Nicholas Lezard=20
CIGARETTES ARE SUBLIME by Richard Klein (Picador,=20 R39,99) =20
AN academic of Richard Klein’s — middlingish — age=20 would normally by now have published three or four=20 unreadable books. This is his first, and it’s excellent.=20 A valedictory hymn to the poetry of cigarettes, as well=20 as a thrilling work of literart criticism (the key text,=20 naturally, is Italo Svevo’s The Confessions of Zeno), a=20 deft analysis of their psychological and cultural value,=20 and a warning to the regulators, who forget that=20 forbidding something makes it more attractive.=20
PLATO TO NATO: STUDIES IN POLITICAL THOUGHT introduced=20 by Brian Redhead (BBC/Penguin, R45)=20
THE printed version of a series of half-hour talks Brian=20 Redhead produced for British Radio 4, and, in its way,=20 not a bad introduction (from different writers I’ve=20 mostly never heard of) to the big 12 political=20 philosophers (Augustine, Hobbes, Machiavelli, Adam=20 Smith, Marx … you can fill in the rest). On the=20 copyright page this rather endearing note appears:=20 “Throughout the text of this book the general term ‘man’=20 refers to both men and women.”=20
HEMINGWAY FOR BEGINNERS by Errol Selkirk (Writers Readers, R49,99)=20
WHAT, you might wonder, is the need for a cartoon book=20 about Papa’s life and works? It isn’t as if his prose is=20 particularly impenetrable. Hem’s curt style has at least=20 rubbed off on Errol Selkirk, although the graphics are=20 redundant even by the standards of this series, and=20 someone should have noticed that you don’t spell “TS=20 Eliot” with two L’s. =20
THE PENGUIN HISTORY OF LITERATURE, VOLUME 7: THE 20th=20 CENTURY edited by Martin Dodsworth (Penguin, R54,95)=20
THE kind of collection (Anglocentric, canonical) that=20 students snap up; updates the Bernard Bergonzi 1970=20 edition. Richard Jacobs on The Novel in the 1930s and=20 1940s, despite the necessarily dullish title, is, in=20 particular, extraordinarily deft, intelligent, and=20 sensitive, as you’d have to be if you were writing about=20 Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Samuel Beckett and Jean=20 Rhys in the same essay.=20
THE DEATH OF ECONOMICS by Paul Ormerod (Faber, R49,99)=20
ECONOMISTS, claims Professor Ormerod, have largely=20 failed in their attempts to predict and regulate markets=20 for the common good, underestimating the perversity and=20 subtlety of human needs. A plea for a total rethink and=20 overhaul of free market capitalism, which won loud=20 huzzahs from The Guardian’s Will Hutton, but probably=20 not from the puffy-faced goons who infest the corridors=20 of power. Contains the last word on Lotka-Volterra=20 systems, which rather went over this reader’s head, I’m=20
MIRACLES by CS Lewis (Fount, R32,99)=20
A REPRINT of his 1947 work which makes the case for the=20 miraculous presence of God in nature. Quite batty, in a=20 sincere way: CS Lewis’s philosophical rigour is wobbly=20 at times, but at least he engages the problem=20 intelligently, and is mindful (with what might be called=20 intellectual politeness) of the scrutiny of atheists.=20 “Real things are sharp and knobbly and complicated and=20 different,” as he puts it. More fun than you might=20 think, but maybe not much more.=20
INCEST by Ana=F9s Nin (Penguin, R39,99)=20
CULLED from the 10 volumes of diaries Ana=F9s Nin wrote=20 between 1932 and 1934, none of which Nin ever called=20 Incest. But she Did It with her father, so the appeal to=20 our prurience is, I suppose, justified. It is to the=20 prurient that this book will appeal, to those who relish=20 the grey area between pornography and graphic=20 confession. Difficult to shake off the impression that=20 Nin was vain, vacuous, talentless and tragically=20