What do you think?
Rate this book
Memphis Underground
Stewart Home is the internationally-acclaimed author of Red London, 69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess (Canongate, 2002), Down and Out in Shoreditch and Hoxton (Do-Not Press, 2004) and Tainted Love (Virgin Books, 2005), among others. His new book, Memphis Underground, documents his obsessions with Soul music and the theory and practice of art while marking another step up in his progress as one of the country's most fascinating avant-garde writers.
Nook
First published December 19, 2006
5 people are currently reading
110 people want to read
About the author
Stewart Home
95 books288 followersStewart Home (born London 1963) is an English writer, satirist and artist. He is best known for novels such as the non-narrative "69 Things to Do With A Dead Princess" (2002), his re-imagining of the 1960s in "Tainted Love" (2005), and more recent books such as "She's My Witch" (2020) that use pulp and avant-garde tropes to parody conventional literature.
Home's unusual approach to writing is reflected in the readings he gives from his novels: he recites from memory, utilises ventriloquism, stands on his head and declaims his work and even shreds his own books.
Home's first book "The Assault on Culture: Utopian Currents from Lettrisme to Class War" (Aporia Press and Unpopular Books, London, 1988) is an underground art history sketching continuations of dadist and surrealist influences on post-World War II fringe radical art.
Home's first novel "Pure Mania" was published 1989 (Polygon Books), and details a violent neo-punk subculture. Unmistakenly postmodern but nfluenced by surrealism and the nouveau roman, it pushes the appropriation of pulp tropes and use of repetition found within historical avant-garde fiction to such an extreme that some critics mistook it for a piece of low-brow writing.
Home continued in much the same vein with his next four novels, starting with "Defiant Pose" (Peter Owen, 1991) and continuing with "Red London" (AK Press 1994), "Blow Job" (published in 1997 but written in 1994) and Slow Death (Serpent's Tail 1996).
All Home’s early fiction collages in large amounts of prose from a wide variety of sources – and while it is often close in spirit to the work of ‘postmodern extremists’ such as Kathy Acker, the appropriated material is much more heavily reworked than in the latter’s books.
The novels Home wrote after the mid-nineties featured less subcultural material than his earlier books and focus more obviously on issues of form and aesthetics. Home’s sixth novel "Come Before Christ And Murder Love" (Serpent's Tail 1997) featured a schizophrenic narrator whose personality changed every time he had an orgasm. This was the first novel Home wrote in the first person, and much of the fiction he wrote after this utilised the device of an unreliable first-person narrator.
"Cunt" (Do Not Press 1999) is a postmodern take on the picaresque novel. "69 Things to Do With A Dead Princess" (Canongate 2002) mixes porn with capsule reviews of dozens of obscure books as well as elaborate descriptions of stone circles, while in "Down and Out In Shoreditch & Hoxton" (Do Not Press 2004) every paragraph is exactly 100 words long. "Tainted Love" (Virgin Books) is based on the life of the author's mother, who was part of the London subcultural scene in the 1960s. "Memphis Underground" (Snow Books 2007) has a long conventional literary opening that is slowly unravelled.
Home’s 2010 novel "Blood Rites of the Bourgeois" (Book Works) is to date his only work written in the second person. The plot – as far as there is one - concerns an artist hacking the computers of London’s cultural elite to infect them with modified penis enlargement spam. Reviewing Home’s incredibly weird campus novel "Mandy, Charlie & Mary-Jane" (Penny-Ante Editions 2013) for The Guardian, Nicholas Lezard observes: “I think one of the great virtues of Home's work is the way it forces us to address our own complacency.”
"The 9 Lives of Ray The Cat Jones" (Test Centre 2014) is a fictional exploration of the life of one of the author's more infamous criminal relatives. "She's My Witch" (London Books 2020), is a love story exploring an unlikely relationship between a fitness instructor and a heroin addicted witch. "Art School Orgy" (New Reality Records, 2023) is a 'BDSM extravaganza'. Before this Home published his collected poems "SEND CA$H" (Morbid Books 2018) and a book about martial arts films "Re-Enter The Dragon: Genre Theory, Brucesploitation & The Sleazy Joys of Lowbrow Cinema" (Ledatape 2018).
Home's unusual approach to writing is reflected in the readings he gives from his novels: he recites from memory, utilises ventriloquism, stands on his head and declaims his work and even shreds his own books.
Home's first book "The Assault on Culture: Utopian Currents from Lettrisme to Class War" (Aporia Press and Unpopular Books, London, 1988) is an underground art history sketching continuations of dadist and surrealist influences on post-World War II fringe radical art.
Home's first novel "Pure Mania" was published 1989 (Polygon Books), and details a violent neo-punk subculture. Unmistakenly postmodern but nfluenced by surrealism and the nouveau roman, it pushes the appropriation of pulp tropes and use of repetition found within historical avant-garde fiction to such an extreme that some critics mistook it for a piece of low-brow writing.
Home continued in much the same vein with his next four novels, starting with "Defiant Pose" (Peter Owen, 1991) and continuing with "Red London" (AK Press 1994), "Blow Job" (published in 1997 but written in 1994) and Slow Death (Serpent's Tail 1996).
All Home’s early fiction collages in large amounts of prose from a wide variety of sources – and while it is often close in spirit to the work of ‘postmodern extremists’ such as Kathy Acker, the appropriated material is much more heavily reworked than in the latter’s books.
The novels Home wrote after the mid-nineties featured less subcultural material than his earlier books and focus more obviously on issues of form and aesthetics. Home’s sixth novel "Come Before Christ And Murder Love" (Serpent's Tail 1997) featured a schizophrenic narrator whose personality changed every time he had an orgasm. This was the first novel Home wrote in the first person, and much of the fiction he wrote after this utilised the device of an unreliable first-person narrator.
"Cunt" (Do Not Press 1999) is a postmodern take on the picaresque novel. "69 Things to Do With A Dead Princess" (Canongate 2002) mixes porn with capsule reviews of dozens of obscure books as well as elaborate descriptions of stone circles, while in "Down and Out In Shoreditch & Hoxton" (Do Not Press 2004) every paragraph is exactly 100 words long. "Tainted Love" (Virgin Books) is based on the life of the author's mother, who was part of the London subcultural scene in the 1960s. "Memphis Underground" (Snow Books 2007) has a long conventional literary opening that is slowly unravelled.
Home’s 2010 novel "Blood Rites of the Bourgeois" (Book Works) is to date his only work written in the second person. The plot – as far as there is one - concerns an artist hacking the computers of London’s cultural elite to infect them with modified penis enlargement spam. Reviewing Home’s incredibly weird campus novel "Mandy, Charlie & Mary-Jane" (Penny-Ante Editions 2013) for The Guardian, Nicholas Lezard observes: “I think one of the great virtues of Home's work is the way it forces us to address our own complacency.”
"The 9 Lives of Ray The Cat Jones" (Test Centre 2014) is a fictional exploration of the life of one of the author's more infamous criminal relatives. "She's My Witch" (London Books 2020), is a love story exploring an unlikely relationship between a fitness instructor and a heroin addicted witch. "Art School Orgy" (New Reality Records, 2023) is a 'BDSM extravaganza'. Before this Home published his collected poems "SEND CA$H" (Morbid Books 2018) and a book about martial arts films "Re-Enter The Dragon: Genre Theory, Brucesploitation & The Sleazy Joys of Lowbrow Cinema" (Ledatape 2018).
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
December 27, 2011
There is an extract from this book at the following link: http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/luv...
January 4, 2013
En el prólogo de “Memphis Underground” (publicado en nuestro país por Alpha Decay), Kiko Amat advierte de la dificultosa tarea que le queda por delante a ese lector que ha elegido encarar un libro que queda fuera de los márgenes de la literatura clásica. Está claro que este aviso para navegantes erráticos sólo consigue una cosa: poner palote a los que saben más o menos de qué va el tema. Y es que Stewart Home es una figura capaz de dejar en bragas a entes presuntamente subversivos en el panorama literario actual: ¿Salman Rushdie? ¡Ríete tú de Salman Rushdie! Y ríete a mandíbula batiente, porque Home no se corta un pelo a la hora de lanzar dardos envenenados contra el autor de “Los Versos Satánicos” y contra toda la cohorte de literatos apoltronados en las formas tradicionales de un medio que murió hace demasiado tiempo y que ahora sólo es posible por la vía de la antiliteratura. No lo digo yo. Lo dice Stewart Home en las páginas de su libro: ”Memphis Underground no es exactamente una novela. He dado a luz a varios textos publicados como novelas que en realidad son otra cosa. Después de Joyce, después de Finnegans Wake, escribir novelas no tiene sentido. La literatura está muerta. La única literatura que me interesa es más antiliteraria que literaria“. Y lo cierto es que la mención continua de conceptos como antiliteratura y neoísmo pueden espantar a cualquiera (de hecho, desde ya declaro que mis conocimientos de este “ismo” son bastante parcos y que esta va a ser una crítica realizada precisamente desde estas limitaciones). Pero aquí va otra advertencia totalmente compatible con la de Amat: no necesitas conocer de antemano los mencionados conceptos teóricos para disfrtuar de “Memphis Underground“. Porque, al fin y al cabo, la destrucción de la literatura de Stewart Home se basa precisamente en chapotear en el medio (o, bueno, en las ruinas del medio) con la sana alegría de un punk rebozándose en las patadas y codazos de un pogo coniertil. Vamos: algo tan primitivo y emocional que está al alcance de cualquiera.
De hecho, y por mucho que Home proclame a los cuatro vientos sus intenciones antiliterarias, sorprende cómo la primera mitad de “Memphis Underground” presenta unos patrones narrativos si no clásicos, por lo menos lo suficientemente apegados a la posmodernidad literaria como para ser fagocitados con fervor y entendidos de forma mínimamente ordenada. Eso siempre que estés dispuesto a pagar el peaje inevitable que propone el autor: ”Como ejercicio puramente técnico, recapitulé información a partir de mapas y diagramas y la convertí en prosa. He aquí una auténtica antiliteratura responsable de interesantes efectos“. Esta es tan sólo una de las técnicas empleadas por Home para plantear en esta primera mitad una trama paranoide, casi esquizoíde, en la que las vivencias de dos personajes se alternan en caminos paralelos. El primero es un tipo que se arrastra por un Londres hostil en el que parece imposible conservar un trabajo y una vivienda. El segundo es un joven que aprovecha al máximo una beca artística en una zona residencial que acaba revelándose como una “cárcel” sin muros de contención para antiguas estrellas que han decidido desaparecer de la vida pública. De hecho, el surrealismo se hace extremo cuando uno de los personajes de esta segunda trama resulta ser Lady Di… Un surrealismo que queda en agua de borrajas cuando, al final de esta primera parte, Home alumbra al lector con una revelación juguetona (peligro de spoiler): los dos personajes son la misma persona y, de hecho, el final de una de las dos historias es el principio de la otra.
En la correspondencia entre los dos espacios (los suburbios londinenses y la zona residencial) podría contenerse la finalidad última de “Memphis Underground” si nos fiamos de la pluma de Home: “Estoy trabajando en una novela llamada Memphis Underground que trata sobre cómo los guetos y los barrios residenciales se crean los unos a los otros“. Y lo cierto es que esta sería una teoría interesante si no fuera porque el mismo autor se autosabotea durante toda la novela (o antinovela o lo que sea): la segunda parte del libro, una venganza directa sobre los que pensaron que en la primera mitad el autor agachaba las orejas, vuelve a contar dos historias en paralelo. Una parece seguir al personaje de la primera parte (quien, en este caso, vive un episodio altamente onírico y poderosamente melómano junto a la mismísima Muerte), mientras que la segunda bien podría ser un diario personal altamente digresivo del mismo Stewart Home. Es aquí, precisamente, donde parece revelarse el objetivo del autor. O, al menos, los dos objetivos del autor, que resulta que vienen a engrasar la maquinaria neoísta. Para empezar, “Memphis Underground” supone un cuadruple viaje por los entresijos menos complacientes del arte en cualquiera de sus disciplinas: gráficas, literarias, performancísticas… o, simple y llanamente, el arte como medio de vida. Al sobrepasar la cima de su punto y final, no es extraño quedar totalmente devastado como quien contempla un campo de batalla sobre el que será difícil que crezca nueva vida. La visión del arte de Home es la de un medio que no sólo está muerto, sino que incluso va siendo profanado en ataques necrofílicos que rozan lo absurdo. Ataques a los que cuesta encontrar un sentido definido y ante los que sólo queda una salida: la del fake y la impostura como juego (como los de uno de los personajes durante su beca artística).
Y si esa visión es devastadora, tampoco se queda atrás otra consideración estrechamente ligada a la anterior: el fake y la impostura comportan, indefectiblemente, un acoso y derribo del concepto de identidad. Esa misma identidad que ha vertebrado la comprensión del arte como una expresión individual e intransferible. Sin esa confianza en el concepto de autoría, el arte se viene abajo… Y sin esa confianza en la necesidad de un protagonista como caracter inquebrantable, de psicología inequívoca que se adhiere a una presentación, nudo y desenlace, cualquiera podría pensar que la literatura también se debería venir abajo. Pero Home se las ingenia para que su antinovela contenga más literatura que un alto porcentaje de los libros publicados en el panorama actual. Porque literatura no debería ser mímesis ni repetición de un modelo agotado. Porque literatura no debería ser la perpetuación de unas estructuras caducas. Literatura, Stewart Home lo sabe, debe ser una búsqueda vibrante que culebrea en el cenagoso territorio limítrofe entre las expectativas del lector virgen acabado de llegar y las preguntas sembradas en ese mismo lector que han de florecer a su salida. Literatura debería ser un debate abierto sobre los límites del medio. Literatura debería ser todo lo que “Memphis Underground” nos vende como antiliteratura.
De hecho, y por mucho que Home proclame a los cuatro vientos sus intenciones antiliterarias, sorprende cómo la primera mitad de “Memphis Underground” presenta unos patrones narrativos si no clásicos, por lo menos lo suficientemente apegados a la posmodernidad literaria como para ser fagocitados con fervor y entendidos de forma mínimamente ordenada. Eso siempre que estés dispuesto a pagar el peaje inevitable que propone el autor: ”Como ejercicio puramente técnico, recapitulé información a partir de mapas y diagramas y la convertí en prosa. He aquí una auténtica antiliteratura responsable de interesantes efectos“. Esta es tan sólo una de las técnicas empleadas por Home para plantear en esta primera mitad una trama paranoide, casi esquizoíde, en la que las vivencias de dos personajes se alternan en caminos paralelos. El primero es un tipo que se arrastra por un Londres hostil en el que parece imposible conservar un trabajo y una vivienda. El segundo es un joven que aprovecha al máximo una beca artística en una zona residencial que acaba revelándose como una “cárcel” sin muros de contención para antiguas estrellas que han decidido desaparecer de la vida pública. De hecho, el surrealismo se hace extremo cuando uno de los personajes de esta segunda trama resulta ser Lady Di… Un surrealismo que queda en agua de borrajas cuando, al final de esta primera parte, Home alumbra al lector con una revelación juguetona (peligro de spoiler): los dos personajes son la misma persona y, de hecho, el final de una de las dos historias es el principio de la otra.
En la correspondencia entre los dos espacios (los suburbios londinenses y la zona residencial) podría contenerse la finalidad última de “Memphis Underground” si nos fiamos de la pluma de Home: “Estoy trabajando en una novela llamada Memphis Underground que trata sobre cómo los guetos y los barrios residenciales se crean los unos a los otros“. Y lo cierto es que esta sería una teoría interesante si no fuera porque el mismo autor se autosabotea durante toda la novela (o antinovela o lo que sea): la segunda parte del libro, una venganza directa sobre los que pensaron que en la primera mitad el autor agachaba las orejas, vuelve a contar dos historias en paralelo. Una parece seguir al personaje de la primera parte (quien, en este caso, vive un episodio altamente onírico y poderosamente melómano junto a la mismísima Muerte), mientras que la segunda bien podría ser un diario personal altamente digresivo del mismo Stewart Home. Es aquí, precisamente, donde parece revelarse el objetivo del autor. O, al menos, los dos objetivos del autor, que resulta que vienen a engrasar la maquinaria neoísta. Para empezar, “Memphis Underground” supone un cuadruple viaje por los entresijos menos complacientes del arte en cualquiera de sus disciplinas: gráficas, literarias, performancísticas… o, simple y llanamente, el arte como medio de vida. Al sobrepasar la cima de su punto y final, no es extraño quedar totalmente devastado como quien contempla un campo de batalla sobre el que será difícil que crezca nueva vida. La visión del arte de Home es la de un medio que no sólo está muerto, sino que incluso va siendo profanado en ataques necrofílicos que rozan lo absurdo. Ataques a los que cuesta encontrar un sentido definido y ante los que sólo queda una salida: la del fake y la impostura como juego (como los de uno de los personajes durante su beca artística).
Y si esa visión es devastadora, tampoco se queda atrás otra consideración estrechamente ligada a la anterior: el fake y la impostura comportan, indefectiblemente, un acoso y derribo del concepto de identidad. Esa misma identidad que ha vertebrado la comprensión del arte como una expresión individual e intransferible. Sin esa confianza en el concepto de autoría, el arte se viene abajo… Y sin esa confianza en la necesidad de un protagonista como caracter inquebrantable, de psicología inequívoca que se adhiere a una presentación, nudo y desenlace, cualquiera podría pensar que la literatura también se debería venir abajo. Pero Home se las ingenia para que su antinovela contenga más literatura que un alto porcentaje de los libros publicados en el panorama actual. Porque literatura no debería ser mímesis ni repetición de un modelo agotado. Porque literatura no debería ser la perpetuación de unas estructuras caducas. Literatura, Stewart Home lo sabe, debe ser una búsqueda vibrante que culebrea en el cenagoso territorio limítrofe entre las expectativas del lector virgen acabado de llegar y las preguntas sembradas en ese mismo lector que han de florecer a su salida. Literatura debería ser un debate abierto sobre los límites del medio. Literatura debería ser todo lo que “Memphis Underground” nos vende como antiliteratura.
June 4, 2010
Fascinating mash-up of overlapping narratives about art vandals, government pranks, wife swapping, soul music, blow-up dolls, council housing, heroin addiction, arts funding, and Death. Home undercuts the more sensational novelistic content by including personal interviews, aesthetic manifestos, and diary-type entries. It all coheres into a combustible cocktail that critiques current notions of the novel and draws inspiration from pulpy page-turners, while setting out on its own path that's beholden to neither.
March 7, 2012
Al terminar este libro me parece increíble que Stewart Home no estuviera traducido en nuestro país. A su lado hasta Welsh es un PUPAS. Fantástico.
February 21, 2024
Entertaining narrative at first, then turning into some sort of diary with too much sex/boring detail but strangely had a very unlikely Joyce theory near the end: that Joyce had a strong liking for Finland. "I'm Not Half Norawain for Nothing" so nice try.
December 28, 2020
Hugely frustrating. Somewhere in these pages lies a truly great novel but each time it begins to emerge, the constant anti-writing structure and technique of the narrative quashes it.
December 14, 2016
Like a Modern Art exhibition this book went from truly awful to amazingly wonderful and back (sometimes in the same paragraph).
The book cover resembles a vinyl record and there are many times the narrative passes by Berwick Street Market and other vinyl emporiums in London and elsewhere. The short chapters are titled with what could be the titles of Northern Soul classics, if I could be bothered to check. The protagonist could be fictional or the real Stewart Home, he goes by many names describe himself as an Afro Celt and adds the caveat that biographies and autobiographies in particular are works of fiction.
The book is a bizarre mash-up of overlapping narratives about art vandals, struggling on welfare (“welfare payments had become rarer in the British Isles than sightings of red squirrels“), wife swapping, soul music, blow-up dolls, council housing, heroin addiction, arts funding and Death. Home undercuts the more sensational novelistic content by including personal interviews, aesthetic manifestos, and diary-type entries.
He suggests describing cold turkey would be as meaningless as a 10 000 word essay on the inside of a ping pong ball, but then goes on to describe it anyway.
In the beginning we see the protagonist, taking the identity “Tony Cheam” and going to work in the Orkney Islands at an open prison, as an artist-in-residence. He wants to blow up the Old Man of Hoy a giant rock stack in the name of art. He delights in the vandalism of art, like the burning of David Mach’s Polaris or the Chinese artists having a pillow fight on Tracey Emin’s bed. He is unhappy when the governor of the open prison, wants to see him make real art. “The cretin was forcing me to produce what he called proper drawings.” He incites the burning of the exhibition to collect on the insurance money. There is a lot about contemporary art and culture and the mediocrity of Salman Rushdie's writing.
"I sometimes fantasised about giving up impersonating a barely professional artist and turning to crime, but I was too stuck in a junk rut to make any changes to my life."
This isn't so much a novel as an anti-novel, the author making an appearance midway through and staying there. "After Joyce, post Finnegan’s Wake, there really isn’t any point in writing novels – Literature is dead.” There are many references to contemporary cultural figures.
"Cain's Book is autobiography written by a writer intelligent enough to understand that this meant it was also fiction."
There is much talk of neoism, I don't know if this is an actual art movement or just a parody, being a prefix and suffix with no substance between.
One of the characters is called Claire Grogan, but no references are made to Altered Images (the lead singer of said band is also Claire Grogan), is it just coincidence, the character penned is a sex object from a privileged background.
Near the end of the book Home writes:
"Under the codename Memphis Underground, the Reaper wanted to create a meaningless post-modern allegory using me as the canvas on which to paint his sick vision.”
There is a lot of repetition, whether it be making trips around London to find rare vinyl or perverted playing with blow up dolls. One of the strangest books, I’ve ever read.
My rating for this book overall is 3 out of 5 (some parts were worthy of 5 out of 5 and others 0 out of 5). Maybe it would be better to submit two reviews one rated 5 stars and the other one....
The book cover resembles a vinyl record and there are many times the narrative passes by Berwick Street Market and other vinyl emporiums in London and elsewhere. The short chapters are titled with what could be the titles of Northern Soul classics, if I could be bothered to check. The protagonist could be fictional or the real Stewart Home, he goes by many names describe himself as an Afro Celt and adds the caveat that biographies and autobiographies in particular are works of fiction.
The book is a bizarre mash-up of overlapping narratives about art vandals, struggling on welfare (“welfare payments had become rarer in the British Isles than sightings of red squirrels“), wife swapping, soul music, blow-up dolls, council housing, heroin addiction, arts funding and Death. Home undercuts the more sensational novelistic content by including personal interviews, aesthetic manifestos, and diary-type entries.
He suggests describing cold turkey would be as meaningless as a 10 000 word essay on the inside of a ping pong ball, but then goes on to describe it anyway.
In the beginning we see the protagonist, taking the identity “Tony Cheam” and going to work in the Orkney Islands at an open prison, as an artist-in-residence. He wants to blow up the Old Man of Hoy a giant rock stack in the name of art. He delights in the vandalism of art, like the burning of David Mach’s Polaris or the Chinese artists having a pillow fight on Tracey Emin’s bed. He is unhappy when the governor of the open prison, wants to see him make real art. “The cretin was forcing me to produce what he called proper drawings.” He incites the burning of the exhibition to collect on the insurance money. There is a lot about contemporary art and culture and the mediocrity of Salman Rushdie's writing.
"I sometimes fantasised about giving up impersonating a barely professional artist and turning to crime, but I was too stuck in a junk rut to make any changes to my life."
This isn't so much a novel as an anti-novel, the author making an appearance midway through and staying there. "After Joyce, post Finnegan’s Wake, there really isn’t any point in writing novels – Literature is dead.” There are many references to contemporary cultural figures.
"Cain's Book is autobiography written by a writer intelligent enough to understand that this meant it was also fiction."
There is much talk of neoism, I don't know if this is an actual art movement or just a parody, being a prefix and suffix with no substance between.
One of the characters is called Claire Grogan, but no references are made to Altered Images (the lead singer of said band is also Claire Grogan), is it just coincidence, the character penned is a sex object from a privileged background.
Near the end of the book Home writes:
"Under the codename Memphis Underground, the Reaper wanted to create a meaningless post-modern allegory using me as the canvas on which to paint his sick vision.”
There is a lot of repetition, whether it be making trips around London to find rare vinyl or perverted playing with blow up dolls. One of the strangest books, I’ve ever read.
My rating for this book overall is 3 out of 5 (some parts were worthy of 5 out of 5 and others 0 out of 5). Maybe it would be better to submit two reviews one rated 5 stars and the other one....
January 15, 2012
The first half is jolly good fun and show Stewart could be a great sitcom writer for Channel 4, penning savagely satirical episodes for "Peep Show" and the like. After that we get increasingly serious and reminded that SH sees himself as a groundbreaking literary provocateur in the vein of B.S.Johnson (the film version of "Christie Malry" gets a mention here). But although he takes the formal experimentation, he simply doesn't have the skill, poetry, tenderness or self-aware regret that BSJ showed in "Trawl", "The Unfortunates" or anywhere else. Despite his long interest in aesthetics he has little sense of style: the writing is plodding, full of cliches and redundancies, and this carries over in to the autobiographical sections, it is not simply a device for the fictional chunks. His lifestyle as an international artscene subsidy whore is just a career in marketing, travelling between business conferences and sales pitches. The reflections on dead friends are simply awkward memories of awkward moments: lost opportuntities, a failure to communicate beyond self-imposed limitations. He should just pitch a "Comedy Lab" script, but avoid any dated stuff about Diana, the Devil, "the postmodern", or other long-exhausted seams of parody.
But then again I haven't yet read the copy of "Tainted Love" I bought, so perhaps I might have to reverse some of the above judgements. See, I'm all self-referential in this review, clever me.
But then again I haven't yet read the copy of "Tainted Love" I bought, so perhaps I might have to reverse some of the above judgements. See, I'm all self-referential in this review, clever me.
October 17, 2015
As he writes in the final chapter: "For many years I've modelled my prose on pulp styles that were in turn influenced by the popular press. Although I want a critical relationship to all modes of writing, this does not necessarily prevent me from being entertaining. I do what I do at least partially because I find it amusing. I want to combine critique, poetics and popular storytelling."
August 13, 2013
Soy tan postmoderno, tan fragmentado, tan innovador, tan contracultural... Que escribo mierda para cools con granos. Lo mejor del libro, su encuadernación.
June 5, 2024
Ya lo dice Kiko Amat en el prólogo, no es fácil de seguir y a veces le pegarías un puñetazo a Home.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews