The West Bletchley Left Book Club Circa 1936
You don’t read May Day waiting for an unexpected conclusion. The “party-minded” Sommerfield lays on the Daily Worker line with a trowel. But is not Proletkult ‘pure’ proletarian literature. There is a freshness that is hard to dismiss. Unsettling modernist techniques, of the “Camera-Eye”, collages of newspaper reports, a montage of scenes, interrupt the narrative. As important as the lives of May Day‘s characters are the Carbon Works, the Docks, Charing Cross Road, West End cinemas and theatres, the powerhouses of Battersea and Lots Road, the Print, Bus garages, the March, newsbills, statistics on unemployment, industrial accidents and strikes. There is a genuine tenderness and complexity of feeling at work.
Andrew Coates on the reissue of John Sommerfield‘s May Day.
ampere’s and
This week’s visuals: Zembla Magazine (R.I.P.) had a feature the ‘Geography of a Book Jacket’ (if you scroll down you can read Dan Rhodes‘ here). Tom Lamont explores territory re-jacketing & Tove Jansson illustrates The Hobbit [via @roundmyskull] & Alivin Lustig‘s covers for Perspectives, the literature & art magazine (history here) & Gothic alphabets & […]