New releases from Public Image Ltd, William Basinski, John Luther Adams
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
KNOWLEDGE FOR ALL: Wycliffe's Bible in the British Library - Jorge Luis Borges mentions Wycliffite Bibles in his short story The Book of Sand, where he calls it the ‘Black-letter Wyclif,’ in reference to the Blackletter script used to write the publication
[Coldupnorth/CC]
Banksy’s identity may have been published – but was the investigation in the public interest, asks PETER BENGTSEN
RON JACOBS recommends a book that charts the disparate circumstances that defined the lives of two prominent black Afro-Americans — one a communist, the other an anti-communist
CHRIS MOSS joins the hunt in Argentina for the works of Poland’s most enigmatic exile
SYLVIA HIKINS welcomes a survey of successful contemporary worker co-operatives and economy-based co-operative systems
DAVID NICHOLSON recommends the staging of this Wagnerian classic minus one or two insignificant quibbles
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.
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JOHN GREEN’s palate is tickled by useful information leavened by amusing and unusual anecdotes, incidental gossip and scare stories
Israel and the US talk as if they’ve won a victory, but the reality is that world opinion has turned decisively against the Israeli regime, says RAMZY BAROUD
JOHN HAWKINS welcomes the passion, grief, precision and elegance of an eloquent witness of genocide
![CS Lewis in 1947 [Pic: Scan of photograph by Arthur Strong]](https://msd11.gn.apc.org/sites/default/files/styles/desktop/public/2025-04/Untitled-1.jpg.webp?itok=2jzsrA-s)
After a ruinous run at Tolkien, the streaming platforms are moving on to Narnia — a naff mix of religious allegory, colonial attitudes, and thinly veiled prejudices that is beyond rescuing, writes STEPHEN ARNELL