RUTH AYLETT admires the blunt honesty with which a woman’s experience is recorded, but detects the unexamined privilege that underlies it
Latest editorial
When you can’t see the wood for the trees
JOHN GREEN is dissatisfied with a book that fails to address the promotion of ignorance as a ruling-class strategy to maintain control
ignorance
IAN SINCLAIR draws attention to the powerful role that literature plays in foreseeing the way humanity will deal with climate crisis
High quality pulp, rollicking online murders, Abnorman Britain, and high skates drama: reviews of The Get Off, Everyone In The Group Chat Dies, Pagans and First To Fall
DENNIS BROE notes what happens to content when the streaming giants incorporate AI and deregulation into their economic models
New releases from The Tenementals, Nik Bartsch’s Ronin, and Kuunatic
SCOTT ALSWORTH hears the call to burn down and rebuild the video game industry from the bottom up
The Chinese language only introduced a feminine pronoun in the 1920s. Now, it might adopt a gender-inclusive one, suggests JANET DAVEY
Ignorance and Bliss – On Wanting Not To Know
Mark Lilla, Hurst, £18.99
MARK LILLA, Professor of Humanities at Columbia University, purports to investigate the contrary disposition to curiosity: the will not to know, the will to ignorance.
Certainly an interesting subject, but he treats it quintessentially as a disquisition from the ivory tower of academe. He takes us on a seemingly aimless ramble though the thickets of mythology, Biblical narratives and religious belief.
He begins by using the example of Oedipus, the most notorious case of someone whose ignorance determines their tragic fate, then races on through the mythological basis of fascism, to the role played by Christian fundamentalism in the historical self-narrative of the US, but in a very superficial way.
More from this author
JOHN GREEN recommends an entertaining, if harsh and instructive, study of bullying, discipline and power dynamics in schools and at work
JOHN GREEN surveys the remarkable career of screenwriter Malcolm Hulke and the essential part played by his membership of the Communist Party
As climate change makes vast mineral deposits accessible, the island’s 56,000 residents face unprecedented pressure from Trump’s territorial ambitions while struggling to maintain their traditional way of life, writes JOHN GREEN
JOHN GREEN takes issue with a mainstream novel designed to denigrate the GDR