BOOK AND PODCAST REVIEWS - NON-FICTION

King Kong Theory (2006)  Virginie Despentes   This is a review of the English Edition, published by Serpent's Tail, rather than the French Edition. Let's get the negatives out of the way quickly because this is an important little book that might have got more praise if its faults had been more sincerely addressed by its Editors. It has three spectacularly interesting chapters on rape, prostitution and pornography that would have made excellent articles in some intelligent monthly. These sit oddly between an equally interesting introduction, in which Virginie Despentes places her book in some context, and an utterly daft rant at the end in which she lets vent to her furies. There are plenty of blank pages between chapters and the print is large so that this reads like a collection of articles or a pamphlet, scarcely a book at all. It is also so 'French' as to make it dangerously close to being dismissed in Anglo-Saxon circles. There are cultural differences ...

Phaidon Colour Library Picasso (1971) Roland Penrose   Max Ernst (1979) Ian Turpin   Surrealist Painting (1982) Simon Wilson   Pop Art ((1996) Jamie James    Chagall (1998) Gill Polonsky   Taschen   Pablo Picasso, 1881-1973: Genius of the Century (2000) Ingo F. Walther   Surrealism (2004)  Cathrin Klingsohr-Leroy   Abstract Expressionism (2005) Barbara Hess  The Phaidon Colour Library is a remarkably cheap if old-fashioned set of full colour guides to the great artists and to some of the schools of art that make up the canon. Three particular choice from three successive decades are Roland Penrose on Picasso, Simon Wilson on Surrealism and Jamie James on Pop Art.  The Phaidon Guide to Picasso (48 pages) is, unfortunately, somewhat hagiographic because the extensive Introduction is by his friend, the surrealist painter Roland Penrose. At this time, Picasso's post-war work was not being widely appreciated by critics (wit...