First Drafts - The Prospect magazine blog

Tom Chatfield

I’ve recently been looking through a book called Thank you for Arguing by Jay Heinrichs—one of the surprisingly large number of books that have been arriving recently at the office on “the art of persuasion.” Heinrichs quite rightly observes that the art of rhetoric, now little taught formally, was once a pillar of the western education system, and that its techniques can be used to great effect throughout our daily lives to “win” both minor and major verbal battles with those around us. What he doesn’t seem in any hurry to establish in the hundred pages I’ve managed to trawl through thus far is whether such “winning” is actually such a great idea, or whether it might be better to shut up once in a while and work out whether you actually know what you’re talking about. How about constructive dialogue as a rhetorical technique, or the art of gracefully admitting you’re wrong or ignorant, rather than chapters with obnoxious titles like “control the argument,” “make them identify with your choice,” and “get instant cleverness”?

Mary Fitzgerald

The Happiest Man in the World by Alec Wilkson. The story of real-life adventurer “Poppa Neutrino” (né David Perlman), as told by New Yorker writer Alec Wilkinson. Neutrino first found international fame for building a raft with refuse gathered from the streets of New York and sailing it across the Atlantic. But this was just one of many schemes the self-titled “aborigine” has dreamed up in the 73 years he has so far been alive. In between countless jobs and a few spells in prison, he also found time to found The First Church of the Fulfillment—”the only church in the history of the world that didn’t know the way”—to lead an outfit called the Salvation Navy; and to tour in a band called The Flying Neutrinos, (or “Latrinos”), which once made $10,000 playing in the New York subway.

Wilkinson has spent several years talking to Neutrino and various friends, lovers, wives (there have been three so far) and travel companions, and the result is sort of Huck Finn-meets-Homer, delivered in a style that lurches from pared-down journalism to more florid (imagined) tangents. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t, but the tale itself trumps any quibbles about form one might have: it is a fascinating and in many ways inspiring story.

John Kelly

I’ve been reading The Great Moon Hoax and the Race to Dominate Earth from Space by Gerhard Wisnewski, a mother of all conspiracy theories, translated from the German. The author’s main thesis is that the USSR knew the Americans were spoofing and vice versa but in both sides engaged in a propaganda stand-off. The space race was important for the US, in that it diverted attention from losing in Vietnam. The first moon landing signalled American imperial supremacy. The Ruskies needed space achievements to divert attention from the fact that the cupboard was bare. While pretending to go to the moon, the US was really building space surveillance networks, missile shields and Dan Dare ray guns for all we know. All heady stuff and great fun, except that like most conspiracy theories, we need to suspend disbelief and trust to the evidence of a couple of Italian blokes with a ham radio astronomy rig or variations thereof. I’m a fool for this sort of stuff all the same.

David Killen

Over the Christmas break I read A History of Venice by John Julius Norwich. This is a city I’m very familiar with—rather implausibly, when I was working as an oil rig worker in the late 1970s I took to spending my shore leave there—but I’ve never really been able to match the history to the place. It turns out to be a tale of some glory and not a little shame. In the 13th and 14th centuries, Venice controlled a vast maritime empire and the Doge spoke on equal terms with the kings of England and France. But by the time Tintoretto and Palladio were putting the final touches to the city’s near perfection, the republic was well past its golden age and living out a long, slow decline. The final pages are rather dispiriting, and a salutary lesson to all empires who seek to outlive their natural span. But, as Norwich points out, the republic’s craven submission before the threat of Napoleon’s artillery ensured that the city survived intact—and for that we must be grateful.

Susha Lee-Shothaman

If America chose its president by the criterion of literary ability, Barack Obama would almost certainly already have won. (I say almost certainly because I don’t intend to subject myself to, among others, It Takes a Village by Hillary Clinton or Quit Digging Your Grave with a Knife and Fork by Mike Huckabee to make sure.) Dreams from My Father, Obama’s first book, published in 1994, is a thoughtful, well-structured and candid memoir covering his childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia, his student days and his time as a community organiser in Chicago. In the final part, Obama visits Kenya, meets a large number of half-siblings, and tries to come to terms with never really having known his late father. This book proves there is much more to Obama than you’d expect from his rather meaningless campaign rhetoric—”the politics of hope” and so on. It is, however, quite long and you might want to wait to see if he gets the nomination, or even the presidency, before putting in the hours.

Tom Nuttall

Andrew Stephen’s recent New Statesman piece on Barack Obama was a useful corrective to the wave of Obamamania that followed the Illinois senator’s triumph in Iowa (although one wonders if the Staggers would have chosen it as their cover story had Hillary not defied the polls in New Hampshire). Stephen calls Obama’s character into question—apparently he is prone to “bad-tempered haughtiness”—and highlights some of the policy areas—Iraq, healthcare—where an Obama presidency might not be entirely to the taste of the New Statesman constituency. I’ve also read “The Moral Instinct” (link requires registration), Steven Pinker’s fascinating essay in this weekend’s New York Times on recent work in “moral psychology”—a relatively new academic field in which biologists and psychologists attempt to get to grips with the cognitive and neurological underpinnings of our moral beliefs.

William Skidelsky

I’ve been reading James Wood’s forthcoming book How Fiction Works. The title, I think, is a bit misleading. Wood tells us almost nothing about how a number of aspects of fiction work—most notably plot, to which he seems largely indifferent. Instead, his focus is on narrative style, and in particular on the third person narrative style refined by (mainly) European novelists in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th. But within these limited terms, this is a brilliant book. Through his detailed analyses of individual passages, Wood reminds us what an excellent close reader he is. It is a pleasure to encounter the art of criticism practised in this intelligent and straightforward way.