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Hindustan Times
17-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Dublinwale: A tale of two readers
This is the story of two Dubliners. One is a professor, the other is an engineer. One is a former New Yorker, the other is an Irish native. Both share a passion for the same novel. James Joyce's Ulysses is contained into a single day, 16 June, and that date is celebrated worldwide as Bloomsday, named after the novel's hero—Mr. Bloom. To celebrate the city novel, this reporter is in Dublin for Bloomsday 2025, and the Delhiwale column briefly becomes Dublinwale. Sam Slote is among the world's most renowned Joyceans. He is a Professor in the School of English at Trinity College Dublin. His book Annotations to James Joyce's Ulysses is the most authoritative guide to understand the notoriously difficult novel. The wall-sized book rack in his office is crammed with the different translations of Ulysses, including Dutch, German, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Persian, Arabic, and Malayalam. John O'Connell is an electrical engineer working in Telecom, but also conducts walking tours to Joyce's Dublin. A volunteer at the James Joyce Tower and Museum, he often dresses up as Mr Bloom, complete with a hat and a fake moustache. He believes that Ulysses is Dublin's very own Sistine Chapel. This afternoon, Sam Slote is sitting in his office, working on his annotated book's next edition. More particularly, he is busy with some specific question of punctuation in episode 17. His tone is gracious and delves deeply—yet effortlessly—into the intricacies of the novel. This sort of precision and care for detail is essential to a scholar of Ulysses, where everything is likely to carry narrative and symbolic weight. This afternoon, John O'Connell is crossing the Grattan Bridge over the Liffey, leading a walking tour. In the Dublin rain, he's excitedly pointing at a building in front of which a minor character makes a fleeting appearance. This sort of precision and care for detail is essential to a guide of Ulysses, where every street corner possibly has a role to play. Sam Slote says that he read Joyce's final novel, Finnegans Wake, before the Ulysses. This is surprising because the world is full of Joyce fanatics who adore Ulysses and have read it many times, but just couldn't climb the heights of Finnegans, considered a super-difficult book. John O'Connell says that when he first read Ulysses, 'I didn't really get it then, but I knew there was a genius driving the bus.' On finishing the dreaded Finnegans Wake, he announced his accomplishment in an office meeting. The colleagues, he recalls, looked bemused. For his everyday use, Sam Slote carries a 1986 Gabler hardbound edition of Ulysses, published by Bodley Head, bearing a grey cover. For his everyday use, John O'Connell carries a 2000 hardbound reprinting of the 1986 Gabler edition of Ulysses, published by Bodley Head, bearing a green cover.
Mint
12-05-2025
- Business
- Mint
The best- or worst-timed book in history
The Technological Republic. By Alexander Karp and Nicholas Zamiska. Crown Currency; 320 pages; $30. Bodley Head; £25 'SILICON VALLEY has lost its way." So says Alex Karp, co-founder and boss of Palantir, a supplier of software to Western armies and spooks. America's tech industry has forgotten about the armed forces' role in its creation, he frets. It shuns defence work and prefers to build frivolous consumer products, such as food-delivery apps and video-sharing platforms. No tech boss dares to take principled, unpopular positions such as, say, working on military technology (the author aside, of course). But now AI is here, and America's adversaries are racing to put it to military use. So as with nuclear weapons in the 1940s, when technologists worked hand-in-hand with government (thereby giving rise to Silicon Valley), their modern-day counterparts must do the same again to defend America. Alas, patriotism and a sense of civic duty have become unfashionable among a generation of technologists who distrust government and espouse naive pacifism. If only, Mr Karp laments, some brave technologist would step forward and show the way: for techies to become more patriotic and willing to develop military technology, and for governments to become more like the fast-moving, innovative tech industry. That is the argument advanced in 'The Technological Republic", co-written by Mr Karp and Nicholas Zamiska, a colleague at Palantir. Penned before the American election of November 2024, it has been published after it. Unlike many of his peers, Mr Karp endorsed Kamala Harris. With the victory of Donald Trump, however, many of the things that Mr Karp calls for have now happened—but not in the way he might have wished. Mr Karp is right that American techies could put their talents to better uses than trivial consumer apps. But his claim that they will not do military work is wide of the mark. Attitudes changed after Russia invaded Ukraine, and the shift accelerated after Mr Trump's election. Google reversed its ban on the military use of its AI technology in February. Investors are piling into defence-tech startups. Palantir's own share price hit a record high last month; today the firm's market capitalisation is around $174bn, about triple what it was a year ago. What of the idea that tech bosses will not take unpopular decisions? They have been doing so lately, seemingly to appease Mr Trump. (Nearly every Silicon Valley bigwig was at Mr Trump's inauguration.) Jeff Bezos of Amazon has pushed conservative viewpoints at the Washington Post, a newspaper he owns, causing an exodus of subscribers. Mark Zuckerberg of Meta has attracted criticism for cutting back on fact-checking and calling for more 'masculine energy" in the workplace. As for the notion that Washington could use a dose of the 'move fast and break things" attitude of the tech industry, that too has come to pass, as Elon Musk chaotically applies shock therapy to the federal government. It is hard to say whether Mr Karp's timing is brilliant or terrible. His book has arrived just as many of the things he argues for have come true, but in unexpected ways—like a fairy tale in which the granting of a wish turns out to have unexpected drawbacks. The argument is filled out with a potted history of America's tech industry, quotes from luminaries, a fair amount of score-settling and quixotic excursions into what managers can learn from honeybees and improvisational theatre. The book's intellectual eclecticism is clearly modelled on that of Yuval Noah Harari, Silicon Valley's favourite historian. But 'The Technological Republic" is much less compelling. Mr Karp has got what he wished for, but he may not like the outcome. For more on the latest books, films, TV shows, albums and controversies, sign up to Plot Twist, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter
Daily Mail
03-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
The Thinking Machine by Stephen Witt: Forget Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg – meet the mogul in tech you have never heard of
The Thinking Machine by Stephen Witt (Bodley Head £25, 272pp) In summer last year, Nvidia topped $3trillion in market capitalisation. It became the most valuable company in the world. How did what was once a niche vendor of video game hardware achieve this? Stephen Witt's thought-provoking, occasionally alarming book sets out to answer the question. Much of Nvidia's success is down to its long-serving CEO, Jensen Huang. Forget Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. Jensen Huang is probably the most influential tech bro alive today. He deserves this wide-ranging account of his life and the meteoric rise of his company, although he probably won't appreciate it. When told about the book, Huang said, 'I hope I die before it comes out.' By any standards, Huang is a remarkable, charismatic man. A colleague once said of him, 'Interacting with Jensen is like sticking your finger in the electrical socket.' He was born in Taiwan and spent his early childhood in Thailand. He arrived in rural Kentucky as a ten-year-old in 1973, despatched 8,000 miles from his parents to a foreign land where he could barely speak the language. He was bullied and the school he attended sounds like a penal institution. There was an illiterate who introduced himself by showing off the scars from his assorted stab wounds. Huang taught him to read and he became his protector against the bullies. After graduating from Stanford University, he worked in Silicon Valley. In 1993, he and two others founded Nvidia, the name echoing the Latin for 'envy'. They wanted other tech firms to become green with envy at their future successes. Huang, as described by Witt, appears to have had a Jekyll and Hyde approach to management. Often charming and self-deprecating, he could turn on employees who failed to meet his exacting standards. He would scream at his victims in front of their peers. His own commitment to Nvidia is legendary. 'His hobbies,' one colleague told Witt, 'are work, email and work.' Like all great entrepreneurs, his willingness to risk all is astonishing. His greatest gamble came in 2013. Nvidia had been highly successful as a producer of GPUs (graphics processing units) for computers. Huang became an overnight evangelist for AI. 'He sent out an email on Friday evening saying… that we were no longer a graphics company,' one Nvidia employee tells Witt. 'By Monday morning, we were an AI company.' Plenty of people see potential dangers in AI. Huang will have none of this. 'I'm so tired of this question,' he says and launches on one of his famous rants when Witt persists in raising the subject. His company has surfed the wave of AI to accumulate incredible riches. As Witt's book makes scarily clear, our future may depend on whether Huang is right.
Irish Independent
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
RTÉ to release documentary on serial scammer Samantha Cookes
Bad Nanny tells the story of Samantha Cookes who, for over a decade across Ireland and the UK, used a revolving door of aliases including Carrie Jade Williams and Sadie Harris to weave an intricate web of lies, deceiving the public, from vulnerable families to online communities. Her story was the subject of RTÉ podcast series The Real Carrie Jade, with documentary maker Ronan Kelly from the podcast featuring in the TV series and an update to the podcast series published today. Gráinne McAleer, head of socumentaries and series at RTÉ, said: 'The shocking story of Samantha Cookes and her long list of scams and aliases is an intriguing story that needs to be told on screen. The documentary series lays out this timeline of deceit brilliantly and captures the collective power of ordinary people. 'From the Tik Tok sleuths to the victims of Samantha's scams that came together to expose her story, Bad Nanny is a story of the power of ordinary people working together. It is also cautionary tale for anyone hiring someone to look after their nearest and dearest.' The documentary delves into Samantha's persona as Carrie Jade Williams, a supposedly terminally ill, award-winning author. Under that name in 2020, Cookes had won a prestigious Financial Times/Bodley Head £1,000 (€1,200) essay prize for writing about the difficulties she had being a writer with Huntington's disease. She has since admitted she does not have this terminal illness. The documentary also features the vulnerable families left emotionally shattered by Samantha's deceit. Viewers will watch exclusive interviews with victims of Samantha's scams who have never spoken publicly and includes unseen archive footage of Samantha. In her most recent conviction, Cookes pleaded guilty to deception and theft of €60,000 in social welfare payments over a four-year period up to 2024. During this time she was also able to obtain two Arts Council grants using a slight variation on her real name. Bad Nanny is co-production between RTÉ and BBC Northern Ireland produced by Alleycats TV. It will be available on RTÉ Player and BBC iPlayer from Monday, May 12.
The Independent
06-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Books of the month: What to read this April from a surprisingly candid Doctor Who biography to five-star fiction
Divisive debates about 'cancel culture' are hard to avoid these days, with most confrontations offering scant evidence of rigorous thinking. Two books in April deal with this controversial topic in different ways. In Discriminations: Making Peace in the Culture Wars (Oneworld), philosopher AC Grayling puts forward an astute guide to why this messy battle ground matters; while Deborah Frances-White, author of The Guilty Feminist, tackles the same thorny, volatile issues with wit and insight in Six Conversations We're Scared to Have (Virago). Two other 'meaty' social history studies out this month have interesting things to say about race and class. They are Lanre Bakare's We Were There: How Black Culture, Resistance and Community Shaped Modern Britain (Bodley Head) and Joel Budd's Underdogs: The Truth About Britain's White Working Class (Picador). Both books are packed with revealing content. Finally, an ardent recommendation for Alice Vincent's Hark: How Women Listen (Canongate). Hark offers a heartfelt, powerful exploration of the importance of sound and how it lands for women. The book takes the reader on a moving journey through Vincent's testing times as a young mother and the role music and sensory experiences play in helping forge an identity. It is a book whose themes will surely echo with many readers. My picks for fiction, non-fiction and memoir of the month are reviewed in full below. ★★★★★ As a child in the 1970s, I regularly watched Doctor Who, a character who has been on our screens since November 1963. I enjoyed the Tom Baker years, although I was never an ardent fan, and I think that makes it easier to read Exterminate/Regenerate: The Story of Doctor Who. John Higgs's dispassionate, candid book is described by his publishers as 'the first biography of the infamous Time Lord'. A memo from 1963 described the character of the Doctor as 'bewildered… garbled… somewhat pathetic', which could stand as an unwelcome epitaph for William Hartnell, the first man to play the Doctor. Hartnell was a bad-tempered, homophobic, heavy-drinking bigot. Going by the book, he seems the perfect symbol for the snobby BBC of that era, an organisation that tolerated racist and predatory behaviour. Doctor Who was rife with sexism from the start. The founding producer was Verity Lambert. 'Verity had enormous boobs and once, by mistake, I called her 'Very-titty' to her face,' admitted the programme's director Richard Martin. Higgs does a good job dissecting the 14 main Time Lords since 1963 – from Hartnell to Ncuti Gatwa – and there are entertaining stories about the actors involved, especially the volatile Baker, sex addict Patrick Troughton, the wild Sylvester McCoy and the principled Christopher Eccleston. John Pertwee, who played the Doctor in the early 1970s and who was known for his velvet smoking jackets and frilly shirts, once slapped his onscreen assistant Sarah Jane Smith across the face when she dared to mock his propensity for telling 'tall tales' about his work in naval intelligence. Other young female assistants faced similar appalling misogyny. They were usually just known as 'the girl'. Barry Letts, a producer, admitted that cynically (and creepily), these young girls were just there as 'something for the dads'. 'It was not unusual for entire seasons of Doctor Who to be made by an entirely male team of writers, producers and directors,' Higgs writes. The book is crammed with fascinating nuggets about fictional Doctor Who villains, too – the Daleks were intended to be seen as 'space Nazis' – although some of the most monstrous behaviour came from the show's fevered, factional fans. The diehard enthusiasts were disliked by most of the production staff, who called them 'barkers' or 'the ming-mongs'. Colin Baker, hated for his multicoloured coat, came in for particularly cruel treatment from some hardcore fans. A magazine produced by the Merseyside sect of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society went so far as to mock the death of Baker's baby son Jack from sudden infant death syndrome. Higgs takes us all the way through to the 21st-century Doctor Whos, in an era helmed by Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat, among others. Jodie Whittaker broke ground as the first female Doctor. Blackface and yellowface actors are gone. The current Doctor, Gatwa, was born in Rwanda during its civil war of the 1990s. The new progressive Doctor Who has antagonised Nigel Farage, who tellingly described it as a programme 'I used to love, but they've completely ruined'. Exterminate/Regenerate is a cracking read about a character Higgs calls 'the British folk hero of the television age'. Doctor Who may be a hero to fans, but non-obsessives will find little comfort in this sharp-eyed account of an iconic British show forged in a toxic and abusive workplace. 'Exterminate/Regenerate: The Story of Doctor Who' by John Higgs is published by W&N on 10 April, £25 ★★★★★ Around 55 per cent of humans now live in urban environments. This figure is expected to rise to more than 66 per cent by 2050. In Wild Cities: Discovering New Ways of Living in the Modern Urban Jungle, Chris Fitch looks at what pioneering cities around the world are doing to fight a seemingly losing battle against vanishing nature. The book covers 12 cities – Tokyo, Medellín, Singapore, Tallinn, Wellington, Nairobi, Sydney, Munich, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Flagstaff and Paris – and uses surveys, data analysis, interviews, anecdotes, urban planning studies and personal observation to build an utterly compelling account of people working to protect a connection to the natural world for urban residents. Fitch does not sugarcoat the problems. He writes at length about local insect populations in Europe declining by more than three-quarters in the past 30 years – something he calls 'an invertebrate annihilation' – and the ways in which humans are wrecking the marine ecosystem. Whalers and fishermen are doing more damage than climate change. He looks at the issues facing urban dwellers, including physical inactivity, light pollution, heat retention in cities and the unsustainable and destructive habit of car commuting. The benefits of nature are clear – time among trees boosts immune systems, scenic views aid medical recoveries, etcetera, etcetera – and Fitch uses 12 global cities (and London in the epilogue) to highlight remarkable achievements by progressive, determined people. We can all take heart from urban foragers, from the brains behind the biodiverse forests of Tokyo, from the way that vertical greening is helping in Singapore, and from the fact that Wellington's bird sanctuaries are reviving once-doomed birds in New Zealand. Perhaps the most heartening chapter is on the Colombian city Medellín: a place once despoiled by the lawless and murderous activities of Pablo Escobar has been reclaimed and made green. Fitch explains how the problems of urban expansion continue even after death. Paris, with limited burial plots, has seen a steep rise in 'tree burials'. Alternatively, if you are cremated, you can now even have your remains turned into a vinyl record. An engaging tone enlivens a book packed with surprising information, including about the rise of fatal urban bear attacks in Japan. Wild Cities is a splendid, uplifting book that is as entertaining as it is enlightening. 'Wild Cities: Discovering New Ways of Living in the Modern Urban Jungle' by Chris Fitch is published by William Collins on 10 April, £22 Novel of the Month: Audition by Katie Kitamura ★★★★★ Katie Kitamura's novel Intimacies was longlisted for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award in 2021, and four years later, I expect there will be similar plaudits for Audition. The idea for her latest novel was sparked around eight years ago when she read a headline that said: 'A stranger told me he was my son.' Audition 's unnamed protagonist is a successful New York actress thrown into turmoil by this 'Are you my mother?' moment with a young man called Xavier. The first set piece of the novel is when the pair meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. In the fictional play she is starring in, the main character undergoes a character transformation – described as 'the hinge' – and this 'hinge' is echoed in the novel. In Part One, we are shown one path for the actor and her husband, Tomas. Part Two offers a very different life arc for her, a competing narrative that is deeply unsettling for the reader. We are all caught in a game of performance and role-playing, Kitamura seems to suggest, as she skilfully pulls apart her character's sense of an authentic self. As her own reality becomes completely unstable, her protagonist is the embodiment of the unreliable narrator. Kitamura can be witty (as in the remark that 'Xavier gave good son' or in the reflection that middle age is just 'a time of attrition'), and she is in masterful control of tense and hostile confrontational scenes. The battles between the narrator and Xavier's sly young girlfriend, a woman with a 'strange feather touch', are taut and nadgery. Although the story is subtle and reflective, Audition has powerful things to say about our present destabilised society. It offers a bleak view of a performative age, one in which we must be hyper attuned, sharpening our instincts to survive a world full of manipulators and skittish people. This superb, thoughtful novel resonated long after finishing.
