Andrew > Recent Status Updates

Was perhaps abit harsh on this. Section on Northumbria and Basil Bunting's poetry is genuinely fascinating and introduced me to his work (priority find now!). But still dont know where the fuck its going, its still hoplessly waffly, its argument is weak (its reliance of hearsay, unattributed sources, generalised cultural observations are hardly rigrious) and terribly self indulgent. So a perfect Zero Book then!

Another howler. Niven writes that the contradiction was that the "economic basis of NL was Thatcherite, and Thatcherism was of course a political movement firmly embedded in the south-east of England". In one sentence hes done a sleight of hand which conflates the economics of Thatcherism with its politics. Thatcherism was economically neoliberal, but politically Tory. NL was economically AND culturally neolib.

Almost half way am not fucking impressed. Tries to tart up Britpop as some absurd product of regional working class culture with an ear to 60s continental modernism, when plainly it was a macho postering, deeply consumerist establishment ploy recreating beach town mod thugginess. His argument that Blairism represented sublimated, warped New Left desires ignores a) new left desires were garbage and b) the late Marxist

Pages 16 to about 160 i think are some of the best, most savagely brilliant, astonishingly insightful, meticolously observed prose I've read on the emergent yuppie middle class (still in incohate form in 75) and the latent tendencies for affulent capitalist societies to degenerate into fascism. Actually astonishing how prescient it is. The last 50 pgs now seem to drag terribly. Its momentum has just vanished

Btw the goodreads thing here is fucking wrong. Its 149 pgs not 213! Who puts these fucking books on here.

Goodness me Barker is really something else. His bombastic, almost archaic style of writing at times is nevertheless brilliant, its proper literature applied to an often "trash" genre. And god, Barker really gets the horror of the flesh. Out of the 3 stories read so far, not 1 has been immune to some kind of excruciating physical agony. Its such sensous horror. Its brillant.