Bryan Appleyard
The Ruins of The Future
'THE WORLD', RUNS John Reader's first sentence, 'is not short of books about cities.' This is true but it's a bad start. Most people scanning that line in a bookshop would pass on. It gets worse. At the foot of the first page he asks, 'If so many books on cities already exist, why burden the shelves with another?' Okay, okay, so why?
Well. I like to think this one is different. It commends the magnificence of great cities, as other admirers do; and deplores their failings no less than any polemicist might; but beyond that, it searches for the context - ecological and functional - that is common to the phenomenon of
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
We've extended our February offer for a week, meaning you can still get a six-month subscription for only £19.99.
Click below for details.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/literaryfebruary/
'McCarthy’s portrayal of a cosmos fashioned by God for killing and exploitation, in which angels, perhaps, are predators and paedophiles, is one that continues to haunt me.'
@holland_tom on reading Blood Meridian in the American west (£).
https://literaryreview.co.uk/devils-own-country
'Perhaps, rather than having diagnosed a real societal malaise, she has merely projected onto an entire generation a neurosis that actually affects only a small number of people.'
@HoumanBarekat on Patricia Lockwood's 'No One is Talking About This'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/culturecrisis