Three well-written but fleeting vignettes from some of the darkest edges of the internet.
Three intriguing pieces of journalism about the new threats of a digital age.
O’Hagan (The Illuminations, 2015, etc.) is known as a three-time Man Booker Prize–nominated novelist, but he’s also a razor-sharp London-based reporter, as evidenced by these three stories from “the wild west of the Internet, before policing or a code of decency.” His subjects are diverse and mostly well-known. In the first, “Ghosting,” the author describes how he assumed the unenviable position of ghostwriting the autobiography/manifesto of Julian Assange, the infamously imperiled WikiLeaks founder. “It needs to be more like Ayn Rand,” said Assange during one of their strange meetings. “I don’t know if I can help you with that,” was the author’s straightforward reply. Describing his subject as “a cornered animal,” O’Hagan delivers a troubling portrait of paranoia, trespasses, and consequences that feels unique because of the writer’s unique proximity to his subject. The second work, “The Invention of Ronald Pinn,” is equally dark, chronicling O’Hagan’s successful attempt to create a real identity for a long-dead man. He succeeded in generating an income with Bitcoins and buying heroin and counterfeit money online. “To the moderators of Silk Road or Agora,” writes the author, “the world is an inchoate mass of desires and deceits, and everything that exists can be bought or sold, including selfhood, because to them freedom means stealing power back from the state, or God, or Apple, or Freud. To them, life is a drama in which power rubs out one’s name; they are anonymous, ghosts in the machine, infiltrating and weakening the structures of the state and partying as they do, causing havoc, encrypting who they are.” The third story, “The Satoshi Affair,” finds O’Hagan tapped to reveal the identity of Craig Wright, an awkward Australian computer scientist, as “Satoshi Nakamoto,” the cryptic inventor of Bitcoin, only to find that even his real subjects can be frauds after all.
Three well-written but fleeting vignettes from some of the darkest edges of the internet.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-374-27791-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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