Daniel Matlin
Folk Hero
The Man Who Recorded the World: A Biography of Alan Lomax
By John Szwed
William Heinemann 410pp £20
When the two Voyager probes were launched in 1977 on an interstellar journey projected to last for a billion years, each was fitted with a gold-plated copper disc containing ninety minutes of music from planet Earth. Should extraterrestrial beings ever have the desire and capability to listen to these discs, half of the tracks they hear will be selections made by one man. Thanks to Alan Lomax, works by Bach, Mozart and Stravinsky are complemented by recordings of folk music from the Solomon Islands, Peru, Java, Japan, Australia, India and Bulgaria, as well as by numbers performed by Louis Armstrong, Chuck Berry and Blind Willie Johnson. As Lomax’s biographer John Szwed observes, it remains ‘the ultimate mix tape’.
Merely reading Alan Lomax’s life is so exhausting that the notion of someone actually living it seems implausible. His primary occupation as an itinerant folklorist (‘Road Scholar’, in Szwed’s apt phrase) meant that much of his fifty-year career was spent tearing across the United States in a succession
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Richard Flanagan's Question 7 is this year's winner of the @BGPrize.
In her review from our June issue, @rosalyster delves into Tasmania, nuclear physics, romance and Chekhov.
Rosa Lyster - Kiss of Death
Rosa Lyster: Kiss of Death - Question 7 by Richard Flanagan
literaryreview.co.uk
‘At times, Orbital feels almost like a long poem.’
@sam3reynolds on Samantha Harvey’s Orbital, the winner of this year’s @TheBookerPrizes
Sam Reynolds - Islands in the Sky
Sam Reynolds: Islands in the Sky - Orbital by Samantha Harvey
literaryreview.co.uk
Nick Harkaway, John le Carré's son, has gone back to the 1960s with a new novel featuring his father's anti-hero, George Smiley.
But is this the missing link in le Carré’s oeuvre, asks @ddguttenplan, or is there something awry?
D D Guttenplan - Smiley Redux
D D Guttenplan: Smiley Redux - Karla’s Choice by Nick Harkaway
literaryreview.co.uk