James Delingpole
Who’s Your Daddy
Fatherhood
By Marcus Berkmann
Vermilion 282pp £10.99
When I was reading Marcus Berkmann's Fatherhood on the tube, I kept having to make sure the cover was flat against my knees so that no one could tell what it was. Otherwise, I risked ‘Ah, how sweet – he's going to have his first baby’ looks from all the mums in the carriage and patronising, ‘Welcome to the third circle of hell, matey’ looks from all the dads. And I might have had to keep giving them looks back conveying: ‘Actually no. Been there, done that already, ta very much.’
You might believe this is a silly way of thinking. But if you do, you clearly haven't been through baby-parenthood. Baby-parenthood is the period of your life which lasts between the birth of your first child roughly up until the third birthday of your last. After you've emerged from the tunnel at the other end (blinking into the light), you suddenly realise just how self-obsessed, baby-obsessed, warped and dreary the parents of young children are. And just how similarly awful, until very recently, you were too. If you have any sense (though the brooding urge never quite dies completely), you'll decide not to go back to that dark and terrible
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
Paul Gauguin kept house with a teenage ‘wife’ in French Polynesia, islands whose culture he is often accused of ransacking for his art.
@StephenSmithWDS asks if Gauguin is still worth looking at.
Stephen Smith - Art of Rebellion
Stephen Smith: Art of Rebellion - Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux
literaryreview.co.uk
‘I have fond memories of discussing Lorca and the state of Andalusian theatre with Antonio Banderas as Lauren Bacall sat on the dressing-room couch.’
@henryhitchings on Simon Russell Beale.
Henry Hitchings - The Play’s the Thing
Henry Hitchings: The Play’s the Thing - A Piece of Work: Playing Shakespeare & Other Stories by Simon Russell Beale
literaryreview.co.uk
We are saddened to hear of the death of Fredric Jameson.
Here, from 1983, is Terry Eagleton’s review of The Political Unconscious.
Terry Eagleton - Supermarket of the Mind
Terry Eagleton: Supermarket of the Mind - The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act by Fredric Jameson
literaryreview.co.uk