JAMES WALSH is moved by an exhibition of graphic art that relates horrors that would be much less immediate in other media
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Witnessing homelessness
JOHN KENDALL HAWKINS recommends a compassionate survey of the global scourge of homelessness, and those who help them
A soup run, located under Waterloo Bridge, at Victoria Embankment, in central London. May 26 2019
RON JACOBS welcomes the translation into English of an angry cry from the place they call the periphery
GUILLERMO THOMAS recommends a useful book aimed at informing activists with local examples of solidarity in action around the world
HENRY BELL is provoked by a book that looks toward, but does not fully explore the question of who gets to imagine the shapes of cities to come
MATTHEW HAWKINS surveys the upcoming programme of contemporary dance in Glasgow, and picks some highlights
‘Chance encounters are what keep us going,’ says novelist Haruki Murakami. In Amy, a chance encounter gives fresh perspective to memories of angst, hedonism and a charismatic teenage rebel.
Rough Sleepers
Tracy Kidder, Random House, £17.27
PULITZER Prize-winning writer Tracy Kidder has a new book out, Rough Sleepers, that is timely, poignant, and depressingly true as an indictment of the fracturing values of our time.
Kidder, who won his Pulitzer for describing the symbiotic relationship between humans and computers in The Soul of a New Machine (1981), here chronicles the soul-sucking conditions of everyday people living on the streets.
As Kidder points out, “rough sleeping” is a 19th century British term to describe homelessness. That an old term is still fresh as a descriptor is the first depressing note about the book to swallow. One thinks of George Orwell’s slightly later memoir, Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), which paints a picture of the tramp’s life.
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