It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what it is that makes second-hand books so wonderful. Maybe it’s because they’re cheap, and anyone who loves reading can tell you that when you’re burning through three books a week it can get really expensive. Some claim it’s the smell, which is why you get people walking into a shop, inhaling so deeply their chests almost pop open, rolling their eyes with an indescribable ecstasy. Other’s claim old and dusty books heat up a room, making it more comfortable. I’ll accept that books are beautiful, especially older ones, there’s something deeply satisfying about old, creased spines with titles emblazoned on them in gold lettering. I’ll even be the first to admit that a shelf full of books makes a room, but these books should really be dog-eared, every single one having been either read or waiting to be read, not simply put up for the show of it. The thing is books are not incense sticks or furniture. Books are meant to be read, and maybe that’s what makes second hand books so enticing, the mysterious histories that led to that book being in your hands.

Firstly it’s the idea that you’re not the only one who’s read that book. When you buy a brand new novel, still hot from the printing press, it’s like it’s just you and the author muttering to each other in a darkened room. Yet when you hold a second hand book, you feel united to everyone else who read it, all shouting together at once. It’s even better when you find pencil notes scratched into the margins. They raise funny points, or interesting observations you never thought would occur to you. Of course sometimes they’re nonsense observations, sometimes they’re even illegible and sometimes, if you’re really lucky, they’ll have nothing to do with the book at all.

The absolute best kinds of annotations are the random ones covering a shopping list, an address or a random reminder to buy someone a present. They offer you a glimpse of the people who owned this book before you. Alongside the story printed on the pages themselves, you are introduced to a string of other stories, the stories surrounding the reading of the book. Maybe someone was reading it just before they proposed to the love of their life, maybe it was a present given to them by their father just before they headed off to university for the first time, or maybe this very book inspired a novelist to pen their own work, a work you might read yourself in a few years’ time. Lots of people may have held that book on a train, walking the streets or eating their breakfast, and now you’re holding it too. You’ve entered into a wider community of seemingly unconnected people, all reading this one little book.

Okay, this is all fairly speculative, and you can never be sure the book you’re holding has this whole history to it. It’s entirely possible one person was given it as an unwanted present, it sat on their shelf for countless years and then they gave it to a charity shop during a clean out one day. Even with this, there’s a history. It’s an old copy, a little slice of that particular novels publication history. Take those bound versions of The Complete Works of Charles Dickens. They’re unfamiliar when compared to the Wordsworth Classics paperbacks with their strange drawings on the front, they hark back to a time when books were collectors’ items, when you bought an entire set and people had the same copy for years, sometimes even generations.

Even second hand paperbacks have a certain charm to them with their yellowed pages and slightly scuffed covers, reminding us of the project to mass produce literature. My favourite print of any book is the orange Penguin classics with nothing on the cover but the title in thick black script. They’re so elegant, so aesthetically pleasing and admittedly, when the row of orange covers is lined up on a bookshelf it looks fantastic. The book exists just as the book, free of shiny photographs of equally shiny celebrities promoting the latest television adaptation. There’s no spoilers printed on the back, no critics’ reviews shouting in your face about how much you’ll love the story. No, instead they focus just on the title and the author, they let you make your own decisions and holding something like that, you really know you’re reading a novel, not a companion piece to a blockbuster movie.

Getting a new novel is always exciting, but never dismiss a second hand book. They’re smart, they’re enticing and they’re always different, and what’s more, you never know what you’re going to find.

FIVE STARS

Wheatley’s High Rise is a fast-paced dystopian thriller, using dark wit and farce to forward a pessimistic view of human nature. Evident from many of Ballard’s other novels, he regarded humanity as quite uncivilised. Given the right circumstances, all our bourgeois morality and manners – all that ‘self-indulgent toilet training’ as he called it – will simply slip away to reveal our true, inner selves. Behind the façade lies barbaric violence, animalistic ritual, and behaviour determined by the ‘logic’ of primal urges, all of which are realised in the tower complex. Cinema has a habit of using Brutalist architecture to realise dystopian fantasies, think A Clockwork Orange or Total Recall. But for Ballard, the building itself is responsible for the transformation into primalism. It reconditions its inhabitants in the new patterns of behaviour necessary to survive. Those that can adapt, will live and thrive. Those that cannot become another of the building’s many victims – martyrs on the path to the new order.

Wheatley’s film brings bags of style to Ballard’s substance. The cinematography is a treat for the eye throughout. Montage, the splicing together of quick shots traversing time, space, and sometimes reality, is cleverly used. Accompanied by Mansell’s soundtrack, it maintains a fast-paced intensity, mirroring the high rise’s rapid descent into anarchy. One sequence is particularly commendable, a stabbing viewed from the vantage point of a kaleidoscope, which stands out stylistically in a film already drenched with violence. High Rise also offers some commendable performances; Irons shines as the enigmatic Royal, Miller dazzles as the social-climber Melville, and Evans steals the show as the brutish Wilder. Hiddleston plays Laing, the middle-man seeking anonymity – who finds it when he adapts and thrives. Though cast slightly against type, as we’re far more used to seeing Hiddleston as a suave soph­istocrat, there’s nothing jarring in his performance.

But for me, Wheatley never makes convincing the necessity of the new tribalism. The viewer finds it hard to empathise with the onset of a ‘logic more powerful than reason’. The start of discontent in the high rise is quite unexpected, happening suddenly over a game of squash. Unable to demonstrate that adapting was necessary to survival in the tower, Wheatley makes it seem more a competition over better parties than the inevitable collapse of social etiquette. This makes the final third a confusing orgy of drunkenness, sex and violence – rather than tribal logic fulfilled as Ballard intended. So does Wheatley prioritise style over substance? Perhaps. At times I was even bored by their anarchic behaviour, feeling disconnected from their primordial logic.

Is there a message amongst all this carnage? With the film ripe for speculation, enthusiastic viewers have plenty of ammo to try and decipher its ‘message’. Is this social comment? Wheatley portrays the warring floors as having a strong class dynamic. Wilder and the lower-floors find themselves in conflict with the building’s upper-floor aristocrats for electricity, alcohol, and the allegiance of the middle-floors. Indeed, it’s the inequality and rigid hierarchy which set in motion the dissolving of normal morality. But come the end all floors come to resemble a single survivalist class, tribal and barbaric. Or perhaps the high rise represents different layers of the human psyche? Borrowing from Freudian psychoanalysis, Ballard himself suggested the upper floors were the moralising superego, and the lower floors the id, man’s primal desires. In this interpretation the middle floors act as the ego, the mediator between the two. Laing’s job as a physiologist is no coincidence, and the parallels to Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing are obvious. But audiences searching for a political message in Ballard’s dystopian vision will be disappointed. Like all good art, High Rise is ambiguous and open to interpretation.

The film rides the wave of the Brutalist revival. Wheatley’s found the perfect time to make High Rise, at the peak of the reappraisal of Brutal post-war architecture, now admired for its haunting concrete beauty and brutal functionality. In fact High Rise’s whole visual aesthetic speak volumes about contemporary nostalgia for the post-war era. Tindesley’s production design brings the high modernist tower to life with elegance. The fourteenth floor supermarket was designed from scratch, with all products given a minimalist chic by graphic designers Eaton and Hickson. It’s been such a success it has already gained a cult following online, just check Facebook’s bulging group The Brutalism Appreciation Society. Effortless style is one of the film’s major achievements, feeding our nostalgic appetites for post-war modernism. The current tendency is to view pre-neoliberal Britain enviously as a time of optimism and prolonged economic growth. Now regarded as a ‘golden age’, the social democratic era (1945-79) is admired for its percieved collectivism  and inclusivity. These values chime loudly in the context of our post-recession pessimism. Everything from our politics to our fashion seem to be trying to claw back this lost era of certainty, scrambling to rediscover its principles.

But is there a tension to be discerned between Wheatley and Ballard here? Safely separated by historical difference, Wheatley’s film views the 1970s as classy and cool. Yet Ballard was writing at a time of widespread disillusionment with the post-war world. The stifling bureaucracy, the feigned solidarity and persisting inequality, the self-important and dominating urban architecture – Ballard was writing in opposition to these realities when setting the dystopia in a ‘near future’.

But any adaptation of 40 years is bound to have its differences, and for me Wheatley and Ballard coexisted peacefully, despite the film not demonstrating the necessity of the new ‘logic more powerful than reason’. All in all, High Rise is a visually pleasing film which explores Ballard’s complex human themes with style and wit; and what more could one ask?

As we collapse into the vac, so we come to the end of our foray into the modern definition of art. We began with Naomi Gee’s ruthless analysis of ‘the selfie’ and then, in the following weeks, turned our attention to carpets, Kardashians, and The X Factor. We have scrutinised various aspects of modern life and considered their position on the contemporary artistic landscape.

In many ways, our feature ‘Is This Art?’ could itself be an example of art in today’s society. On a weekly basis, we have taken a particular aspect of modern life and considered its position on the contemporary artistic landscape. We have uncovered artistic meaning and profundity hidden within many aspects of today’s world. Through this process of uncovering, questioning and analysing, we have felt something of what it means to be an artist. We have stared into the void and found truth.

But what is art without an audience? We have shared our weekly findings with the Cherwell readership in a bid to make known the artistic truth we have dredged from the deep oceans of modern life. We have published these findings in the hope that our readers will take up our artistic mission; there is still plenty to discover. Cherwell Art and Books believe that the artistic scene is crying out in desperation for originality, for democratisation. We say the time has come for the artistic conversation to flow into the public sphere. In this way our feature, ‘Is This Art?’ is a beacon of encouragement; do you think this is art? What is art? Are you art? Thus, ‘Is This Art?’ represents the pressing need for artistic inclusion and democratic involvement.

I personally have become aware of a fundamental truth during this process of artistic consideration: anything at all can be art if you want it to be. There is meaning and beauty in every household object, television series and social media outlet. I say it is time that we step forward into a new era of postmodernism, and give the artistic power to the people.

★★★★★

“We don’t submit to terror. We make the terror.” House of Cards is back, with a vengeance. Big budget, small-screen, this is by far the sleekest television show at the moment.

Frank Underwood, deliciously reprised by Kevin Spacey, is once more centre-stage. Underwood is the archetypal anti-hero, Orwell’s Emmanuel Goldstein writ-large over American politics. As with previous seasons, dramatic irony overhangs every episode. Only we, the viewer, truly know who Underwood is and what he’s done. As his enemies flounder around him, we’re enthralled by this Borgia in the White House. To the voter Underwood is the sincere South Carolinan, to his fellow Democrat the consummate dealmaker, to the Republicans the unworthy holder of power. Only the fearless journalist Tom Hammerschmidt, played by the redoubtable Boris McGiver, threatens to lift the lid on this devil incarnate.

The thirteen episodes are less a panorama than an almanac of American politics. If the series has one weakness it is this: that it engages with too many themes. Tonally it’s a bit all over the place, and the opening episodes jar uneasily between sweeping Texas vistas and august Capitol skylines. Plot lines come and go; gun reform, race relations, the Ku Klux clan, campaign finance. The plotting seems to pull in multiple directions at once, less Orwellian doublethink, more a cacophony of press releases, policy announcements and pundits.  This series seems to make a lot of noise, only some of which resonates.

At its core House of Cards is a fantasy of surveillance on US politics. In part it confirms the verities we fear to be true. The season closes with Frank Underwood threatening to inflict terror on the United States, his iron grip on the presidency weakening as a journalistic exposé threatens to unmask him.

In the previous season Frank was vulnerable. He seemed to roll from self-inflicted crisis to crisis, a sort of George Osborne-Robert Mugabe synthesis on-steroids. Season Four drops the bizarre Pussy Riot cameo and we’re spared much facetime with the appalling Putin-look alike Russian premier. Mercifully we only have to attend one international conference.  Instead the season sensationalises the politics we love to hate: muck-raking. Frank is back and he’s angry. In part he’s helped by the return of his soul-searching sidekick-come-chief of staff Doug Stamper, played by Michael Kelly. The President’s henchman is a Manichean allegory all to himself, the Jack Burden to Underwood’s Wille Stark. His uneasiness, oozing from every line, makes this a refreshingly uncomfortable show to watch.

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Robin Wright is once more resplendent as Clare Underwood. The writers play-up her sexuality as the season progresses as she embroils herself with her speechwriter-aide. Caring, warm and aristocratic, she’s everything Frank cannot be, the old money to his new. Her evolving characterisation adds an ingredient the previous three seasons lacked, the exposition of her family shedding light on her own entitlement and privilege.

House of Cards enduring success is in itself testimony to the direction television is heading. This was Netflix’s first in-house drama, launched in February 2013, and it marked a breakthrough in small-screen entertainment. To the uninitiated every episode in the season is released at once on the Netflix site, allowing viewers to watch when they want, where they want. For the Oxford student this season’s chosen release date on the cusp of 8^th week of Hilary really could not have been better.

We’ve lost the campness of Michael Dobbs’ 1990s original BBC adaptation. Where that promoted ruthless Tory patrician Realpolitik, the Stateside transposition marries pork barrel politics with the social media age. If Iago worked in D.C. with Kourtney Kardashian as his spin-doctor it would look something roughly like this.

Where Dobbs’ work is comic-farce however, Netflix’s reproduction seems like fractured reality. There’s a rich tradition of unsavoury politics in the States after all. This is the country of Huey Long, Joseph McCarthy, Richard Nixon and now Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. It typifies a review of House of Cards to conclude by noting it depicts a sordid but quasi-accurate take on reality. And in the kaleidoscope of Capitol deal-making it is eerily effective. As Michael Corleone asks his fiancé in the first Godfather, “You think presidents don’t have men killed?  Who’s being the fool now?”

The season succeeds because it reflects but does not mirror real life. There’s no rabble-rousing Trump, no sinister Clinton, no dynastic Bushes. It remains acutely referential; the enthralling season climax deals with a terrorist hostage situation. Sound familiar? Only this time we’re inside the Situation Room, with Frank’s finger poised over the nuclear button.

Reality and the small screen are divorced. This is a stellar season not because it plays on one’s fears about Washington gridlock and corrupt politics but because it’s a testimony to the banality of evil. Ideology and principles are pushed aside by a protagonist obsessed with self-promotion. Frank Underwood is a study in how fast you have to run, how fiercely you have to fight, how mendacious you have to be to make it to the top in politics. House of Cards is not an indictment on the status quo. It’s a ‘do-not-disturb’ sign for us mere mortals.