Ten Cities That Made an Empire by Tristram Hunt
Tristram Hunt’s impressive CV as television historian and lecturer turned Labour MP is more master than “jack of all trades”, judging by the recent reviews of his latest book Ten Cities That Made an Empire. Hunt’s analysis of the rise and fall of the British Empire travels meticulously and ambitiously through different cities, beginning at the Boston Tea Party and ending with the impact of Liverpool’s vast exports.
The particular cities selected by Hunt for analysis, ranging from Dublin to Calcutta, are censored by the Independent, with Justin Huggler remarking “this is not a comprehensive survey of the British Empire. It barely touches on British colonialism in Africa beyond Cape Town … or the Middle East, and Singapore only gets a mention in the Hong Kong chapter.” Surely one of the inevitabilities of a BuzzFeed-worthy format of ten cities is the limited number, and as the Observer‘s Robert Service concedes, “No book can deal with everything”, proving that what Hunt may lack in breadth he makes up for in depth.
Hunt’s objective approach to sensitive matters such as the slave trade and other debilitating aspects of colonialism is derided by The Observer as “a middle position between the two sides” adding that Hunt “dislikes any cut-and-dried analysis that suggests that the effects of British rule were wholly good or wholly bad for the subject peoples.” Michael Gove’s support of Hunt in the Times takes the view that the historian’s distanced narrative is “clever, stylish, carefully balanced ideologically so as not to give offence to vigorous partisans on either side of the debate and a pleasure to spend time with.” Hunt’s impartial gaze, while frustrating for some, demonstrates that his interest lies not in the dichotomy of condemning or rejoicing the British Empire but instead on exploring how colonialism transformed the urban landscape.
American Interior by Gruff Rhys
On an “investigative concert tour” throughout the USA, Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys retraces the journey of his distant ancestor, John Evans, who sought to find the Madogwys, a fabled tribe of Native American Welsh-speakers. Although Evans never found the Madogwys, during his journey up the Mississippi river he created a map which would be used by Lewis and Clark’s 1804 expedition and, two centuries later, plots the points for Gruff Rhys’ own artistic journey in American Interior.
Rhys’ ambitious project takes a multimedia approach, appearing in four forms: book, album, film, and app, all named American Interior. Each form allows Rhys to tell the tale of his and Evans’s parallel journeys from a different angle. The book was praised by the Independent’s James Attlee as “charming and entertainingly written”, while the Guardian’s John Harris applauds a book which “brims with verve and fascination”. Harris recognises the risks of Rhys’ project: relating two journeys separated by two centuries “could easily go wrong”, but Harris assures the book “actually soars, thanks to three things: the strength of Rhys’s writing, his talent for finding the extraordinary among the mundane and his grasp of the subject.”
Yet, for Paul Lester of the Express, John Evans’s journey is overwhelmed by historical detail, leaving the reader’s mind “scrambled by all the dates and names.” Lester describes the book as an “avalanche of minutiae” and “a barrage of facts, albeit leavened with Rhys’ wry humour and neat turns of phrase.” Lester’s lukewarm response shows that with ambition comes the risk of failure. Gruff Rhys, like John Evans before him, is mapping out new territory.
In the London Review Bookshop on July 15th, Gruff Rhys will be in conversation with Iain Sinclair, discussing the project.
The Empathy Exams: Essays by Leslie Jamison
Leslie Jamison’s ruthlessly honest book studies the emotional and physical complexities of pain, grounded as it is in personal anecdotes which aim to avoid over-generalisation. There is no thought she appears to censor, revealing that before an abortion she told herself to “answer every question like you’re clarifying a coffee order”, leaping onto other essays about breakups, visiting prison inmates and getting her nose broken by a man who stole her purse in Nicaragua.
Former NS features editor Sophie Elmhirst, writing in the Financial Times, places Jamison in an “alternative tribe – patron saint, David Foster Wallace – who try to encounter the world more gently.” Jamison attempts to write and live according to empathy, concluding one essay: “I want our hearts to be open.” Elmhirst sees Jamison “surprising even herself with the Disneyish sentiment” in a review which is affectionate towards and impressed by the “winningly honest” Jamison. However, the Guardian’s Brian Dillon takes issue with the sincere, sermon-like call for open-heartedness “Too many essays conclude, as “Grand Unified Theory” does, with trite expressions where it seems the expectations of the well-formed lit-mag essay have pressed too hard”. For Dillon, while Jamison’s attention to vulnerability is “exceptional”, solidifying her place in the “alternative tribe” of empathy, The Empathy Exams is “more of a retreat at the level of thought than that of style.”
Jamison’s work is repeatedly compared with Lena Dunham’s HBO series Girls due to its popular culture references and unashamedly confessional tone. Her unique blend of inspiration, ranging from Axl Rose to Charles Dickens, is criticised by the New York Times’ Dwight Garner who commented that “one or two of her lesser essays find her swinging too frequently from quotation to quotation, as if from vine to vine.” Yet Garner ultimately defends Jamison’s mix of gory personal injuries – such as a maggot-infested ankle – with cloying clichés, concluding that “the prose contains not a shred of self-help imbecility.” The originality of Jamison’s self-criticism may inadvertently lead to some soul-searching of your own.
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