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American
Psycho
Despite these ambiguities, the violence - real or imagined - is shocking, but not half as shocking as the realisation that Patrick's numbing monologues on Whitney Houston, Phil Collins and Huey Lewis and The News satirise the shocking acceptance by western consumers for undemanding, banal and mentally degenerative art-forms.
Despite these ambiguities, the violence - real or imagined - is shocking, but not half as shocking as the realisation that Patrick's numbing monologues on Whitney Houston, Phil Collins and Huey Lewis and The News satirise the shocking acceptance by western consumers for undemanding, banal and mentally degenerative art-forms.
"In AD 802,701 a Victorian Time Traveller finds the beautiful Eloi living a life of idleness. But, as becomes slowly clear, the plot of The Time Machine is the plot of evolution, and in this Victorian future, evolution runs backwards. The Eloi are not our only descendants. Beneath this apparent Eden lurks another life form."
smart-d: a cut-up bastardisation - the cybernetic car repair manual as written by William S Burroughs
Come
Closer
It's surely not a novel, I mean novels these days are a bloated 4 million pages, at least. "Come Closer" runs to an anorexic 168. Nice short chapters as well, just to keep borderline neurotics like me on side. That's one of the many symptoms of incipient insanity, you see, a failure to focus on one thing for more than a few minutes. Um, where was I?
It's surely not a novel, I mean novels these days are a bloated 4 million pages, at least. "Come Closer" runs to an anorexic 168. Nice short chapters as well, just to keep borderline neurotics like me on side. That's one of the many symptoms of incipient insanity, you see, a failure to focus on one thing for more than a few minutes. Um, where was I?
Visits
From The Drowned Girl
I don't believe that writing can be taught. Like painting (pictures you fool, not doorframes), writing is an art. It cannot be measured or accounted or explained, except by philistine dullards. You know who they are.
I don't believe that writing can be taught. Like painting (pictures you fool, not doorframes), writing is an art. It cannot be measured or accounted or explained, except by philistine dullards. You know who they are.
Kiss
Me Softly, Amy Turtle
Imagine and you're a reader, it shouldn't be too difficult imagine a cross between Will Self and James Ellroy. No, don¹t imagine a plot crossover, because then you'd be struggling personfully (look here, I'm Mr PC Personified, no passé man-isms from me) with something called Dorian Confidential, or Tough, Tough Toys For Tough And Violently Corrupt LAPD Cops Circa 1951.
Imagine and you're a reader, it shouldn't be too difficult imagine a cross between Will Self and James Ellroy. No, don¹t imagine a plot crossover, because then you'd be struggling personfully (look here, I'm Mr PC Personified, no passé man-isms from me) with something called Dorian Confidential, or Tough, Tough Toys For Tough And Violently Corrupt LAPD Cops Circa 1951.
Remembered
America
So why, you ask is McNeil reviewing this? Why not somebody with a passing knowledge of poetry? Simple, really. I blagged the review because I'm a literary review whore: I'll review anything, just to get my name up there.
So why, you ask is McNeil reviewing this? Why not somebody with a passing knowledge of poetry? Simple, really. I blagged the review because I'm a literary review whore: I'll review anything, just to get my name up there.
Nicolo's
Gifts
To say that I devoured the book from this point in one sitting would be to exaggerate only slightly I had to rise from my Landaise armchair several times to recharge my glass with a robust Bordeaux. By the end of my evening a host of characters had converged, diverged and changed. All had lived, some had loved and some had died. Tears were shed and not just by characters in the book. Wine notwithstanding, the final few pages of Nicolo's Gifts moved me in such a way that only a few other books ever have.
Neil Ayres interviewed by Dan McNeil
To say that I devoured the book from this point in one sitting would be to exaggerate only slightly I had to rise from my Landaise armchair several times to recharge my glass with a robust Bordeaux. By the end of my evening a host of characters had converged, diverged and changed. All had lived, some had loved and some had died. Tears were shed and not just by characters in the book. Wine notwithstanding, the final few pages of Nicolo's Gifts moved me in such a way that only a few other books ever have.
Neil Ayres interviewed by Dan McNeil
Very early on in this delightful book, McQueen explains that collecting stones from a beach will, if carried out regularly, lighten that beach over a considerable period of time.
