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A review by kimbofo
Axiomatic by Maria Tumarkin
5.0
Writer and cultural historian Maria Tumarkin claims her latest book, Axiomatic, is NOT a collection of essays. “It is a book with chapters that are just a little unorthodox in the way they are structured and sit next to each other,” she says in an interview with the Stella Prize, for which she has been shortlisted.
However you choose to describe Axiomatic, I think it’s fair to say it is not easy to box in: it doesn’t fit a genre, seeing as it’s a heady mix of storytelling and reportage. To my mind, these pieces (or chapters) wouldn’t be out of place in a “high-brow” magazine — for instance, a colour supplement that comes with a weekend broadsheet — and as such I’d class them as journalistic features.
Content-wise, each piece looks at an axiom — an accepted truth — and examines, often in great detail and with much intellectual rigour and anecdotal evidence, as to whether it holds or can be debunked.
These five axioms are:
>> ‘Time Heals All Wounds’;
>> ‘Those Who Forget the Past are Condemned to Repeat It’;
>> ‘History Repeats Itself’;
>> Give Me a Child Before the Age of 7 and I’ll Give You the (Wo)Man’; and
>> ‘You Can’t Enter The Same River Twice’
I’m not going to review each chapter other than to say there are common themes running throughout Tumarkin’s work. She is very much focussed on time and how its passing can shape the past, present and future. She looks at its impact on the personal and the political, how it shapes our understanding of ourselves, our families, our popular culture and our institutions.
To read the rest of my review, please visit my blog.
However you choose to describe Axiomatic, I think it’s fair to say it is not easy to box in: it doesn’t fit a genre, seeing as it’s a heady mix of storytelling and reportage. To my mind, these pieces (or chapters) wouldn’t be out of place in a “high-brow” magazine — for instance, a colour supplement that comes with a weekend broadsheet — and as such I’d class them as journalistic features.
Content-wise, each piece looks at an axiom — an accepted truth — and examines, often in great detail and with much intellectual rigour and anecdotal evidence, as to whether it holds or can be debunked.
These five axioms are:
>> ‘Time Heals All Wounds’;
>> ‘Those Who Forget the Past are Condemned to Repeat It’;
>> ‘History Repeats Itself’;
>> Give Me a Child Before the Age of 7 and I’ll Give You the (Wo)Man’; and
>> ‘You Can’t Enter The Same River Twice’
I’m not going to review each chapter other than to say there are common themes running throughout Tumarkin’s work. She is very much focussed on time and how its passing can shape the past, present and future. She looks at its impact on the personal and the political, how it shapes our understanding of ourselves, our families, our popular culture and our institutions.
To read the rest of my review, please visit my blog.