The Tepid Take

When someone says “socialist literature”, you probably think non-fiction, and then you probably think impenetrable and boring. Generalisation as that is, it’s a fair representation of the way material that presents itself as aiming to effect real political change can often cut itself off from its core audience as a result of alienating them by being simply too academic. Or at least, that’s the modern day conundrum, with a Brownite biography weighing in at more than 500 pages and using economic terminology that flummoxed even me, the soon-to-be politics grad, at points. Brown isn’t the only culprit; even the books written by Owen Jones are largely framed for the well-educated middle classes, when their core audience ought to be the working class they aim to actualise. What’s interesting is that this notion of political literature as something academic is actually relatively new. If we think back to Edwardian England, most leftist ideology was spread in small pamphlets and flyers desig

I think it’s generally bad to point the finger. To single out an object, an individual or even a group and call them the unambiguous ‘problem’ tends lead us down a dark path. With this in mind, I have absolutely no problem with Lisa and Adam, the creators of Listography in all its forms. In fact, Lisa’s story on the founding of Listography is very heartfelt indeed. And it’s not the makers I’m interested in, anyway; I want to explore what the growth of Listography (and it has grown, exponentially) tells us about ourselves, our society, the way we behave, and more than anything, what we need. It pays to explain what Listography is. Originally started in 2006 as a website for collating personal lists, it has since expanded to include a multitude of books and even a board game. The nature of Listography is as simple as its portmanteau: using lists to explain something about yourself. Lisa says she would include a daily to-do list, a list of countries to visit, and a list of the best t

In the closing chapter of The Old Patagonian Express, the writer, Paul Theroux, faces a problem: he has spent the entire book outlining his journey across America by the trains he takes along the way, with names like the Balboa Bullet and El Jarocho. However, as Theroux reaches the final stretch, the last few miles to the Tierra del Fuego - a journey intended as the ultimate reflective denouement - he finds this route has no calling card, no title; the motif has been broken by reality itself. Theroux won’t let this stand, so he decides to baptise the train himself, with the help of a boy across the aisle; it gives its name to the book, a symbol of Theroux’s ability to imprint what he has learned over two continents onto the miniscule details of provincial life. The journey changed him.  There is a stereotype, one that carries more than a grain of truth, about gap year students and other sorts who go on follies to faraway lands, always in the pursuit of “finding yourself”. The der