Yesterday evening over dinner, my housemate, an avid reader, revealed that the book she just finished on holiday might be her new favourite book. I was, and still am, intrigued by this, because for reasons I am now trying to determine, favourites to me are something which are established predominantly through a process of reflection, rather than a feeling in the moment. Maybe it’s something to do with wearing rose tinted glasses, but most of my cultural favourites have only truly resonated with me a while later. Yet, I’m sort of envious—how exciting, the prospect of opening up a new book on the beach, completely unaware of the impact it’s about to have on you. Perhaps I need a rethink.
All that waffle was my way of introducing today’s culture-heavy Lightbulb, which, who knows, could even introduce you to a new favourite! To begin, Claudia Rankine is a Jamaican-American poet and essayist whose latest book Triage asks how to best effect change in the world. She tells Franklin Nelson: “This book won’t be for everybody. It is asking a lot of the reader.”
All of Rankine’s books have raised mirrors to racial hierarchies and have documented what she calls “the takeover of white supremacy”. “The only thing that [Donald] Trump has done is give white supremacy an overt leader, not an overt reality. The reality was always there,” she tells Nelson.
Next, theatre. Fiammetta Rocco reviews the opener of this year’s Edinburgh International Festival, A Trial–after An Enemy of the People. Born under the Brazilian military dictatorship of the late 1960s, director Christiane Jatahy has reworked Henrik Ibsen’s 1882 drama into something different. Adding her own twist, Jatahy has weaved in an audience-based jury, video elements, and includes some onstage drama in Portuguese.
Not necessarily a favourite, but someone I do have an affection for is sculptor and fellow Yorkshire lass Barbara Hepworth. In our latest issue, Saffron Swire details Hepworth’s life, from Wakefield to Florence. She writes that Hepworth in Colour, an exhibition currently on at the Courtauld, “reveals an artist who transformed sculpture from a solid mass into something living, where polished stone and pools of colour could call forth the sea and the sky”.
Finally, in case you missed our latest Weekend Read, Heather Brooke discusses how to rebel against Big Tech and take back your attention through the lens of two books: Attensity! A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement by The Friends of Attention, and Overwhelmed: Ways to Take the Pressure Off by BBC Radio 4’s All in the Mind presenter Claudia Hammond. There’s analysis of how tech companies have monetised and exploited our attention, as well as practical tips on finding healthy attention practices which are not engineered to maximise digital advertising revenue.
Have you recently discovered a new cultural favourite? Let me know at kathryn.schoon@prospectmagazine.co.uk.
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