This collection of essays from John Berger subtitled, ‘Dispatches on Survival and Resistance’, mostly focuses on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the war on terror, and other recent acts of violence and destruction, like Hurricane Katrina. Berger is often described as a cultural theorist, and I previously read his book Ways of Seeing in a college course – we used Berger’s description of women as objects and the ‘internalization of the patriarchal male gaze’ as a framework for reading Flaubert and looking at 19th century French painting. On the whole, Berger’s writing is a lot like that – you have to be in the right frame of mind to take him seriously, and he packs a lot of thought into each sentence.
I read this on the beach, which I wouldn’t quite recommend. Berger is not light summer reading, but it is good for reading in short spurts. Each chapter is a different short essay, written at a different time and place, and the topic usually changes from chapter to chapter.
I couldn’t help but read this in light of the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa which have taken a new turn in Egypt in the past few days. If you want to hear more about that, and find out why I still gave this book four stars, even though I only liked five of the sixteen essays, check out the rest on my blog!
Cannonball Read V 