FOLLOWED BY PHANTOM 105.2 DJ djs richie mccormack & richie ryan DOORS 8PM FREE ADMISSION BEFORE 10PM 5 AFTERFRI oct 2nd PHANTOm.ie FIRST FRIDAY Supported By the Flaws the chakras saville audio GIG Pixies Wednesday, September 30, 2009 metrolife 13 Staying In Book Reviews Book Of The Week The Devil And Mr Casement by Jordan Goodman Verso, 20 The tale of the Irish revolutionary Roger Casement and the Putumayo Indians is one worth highlighting in this the centenary year of the first revelations about rubber baron Julio Csar Arana and his Peruvian Amazon Company. Two Americans initially happened upon Aranas private fiefdom on the border of Colombia and Peru, where enslaved tribespeople were subjected to starvation and torture to make them tap wild rubber. Outrage in Britain led to an investigating commission being dispatched, including our own Roger Casement, then a British diplomat who had catalogued the horrors in King Leopolds Congo. Casements efforts to expose the crimes against humanity earned him a knighthood but the experiences of bloody imperialism, Jordan Goodman argues, further radicalised this confirmed Home Ruler, who ended up being hanged for treason after he visited Germany in a bid to secure arms for the Easter Rising. Goodman gets entangled in the dry complexities of early 20th-century diplomacy, but this is still an astonishing slice of history and his closing reminder of the continued threat to the Putumayo Indians is sobering. Siobhn Murphy Sept 2009: Wins! Her non-stop boozing and burping presumably propelled her to victory. Goes home with 78,254. Sept 2009: Moans to a paper that she put on a stone in weight while doing Big Brother and does a topless shoot for a lads mag. She says shes fascinated by boobs and wants the biggest boobs in the world. She participates in a badly staged campaign at London Fashion Week supposedly demanding curvier women in catwalk shows. But since Sophie is a size six, has already undergone surgery to inflate her breasts to ludicrous dimensions and, at 20, is considering further operations, is she really the ideal choice to front campaigns about body issues? Its all gone wrong good luck Sophie. Scott Tenorman For proof that deeply dysfunctional bands often have the best tunes, look no further than Pixies. In their relatively short career, these New England Every Joes invented grunge, created the template for indie rock and proved nerdy guys from the suburbs could scream and rage as convincingly as anyone else. But by the end, relations between individual members, shaky to begin with, had broken down completely when frontman Black Francis called time on the project in 1992 he did so by dispatching a fax to their record company. To the surprise of everyone, not least the Pixies themselves, it appeared, the foursome regrouped in 2004 for a world tour which saw them cashing in on a legacy that had grown and grown through the previous decade. Now, theyre back again, to honour the 20th anniversary of what is widely regarded as their finest LP, Doolittle. Featuring Francis squealing like a dying big, bassist Kim Deals indie-babe cooing and Joe Santiagos blistering guitar work, the album was instantly iconic and hugely influential. Theyll be performing the record in its entirety, throwing in B-sides and out- takes for good measure. Hard luck if you havent bagged or blagged a ticket the dates sold out within a few minutes of going on sale. Eamon de Paor Tonight until Fri, Olympia Theatre, 72 Dame Street D2, 7.30pm, 44.20 to 54.80 (returns only). Tel: 0818 719 330. www. 4ad.com/pixies Auggie Wrens Christmas Story by Paul Auster Faber & Faber, 12 Tasked with writing a short Christmas story for The New York Times in 1990, Paul Auster managed to file 3,000 words without once mentioning religion or Santa Claus. Instead, he turned in a cute self-referencing fable about generosity of spirit, with an ending that was sufficiently Hollywood to inspire the Harvey Keitel movie, Smoke. Brooklyn cigar store attendant Auggie Wren has photographed the same street corner every day for 12 years. When an unnamed author with a similar Times commission visits him, Auggie relates the story of how he came to own his camera. Like all good storytellers, he swears his tale is true, yet the moral pay-off is worthy of Aesop or Kipling. This new edition adds illustrations from the Argentinean artist Marisol Isol Misenta, whose scratchy, homespun style adds extra lustre to the deceptively simple message. Fans of the bleak Auster-ity of his New York Trilogy might find the cosy warmth of this all a little unexpected but as an early festive treat, this is as deliciously satisfying as the first mince pie of the season. Steve Pill The Dogs And The Wolves by Irne Nmirovsky Chatto & Windus, 22 This short novel by the rediscovered author of Suite Franaise is an unsettling read. Against the backdrop of a love triangle played out in the interwar years in Ukraine and Paris, Nmirovsky tackles the tensions of class division and the divisive question of assimilation, and does so while utilising the most upsetting of Jewish caricatures. The poor Jews in the Ukrainian shtetl the wolves afflicted by poverty and pogroms are given as harsh a treatment as the rich Jews on the hill, the assimilated dogs who have trampled their way to the top. Ada must choose between them her decision is perhaps surprising given the context in which Nmirovsky was writing, and therefore all the more heartening. There have been rumblings in France about perceived anti-Semitism, but Nmirovskys steely attacks surely offer scornful comment on those who deployed such stereotypes and meant them. Her main characters are sympathetically lifted above mere caricature, and her spare but vivid style highlights the pain of the everyday slings and arrows that Ada, above all, endures. A bitterly beautiful tale. Siobhn Murphy Titian: The Last Days by Mark Hudson Bloomsbury, 24 Titian, considered the greatest of the Venetian school of painters, was hugely successful in his lifetime and achieved fame working on commissions for royal patrons, most notably for Philip II of Spain. In this new biography, Mark Hudson traces Titians life and work, creating an atmospheric picture of 16th-century Europe and the cultural context in which art was produced. Unusually, Hudson himself appears throughout the text, a device that is occasionally distracting but demonstrates the work involved in researching art history. The book focuses on Titians later paintings works that were kept in his studio and were largely unfinished. The artist had taken to using his hands as much as the brush, a technique that is seen by many as a precursor to the Impressionist style. But despite the in-depth nature of his research, Hudson is unable to establish whether this departure in style was a conscious decision or the result of old age. Still, its an engaging portrait of a true genius of European art. Tom Hicks SHELF SPACE Graphic novels to try Best-selling crime writer Ian Rankin (Inspector Rebus) socks us with his first, and hopefully not last, graphic novel, Dark Entries (Titan Books, 17 hardback), a noir thriller named after a song by Goth band Bauhaus. A comics fan from the age of three, Rankins take on long- running anti-hero John Constantine sees the hard-drinking occultist detective become the mole in a reality TV show. With works ranging from The Tale Of One Bad Rat (a Beatrix Potter take on child abuse) to Alice In Sunderland (a dazzling, legend-busting local history take on Lewis Carroll), you never know what Bryan Talbot will do next. Turns out its Grandville (Jonathan Cape, 18) a fast-paced, gorgeously coloured, amusingly anthropomorphic steam punk fantasy delightfully inspired by 19th- century French caricaturist JJ Grandville not to mention Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Rupert The Bear and Quentin Tarantino. The Beats: A Graphic History (Souvenir Press, 15) is a black and white look at the generations leading lights including Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg amongst others. Its edited by American Splendour creator/ illustrator Harvey Pekar and Ed Piskor, who self- deprecatingly, if correctly, introduce their comic book biography as having no pretension to the depth of coverage presented by hundreds of scholarly books... But it is new, and it is vital. 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