PD Smith

I very much enjoyed com­ing up with my top ten of the best nov­els pub­lished in Eng­lish for today’s Guardian. Here they are, with the final top-100 rank­ing in brack­ets:

1
The Man With­out Qual­i­ties (#67)
by Robert Musil
“It per­fect­ly cap­tures the peri­od before the first world war in cen­tral Europe and antic­i­pates the intel­lec­tu­al uncer­tain­ty of the mod­ern era.”
2
Berlin Alexan­der­platz
by Alfred Döblin
“It is a clas­sic of mod­ernism that cap­tures the essence of one of Europe’s great­est cities before it was engulfed by Nazism.”
3
The Tri­al (#27)
by Franz Kaf­ka
“Kafka’s voice is essen­tial to under­stand­ing lit­er­a­ture in the 20th cen­tu­ry: a per­va­sive sense of guilt and self-doubt set in an urban con­text.”
4
Bleak House (#12)
by Charles Dick­ens
“An unfor­get­table por­trait of 19th-cen­tu­ry Lon­don, and the won­der­ful Inspec­tor Buck­et is the first pro­fes­sion­al police detec­tive to appear in fic­tion.”
5
The Mal­tese Fal­con
by Dashiell Ham­mett
“Sam Spade is the clas­sic hard­boiled sleuth and this nov­el trans­formed the detec­tive genre.”
6
The Big Sleep
by Ray­mond Chan­dler
“Philip Mar­lowe – the Los Ange­les knight – has shaped the detec­tive genre and influ­enced count­less oth­er writ­ers and film-mak­ers.”
7
Amer­i­can Tabloid
by James Ell­roy
“Ell­roy’s voice and his detec­tive fic­tion has cap­tured the vio­lence and misog­y­ny of post­war Amer­i­can cul­ture like no oth­er author. This is his most pow­er­ful work.”
8
Titus Groan
by Mervyn Peake
“This is the first book in his tril­o­gy. As a work of imag­i­na­tion and fan­ta­sy it is unequalled.”
9
Smi­ley’s Peo­ple
by John le Car­ré
“Le Car­ré’s spy nov­els, and espe­cial­ly his char­ac­ter of George Smi­ley, cap­tures some­thing pro­found about the state of Britain in the Cold War – a coun­try strug­gling to come to terms with its own decreas­ing impor­tance on the world stage.”
10
The Val­ley of Fear
by Arthur Conan Doyle
“Although one of Doyle’s less well-known detec­tive nov­els, I think it is fas­ci­nat­ing for the way it shows Holmes con­fronting the real­i­ty of the mod­ern world, with its themes of law­less Amer­i­can indus­tri­al towns and under­cov­er detec­tives. T. S. Eliot could recite whole sec­tions of it!”

The Times Lit­er­ary Sup­ple­ment has just pub­lished my review of four stud­ies of nuclear his­to­ry:

Destroy­er of Worlds: The Deep His­to­ry of the Nuclear Age 1895–1965, by Frank Close
Nuclear Weapons: An Inter­na­tion­al His­to­ry, by David Hol­loway
The Nuclear Age: An Epic Race for Arms, Pow­er, and Sur­vival, by Ser­hii Plokhy
The Most Awful Respon­si­bil­i­ty: Tru­man and the Secret Strug­gle for Con­trol of the Atom­ic Age, by Alex Weller­stein

They were all fas­ci­nat­ing and well worth read­ing: Close focus­es on the sci­en­tif­ic his­to­ry. Weller­stein’s “atom­ic biog­ra­phy” of Tru­man was full of insights into the first and hope­ful­ly last use of nuclear weapons, as well as the ear­ly years of the cold war. Plokhy and Hol­loway offer wide-rang­ing and impor­tant geopo­lit­i­cal sur­veys of the chal­lenges raised by nuclear weapons in the inter­na­tion­al are­na dur­ing the cold war. Impor­tant­ly, Plokhy brings the nuclear sto­ry up to date with the war in Ukraine, reveal­ing the very real dan­gers of the cur­rent moment.

You can read my review here.

I’ve very much enjoyed read­ing The City and the World by Gre­gor Hens, beau­ti­ful­ly trans­lat­ed from Ger­man by Jen Calle­ja.

In this book, Hens is fas­ci­nat­ed by “the human being in their urban con­text, the human among humans, one among many in the envi­ron­ment he has cre­at­ed for him­self”. Blend­ing reportage with mem­oir, dreams and the­o­ret­i­cal writ­ings on cities, he takes the read­er on a mem­o­rable jour­ney through the life-world of Homo urbanus.

From the “gigan­tic minia­ture park” in Shen­zhen, Chi­na, 48 hectares of scale mod­els of the urban won­ders of the world (“there’s nowhere bet­ter to day­dream being Icarus than in a minia­ture won­der­land”), to Los Ange­les, which he first vis­it­ed at the age of 16, before Google Maps exist­ed (“I had no oth­er choice but to open myself up to the city with all my sens­es, my nose, eyes and ears”), this is a won­der­ful­ly evoca­tive account of the urban expe­ri­ence in the 21st cen­tu­ry.

An author and trans­la­tor who now teach­es urban stud­ies and cre­ative writ­ing in “the win­ter-grey city of Berlin”, Hens grew up on the out­skirts of Cologne. He recalls often climb­ing an old oak (“the Cologne Tree”) from which he could see the icon­ic twin tow­ers of the city’s cathe­dral soar­ing above the city’s sky­line. He points out that the grid of a Roman mil­i­tary camp still defines the struc­ture of inner-city Cologne. The oth­er city in which he lived for many years, LA, was also based on a grid. In a book about expe­ri­ences, such par­al­lels are key to shap­ing how we see a city.

In Berlin, he tasks his inter­na­tion­al stu­dents with going to an “under­ground stop that is pho­net­i­cal­ly clos­est to your name or your home­town”, and walk­ing south-south­west to the next sta­tion: “Don’t use your mobile phone. Be sure to ask for direc­tions. Describe what you see and expe­ri­ence.” He notes that they end up wan­der­ing around the city “lack­ing any and all ori­en­ta­tion”. Nev­er­the­less, he spec­u­lates about how the exper­i­ment may have changed their view of the city, “because the per­son walk­ing car­ries what res­onat­ed with­in them into urban spaces…we can still feel the vibra­tions in the matrix of the city long after we no longer hear them”.

Infused with the spir­it of psy­cho­geog­ra­phy, Hens’s impres­sion­is­tic book reveals how the city opens itself up to walk­ers: “the city is mov­ing; there are places where peo­ple move in streams. The psy­cho­geo­g­ra­ph­er stands still; their activ­i­ty is to watch.” Though he acknowl­edges that the vast­ness and inter­nal speed of the mod­ern metrop­o­lis is no longer con­ducive to this: it’s a mael­strom that pre­vents one from see­ing any­thing oth­er than what is imme­di­ate­ly in front of you. Shang­hai has become the ulti­mate sym­bol of such urban moder­ni­ty, the result of a “ruth­less and destruc­tive” futur­ism. It is a dystopi­an city, but “Shang­hai is the future”, he says bleak­ly.

Filled with allu­sions to the lit­er­a­ture and art of the city, this is a delight­ful­ly orig­i­nal and cre­ative cel­e­bra­tion of how we expe­ri­ence mod­ern urban spaces through our sens­es, mem­o­ry, ideas and images. It’s pub­lished this month by Fitz­car­ral­do Edi­tions and is well worth read­ing!

I’m now also on Bluesky — @pdsmith.bsky.social. I haven’t post­ed much yet (who has the time?!) but it’s quite fun over there, and feels a bit like ear­ly Twit­ter.

Threads still hasn’t got the momen­tum or func­tion­al­i­ty it needs to com­pete with the site for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter. Bluesky def­i­nite­ly feels more live­ly. But I’m also enjoy­ing the image-rich feeds of Insta­gram.

In fact I’m begin­ning to think no sin­gle site will replace Twit­ter. You just have to find dif­fer­ent voic­es on dif­fer­ent plat­forms. A Twit­ter mul­ti­verse, per­hap­s…

If you want to con­nect oth­er than via Twit­ter, I’m now @p.d.smith_ on Insta­gram and Threads — and I don’t mean the 1984 nuclear war dra­ma.

I’ve been on Twit­ter since 2008 when I jumped ship from MySpace (remem­ber that?!) and although it can be a mas­sive dis­trac­tion, I’ve met some great peo­ple through it and I still find my lists use­ful to find out what’s going on.

For these rea­sons I’m not giv­ing up on Twit­ter quite yet, but my time­line is becom­ing increas­ing­ly noisy and the sig­nal is grow­ing ever more faint.

I’m also annoyed by the plan to put Tweet­deck behind a pay­wall in August. It seems to me that Musk’s Twit­ter is on a road to nowhere. Indeed, soon it won’t even be called Twit­ter! Crazy.

So although I’m still on Twit­ter, I’m also try­ing out Insta­gram and Threads. It’s clear­ly not per­fect and up till now I’ve tried to avoid the Zucker­berg empire. To be hon­est there doesn’t seem to be much hap­pen­ing on Threads, for now at least, but here goes! You’re wel­come to join me…