Glimpses of beauty

Born in Michigan, raised in Lagos and educated in London and New York, Teju Cole is about as cosmopolitan as they come. In an interview with the American writer Aleksandar Hemon, republished in Known and Strange Things, he declares that ‘cities are our greatest invention. They drive creativity, they help us manage resources, and they can be hives of tolerance.’ Cole, whose PEN/Hemingway award-winning novel Open City (2012) was a paean to the vitality of urban sprawl, is an art historian by training; the essays and reviews in this collection — gathered from several years of writing for publications including the New York Times and the New Yorker — reveal a sensibility palpably influenced by the genre of writing known as psychogeography, blending touristic observation with social historical insights.

Where art historians once fretted over the implications of mechanical reproduction, they now agonise over digital superabundance. Noting (in 2012) that ‘380 billion photos were taken in 2011, and about ten per cent of all the photographs currently in existence were taken in 2012’, Cole is disparaging about the contemporary mania for compulsive snapping.