LEO BOIX applauds an audacious, self-questioning film about grief, friendship and film-making
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Wasters
SETH SANDRONSKY appreciates a fresh take on a 100-year-old novel that helps to contextualise the current moment of conspicuous wealth, waste and climate chaos
BLING: Trump International Hotel Las Vegas, with gold-infused glass
[Roy Luck/CC]
MARY CONWAY admires a brave and topical study of Armageddon that is, unfortunately, unable to come to a conclusion
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Chris Searle speaks to US pianist RAN BLAKE
EWAN CAMERON trawls the Edinburgh fringe for new political drama
In a season of Greek mythology NIAMH THORNTON looks at an intriguing relocation of Medea to contemporary Mexico
A Rotten Crowd: America, Wealth, and One Hundred Years of The Great Gatsby
John Marsh, Monthly Review Press, £16.99
AS month two of the Trump 2.0 era careens forward, reading author and English professor John Marsh’s book is a wake-up call to systemic themes and trends as he unpacks culture and the economy over a century through the lens of Fitzgerald’s novel.
He revisits an influential work of fiction to examine an enduring “popular fascination with the rich – their houses, their clothes, their manners.” At the base of these cultural features is an economic system of, by and for the accumulation of capital held together by competition and class.
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