16 July 2008
Wednesday 16 July 2008 21:45-22:30 (Radio 3)
Rana Mitter talks to writer Marshall Berman about a series of essays on New York he has co-edited. Plus a look at shopping malls and young author Andrew Sean Greer's latest book.
New York Calling
After the Snow, East Broadway, Manhattan, Winter 2007
Photo by Brian Berger.
Playlist
Marshall Berman
Marshall Berman is one of the world's foremost thinkers on what it means to be modern. A quarter of a century has passed since the publication of his seminal work, named after Marx's statement about modernity, that "All that is Solid Melts into Air", and throughout that time, Berman has lived, and worked, teaching students at CCNY, in his beloved New York. Now, in a series of essays he has co-edited, he traces the cultural history of the city, from the darkest days of the seventies, when the Bronx was burning, to its recovery after the trauma of 9/11.
New York Calling: From Blackout to Bloomberg by Marshall Berman and Brian Berger is published by Reaktion Books.
Marshall Berman is talking in the London Literature Festival on the 17 July http://www.londonlitfest.com/.
Shopping Malls
Shopping malls in the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah are becoming pockets of freedom and liberalisation in the conservative kingdom, commentators claim, where members of the opposite sex meet without fear of reprisals from the moral police, and women allow their headscarves to slip just a little. They're not the only malls in the world to make their own rules, either - Bluewater in Kent banned hoodies from its chicly branded halls and galleries in 2005. But can malls really be agents of liberalisation, as in Jeddah? Or should we be worried that they seems able to change or ignore wider social rules? Architecture critic Jonathan Glancey and BBC Correspondent Crispin Thorold give Night Waves their views.
Press Photography
Acclaimed documentary photographer Roger Hutchings and former Guardian picture editor Eamonn McCabe discuss where responsibility lies for the safety of individuals whose images are captured by press photographers, after the escape of an Iranian political prisoner, Ahmad Batebi. A student demonstrator whose image was captured on the cover of the Economist magazine, Batebi has subsequently reported that when he was arrested he was shown a copy of the magazine, and told that the photo had sealed his death warrant.
Andrew Sean Greer
And Rana will also be talking to Andrew Sean Greer; a young American novelist that no less a critic than John Updike has compared to Proust and Nabokov. The beautifully modulated tone and surprises of his latest book The Story of a Marriage offer an account of America in the Fifties which throw the country today into brilliant relief.
The Story of a Marriage by Andre Sean Greer is published by Faber.
