I have a special fondness for the stories of wayward—particularly British—ex-pats getting into trouble in foreign places that they fail to completely understand. Often these protagonists (sometimes the authors themselves) are heavy drinkers, stumbling through essentially existential narratives. Graham Greene would be the quintessential example of these kind of writers, but also Anthony Burgess—particularly when he writes about [...]
I was going to let it pass without comment, but the knowledge has been nagging me, insistently, with a need to share. Yesterday marked the anniversary of the release, in December of 1979, of the greatest rock-n-roll album of all time: The Clash‘s London Calling. I’ve told this story before, but it’s my party and [...]
Since it made my top-10 of the decade, Richard K Morgan’s outrageous noir-fantasy The Steel Remains has continued to occupy a small, dark corner of the back of my brain—largely because I learned, shortly after reading the novel, that it was the first in a planned trilogy tentatively identified as A Land Fit for Heroes. Normally I’m not a huge fan [...]
The excellent Bookride blog has posted a great little article on “The near and far future of the book“, which is a topic that gets no small amount of press in the age of Kindle and iPad—and is a near obsessive topic for booksellers. I think this article succinctly summarizes my own opinions: reading will occur more [...]
Damien G. Walter, in a recent Guardian blog post, attacks what he sees as a failure on the part of literary fiction—with its apparent obsession with realism (or its complete disconnection through postmodernism)—to confront the “real” issues of our times; he quotes J. G. Ballard: “We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind—mass-merchandising, advertising, [...]
Speaking of China Miéville, in digging up a link for my previous post, I stumbled upon this great little interview with China from August of this year. My favourite line is the one about the “D&Dification of Pynchon“, which, in some ways, captures what’s cool about China’s approach to writing. China has stated in interviews [...]
As a fan of Robert E. Howard’s most iconic character, Conan—and not necessarily the movie, comics and games versions—I anticipate the latest upcoming screen version with equal parts hope and dread. We who have actually read the original, unadulterated Howard stories know that Conan is a much more complex and nuanced character than the one that has entered pop consciousness; [...]
