Courtney McGrailStudies An Irish Quarterly Review
(Messenger Publications, €10.00; €45.00 for a year; visit www.studiesirishreview.ie for more information)
This summer edition of one of the country’s most thoughtful journals focuses on the Great War, in an issue subtitled “The Pity of War 1914-1818”. These authors cover a range of issues from the philosophical considerations of Heather Jones on violent transgression, to an account of a war opera at the Wexford Festival by Tom Mooney. Other articles deal with such varied figures of the time as the poet Francis Ledwidge, Thomas Kettle the poet and economist, and Fr Willie Doyle, experiences as a chaplain. In his article Damien Burke deals with the general theme of Irish Jesuit chaplains in the trench. However the editor has also found space for an article by David Tuohy SJ on Jesuit humanism in education, “Learning to love the world as God loves it”. Altogether a very valuable issue.
The Song of Songs: Exploring the Divine Romance
by Charlie Cleverly
(Hodder & Stoughton, £13.99)
In some ways the Song of Songs has long been a source of embarrassment to some Christians. Over the centuries it has been interpreted as an allegorical exposition of the love of Christ for his Church. Author Charlie Cleverly, the rector of St Aldate’s in Oxford, takes a different approach, frankly facing the eroticism of the poem, which must have begun as a marriage hymn, to explore the nature of love in all its aspects, human and divine.
The intimacy of romantic love, parental love and friendship are in themselves refractions of the love of God for his creation. There would indeed be no creation if it were not for love. Indeed to explore the nature of love in this way will undoubtedly wide the views of many in a truly enriching way. But potential readers might well need to be already grounds in a love of both poetry and religion, which these days can be a rare combination.
Hollywood’s Second Sex: The treatment of Women in the Film Industry 1900-1999
by Aubrey Malone
(McFarland & Co., $45.00)
The Irish Catholic’s film critic is a writer steeped in the arcana of film making, but he is far from starry eyed. He explores just how one of the world’s largest and most rapacious industries has treatment women since it first flickered into life. The men running the business are notoriously ruthless, and their actresses, often promoted as the epitome of glamour, suffered as a consequence. Yet some were able to work through it all, providing some memorable performances, which sometimes reach the acme of art. But this book deals not only with those on the screen, but the many others who were influential behind the camera or in the writers’ bungalows.
One of the idols of film noir, Ida Lupino, began as an ingénue with ambition. “By playing the defenceless female, she stooped to conquer.” She developed into a leading director of both films and TV. Others were not clever. This is undoubtedly a book for the film buff, as the Americans would say, but a well-informed and critical one, both an enthralling read and an excellent introduction to what goes on to day along the boulevards of Hollywood.
