What to read this week, from John Berryman to female friendship

BOOK OF THE WEEK

Only Sing: 152 Uncollected Dream Songs by John Berryman

In 1961, The Observer’s poetry critic Al Alvarez proposed the American poets John Berryman and Robert Lowell as lantern-bearers for a new generation of British writers. Berryman was yet to publish the “dream songs” that would go on to define his legacy – and which had a publication history as unsteady as their author’s personality. The first set, 77 Dream Songs, appeared in 1964. A further 308 followed in 1968 under the title His Toy, His Dream, His Rest. In 1972, aged 57, Berryman, who battled with alcohol and depression, killed himself by jumping off Washington Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis, where he lived and taught. Five years later, another 45 dream songs appeared – and now a further 152 have been unearthed from the archive. This selection contains, Andrew Motion writes, only a handful of fully finished works, but “the fierce and beautiful oddities of [Berryman’s] language, and the brave open-heartedness of his written response to life” are a continued source of wonder.
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WHAT TO READ NEXT

A Stranger in Corfu by Alex Preston

Imagine if Mick Herron’s Slow Horses were relocated to a tiny, idyllic island off Corfu. That’s the premise of Alex Preston’s intriguing novel of washed-up spies sent to Vidos – a real island that has served as both a prison and a fortress – in the 1990s. In her review, Clare Clark points out that A Stranger in Corfu skilfully captures “the awful truth of so much espionage, that unspeakable sacrifice is demanded for principles that turn out to be misjudged or mismanaged or not to exist at all. In Spyland, everyone has betrayed someone.”
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Paperback of the week: The Virago Book of Friendship edited by Rachel Cooke

This week’s paperback column is on a terrific anthology edited by the late Observer journalist Rachel Cooke. “In her 1936 book How to Live Alone and Like It, the Vogue editor Marjorie Hillis wrote that ‘if you’re interesting, you’ll have plenty of friends; and if you’re not, you won’t – unless you’re very, very rich’,” writes Chris Power. “But Cooke’s exploration of female friendship reveals something far more complicated.” Through passages by Zadie Smith, Virginia Woolf, Helen Garner and many more, Cooke shows that “friendship is about investment and listening, vulnerability and uncertainty, envy and competitiveness. And, of course, attraction.”
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Everybody Loves Our Dollars: How Money Laundering Won by Oliver Bullough

Demand for dollars – especially highest-denomination notes – is growing, despite the fact that globally we are all using less and less cash. In seeking to solve this puzzle, Oliver Bullough enters a shadow-world of money laundering. His compelling reporting, writes The Observer’s investigations editor Alexi Mostrous, adds up to a “cry of frustration at the horrific human impact of a criminal system forever outmaneuvering the clunky vested interests and national legal systems set up to oppose it”.
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ENDNOTES

The American history professor Austin McCoy has written a fascinating book about the New York hip-hop trio De La Soul. Titled Living in a D.A.I.S.Y. Age, it looks at the political and social context that shaped the group and how they went on to transform hip-hop culture – alongside Beastie Boys and Public Enemy they revolutionised the art of sampling, and as part of the Native Tongues collective they brought playfulness, positivity, individuality – oddness, in other words – and Afrocentrism into the mainstream. We asked McCoy to list his three favourite books on hip-hop – so, along with his, you now have four to put on your reading list. But before you do any of that, do yourself a favour and cue up a copy (or a stream; after years in the digital wilderness, De La Soul’s back catalogue is now on Spotify) of 3 Feet High and Rising, an ebullient masterpiece that still sounds fresh four decades on.
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