. is really just a canvas upon which .Jelinek splurges her wretched impressions and regret at the Violent survrval of crvrlisation at all costs. This is complex. destructive literature that
Lit) N<>\
BOOKS FOR CHRISTMAS
Roddy Doyle Paula Spencer lJonathan Cape) Revrsrting one of his finest creations. 'Punk' Doyle portrays an Ireland struggling to be at one \‘Jilil the world.
Patrick McCabe Warren-reed (Bloomsbury) The chap behind [he Butcher '3 Boy revels in the dark side once more with this latest tome. featuring a homecoming which goes horribly wrong. Ian Rankin The Naming of the Dead lOrioni The bodies pile up to a backdrop of the G8 summit as Iviebus staggers towards his inevrtable. imminent retirement. Cormac McCarthy I he Road Picador) One man and his son journey south through a dank American wasteland. avoiding contact wrt'n the only other living beings On the postapocalyptic planet. Cheen; stuff from the pioneer of cowboy-lit.
Angus Dunn ‘.:'/riting in the Sand (1. uath) Pitching the mysterious smalltown '.'.'orlds created by the likes of Daphne Du Maurier and [)aixid lynch into the Highlands. Dunn brings us a spooky debut story about shape—shifters and parallel Ll'll‘.’Ol'SOS.
is defined then torn apart but wrth the underlying punkish humour evrdent in the works of her compatriots Thomas Bernhard. Robert Musil and Peter Handke. Greed is another intriguing and challenging novel from Europe's cleverest. most VlSCOféll social phobic. (Paul Dale)
b: Dec 9000 THE LIST 31