Pulp society

This week on CW, we begin a partnership with the Manchester Salon with reviews of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, exploring the appeal of strong narrative and moralism in an uncertain society. George Hoare and James Hamon are disappointed by the BBC’s adaptation of Martin Amis’ Money as part of its Eighties Season, but Gavin Davies finds a new voice of porn, booze and social decay in Jason Dunne’s Everyone is Henry Miller. And Nicky Charlish reviews Barry Miles’ London Calling, and wonders how many veterans of the counterculture are now pillars of the establishment.

In London theatre, Giulia Merlo reviews the NT’s timely Love the Sinner, Ursula Strauss reviews the Old Vic’s new production of Stoppard’s The Real Thing, and Sharmini Brookes considers how political theatre fares over time in a review of Nagging Doubt at the Finborough. Finally in books, Chris Bickerton reviews Perry Anderson’s The New Old World, revealing the difficulty of theorising a post-political institution like the European Union.

27 May 2010