Reviews
ART ANTHOLOGY GERALD SCARFE Drawing Blood
(Little. Brown) .0...
Anyone who has followed his work over the last four and a half decades will know there have always been two Gerald Anthony Scarfes. There's Scarfe the asthmatic, bed-ridden child who grew up to realise he had a gift for scatological illustration and grotesque, diseased caricatures. His immense talents led to him being cast alongside his cartooning nemesis Ralph Steadman as a modern day Hogarth, albeit one who was happy to take a wage from satirical magazines, progressive rock bands, theatre folk and even huge media conglomerates. For his artistic brilliance he was awarded the perfect trophy wife in 1981 (Jane Asher) and a brace of
adorable children.
Then there is the other Scarfe: the annoyed savant, spitting, angry and unreasonable as he pours bile and puts cross hatches on all those who have come his way. His hatred knows no bounds and in each decade he has added another face to his wall of greed and corruption alongside Nixon, Kissinger, Thatcher, Reagan, Blair and Bush, to name but a few. It’s the latter Gerald Scarfe that will interest those willing to shell out £35 for
Drawing Blood.
Arranged by year, this is impressively completist. What is surprising is how much 30 work Scarfe has not only created but gone on to exhibit either in galleries or theatres. He also proves again and again that he should be regarded as one of the foremost commentators on the misery of our special friendship with America. Indispensable. (Paul Dale)
COMEDY HAIKU DAVID BADER One Hundred Great Books in Haiku (Viking) «o
This slim little hardback has Christmas stocking tiller written all over it. and while it's reasonably diverting for a few minutes. it's hardly going to make much of an impact on anyone's life. The title says it all: David Bader has taken a batch of literary classics and condensed each one into a rather sarky haiku (minimalist Japanese poem
consisting of three lines 4 and a total of 17
syllables, for those not in the know).
So everything from Plato to Hemingway
gets squeezed down,
with Bader sometimes catching the essence of the book. other times ' going for a comedic angle. The results are sometimes amusing (Ham/et becomes ‘His mother wed his/dead murdered father's brotherl/Next Jerry Springer“). but not always. As a time and paper saving device. and as a light-hearted guide to literature for folks with the attention spans of goldfish. it pretty much does a job. (Doug Johnstone)
EXPERIMENTAL DRAMA GRAHAM RAWLE Woman's World (Atlantic) 0”.
Building on a method touched upon in his Diary of an Amateur Photographer, ‘Lost Consonants' creator Graham Rawle has fashioned an entire novel from some 40,000 snippets of text cut from women's magazines of the early 19605. Bizarre and frankly mind- boggling. the outcome of this painstaking exercise is a unique objet d'art that is actually a wry and most endearing read. The stOry itself centres around Norma Fontaine. a housebound lady of leisure whose very existence is wilfully, even blissfully, governed by the guidelines laid out in her precious lifestyle reading.
«)7
Not all is at it seems. however, and a delightfully trite and twisted narrative worthy of Roald Dahl unfolds. simultaneously achingly romantic and dark. While at first sight the short paragraphs of regurgitated text (replete with advertising slogans and illustrations) present a challenging read in themselves. it is testament to Rawle's twisted narrative that Woman '8 World soon proves hard to shake off. (Mark Edmundson)
FAMILY DRAMA JOANNA MURRAY-SMITH
Sunnyside (Viking) 0000
Having so evocatively Crafted a novel mired in “the whole cycle of existence. an important treadmill of birth. jobs. acquisitions. debt and death', it‘s easy to believe that Australian playwright and novelist Joanna Murray-Smith is in some ways drawing on her own personal experience. After all. one of her central
characters — resistant suburban h0usewife Alice Haskins - is an acclaimed novelist struggling to find inspiration amidst the swimming pools and meticulously described flowerbeds of Sunnyside.
At once, Murray-Smith describes Alice's husband Harry and teenage children Joe and Grace with a kind of affectionate frustration. yet also essays as much empathy for their point of view as that of their restless wife and mother's. Following all four as they ponder their lives in relation to their neighbours‘ breathless affairs and corrupted teens. Murray-Smith still manages to sidestep the Desperate Housewives- style cliches that could so easily appear to concentrate on the wonderfully-described inner lives of a family of individuals.
(David Pollock)
FOOD HISTORY
Culinary Pleasures (Faber) 0...
CULINARY PLEASURES
Int hulunlh Hamil-Inn: Jun-"l: l u"!
Humble
Even the most ham- fisted gastronome. grimly relying upon beans on toast as their signature dish, is likely to have some kind of cookbook on their kitchen shelves. Many naively blame the souffle-like rise of the ubiquitous celebrity chef on such a fact when. in truth. this so-called fad is well over a century old. Nicola Humble's book is a social histOry
Books
'“ ' of such tomes. ‘ compiling and recording
Our eating habits and
aspirations for posterity.
From the Victorian
. ages amid the critical
gaze of Mrs Beeton through the post-war years and garish eccentricity of Fanny Craddock. on to the brazen procurement of cooking away from stodge towards nouvelle Cuisine and the rise of
the celebrity chef.
Humble's often dense prose borders on the academic. But she injects enough vigour and froth to make this a rare kind of histOry lesson: the sort that actually makes you
hungry. (Mark Robertson)
ALSO PUBLISHED
Ron Halllday and Chris Terry Scotland's Killers: From Manuel to Mitchell A total of 54 murderers are chronicled, including ‘the love-crazed teacher', ‘the public school assassin’ and 'the SAS hero who turned armed robber and murderer.’ Nice. Fort Publishing. Paul Auster Brooklyn Follies Set during the 2000 US election, this is the story of an uncle and nephew accidentally living in the same neighbourhood and meeting a girl who refuses to speak. Faber.
Jonathan L’Estrange The Big Book of More Sports Insults Wayne Rooney’s social exploits and Kelly Holmes‘ dress sense are among the things taking a beating in this coruscating tome. Cassel/ Reference.
War-Is DIrIe Desert Children The Somalian supermodel and UN ambassador against female genital mutilation tells the whole story of a brutal tradition. FGM, not fashion. Virago. Ace Collins Untold Gold It's “the Unknown Stories Behind Elvis' Number 1 Hits'. Souvenir Press.
1—15 Dec 2005 THE LIST 37