tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-82514228186750337352024-03-13T06:53:41.832-07:00The Lost Book LibraryRichard Blandfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02884345651132518354noreply@blogger.comBlogger110125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8251422818675033735.post-77876000082822185622018-01-21T06:55:00.001-08:002018-01-21T06:55:52.455-08:00The Desperadoes and Other Stories<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Title:</b> The Desperadoes and Other Stories<br />
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<b>Author:</b> Stan Barstow<br />
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<b>Year of publication:</b> 1961, Penguin edition 1965<br />
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<b>Back cover blurb:</b> 'A group of young tearaways on a night out that begins with horse-play and ends in tragedy; the loneliness of a drunken miner's wife; a war-shocked ex-sailor forced beyond endurance - these are some of the stories included in this collection.'<br />
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<b>Reading reveals:</b> Stan Barstow wrote <i>A Kind of Loving</i>, the great Kitchen Sink novel that isn't <i>Room at the Top</i> or the other one. In this collection of stories, generally impoverished people do quite banal things, like appear in amateur dramatics or redecorate a flat. They don't express themselves in particularly interesting ways, and not a lot really happens for much of it. Barstow's trick, however, which he pulls off with aplomb in pretty much every story, is to end on a devastating detail that exposes the innermost desires and fears of his characters. Very much the work of someone who knows what they're doing.<br />
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<b>Random paragraph:</b> 'She did not hold his look but sipped tea from her cup, looking past him through the lace-curtained window into the narrow street. He wished once again for the power to read her mind.'<br />
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<a href="http://amzn.to/2F1Gxrs" target="_blank">Purchase</a>Richard Blandfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02884345651132518354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8251422818675033735.post-26014267080116701702017-06-12T07:49:00.002-07:002017-06-12T07:49:26.669-07:00A Fine Madness<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fIg_xqRF858/WT6pcy70S0I/AAAAAAAAA4E/maZRP53nOLkkF5nEMJHwNstx1ngdREXyQCLcB/s1600/lbl104.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1413" data-original-width="875" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fIg_xqRF858/WT6pcy70S0I/AAAAAAAAA4E/maZRP53nOLkkF5nEMJHwNstx1ngdREXyQCLcB/s320/lbl104.jpg" width="197" /></a><b>Title</b>: A Fine Madness<br />
<br />
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fIg_xqRF858/WT6pcy70S0I/AAAAAAAAA4E/maZRP53nOLkkF5nEMJHwNstx1ngdREXyQCLcB/s1600/lbl104.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><b>Author:</b> Elliott Baker<br />
<br />
<b>Year of publication:</b> 1964, Penguin edition 1966.<br />
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fIg_xqRF858/WT6pcy70S0I/AAAAAAAAA4E/maZRP53nOLkkF5nEMJHwNstx1ngdREXyQCLcB/s1600/lbl104.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><b>Back cover blurb:</b> 'He is a poet, and the world is not shaped for poets. His ex-wife's father is after him for long overdue alimony and his violent relationship with the woman he now lives with threatens to destroy them both. So when the psychiatrists start to 'help' him, they had better watch out for their own minds - and their wives! Because this poet will always flee from sanity.'<br />
<br />
<b>Reading reveals:</b> Samson Shillitoe is the worst kind of Twentieth Century creative male - a hard drinking woman-beater who will sleep with just about anyone as long as it destroys lives. A series of unfortunate incidents leads to him coming under psychiatric care, with hilarious lobotomy-involving consequences.<br />
Actually a finely-constructed farce, only let down by a few too many minor characters getting the limelight and the odd needlessly confusing scene (a group of psychiatrists get the results of a vote while in the middle of voting on something else, for instance). Maybe not quite as funny as it needs to be. It's no <i>Confederacy of Dunces</i>, but it's next rung down.<br />
Cover shows Sean Connery up a pole from the film version. Disappointingly, he does not spend the whole film up the pole, as I had at first assumed.<br />
<br />
<b>Random paragraph:</b> '"But I did dream it last night." Shillitoe sat up and stretched. "I often dream of things I've read. One night last year, I dreamt most of War and Peace. Naturally I overslept."'<br />
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<a href="http://amzn.to/2sU1FLm" target="_blank">Purchase</a>Richard Blandfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02884345651132518354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8251422818675033735.post-27802455607695505552017-05-12T05:43:00.000-07:002017-05-12T05:43:18.121-07:00Night Games<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Title:</b> Night Games<br />
<br />
<b>Author:</b> Mai Zetterling<br />
<br />
<b>Year of publication</b>: 1966, Panther Edition 1968<br />
<br />
<b>Back cover blurb:</b> 'we live in the mind of a teenage boy - the macabre, grotesque nightmare of his memories: sexual obsession with his promiscuous mother; the ageing aunt who shares his strange cannibalistic games; the great luxurious house that envelopes them like a womb - or a morgue... And in the present there's the beautiful Mariana, his one hope of rebirth. But first he must exorcise his past, so they enter the human hell of the night games - humiliating, degraded, profane...<br />
MAI ZETTERLING, the Swedish actress and film director, astonished the world with her first outrageous novel, and then turned it into an outrageous film - hailed, damned and the first to be censored at the Venice Film Festival.'<br />
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I met Mai Zetterling once, when I was fourteen. It was at the premiere of the film version of Roald Dahl's <i>The Witches</i>, directed by Nicolas Roeg, which was held at the prestigious location of the newly-opened Cannon multiplex at Ocean Village, Southampton. Zetterling, who during the fifties and early sixties was a stalwart of British film, adding a touch of Swedish sophistication to many a potboiler, played the grandmother in it, and I had come second in a short film competition with my existential super-eight meisterwerk, <i>The True Face</i>. That there were only two entries in total is neither here nor there. Anyway, after receiving my plaque, Zetterling introduced herself and explained that she was an actor and filmmaker and suggested that perhaps one day I would follow in her footsteps and become a professional filmmaker also. This, of course, did not happen. Well, you know, with one thing and another... I'm sorry, Mai. It's just not the way my life panned out. Please forgive me, Mai. Why can't you forgive me? Get out of my head, Mai. GET OUT OF MY <br />
<br />
Zetterling did not mention that she had also written a novel, which she had then adapted into her first feature film as director. I did, nevertheless, go on to write a couple of novels myself. Is that enough for you, Mai? Is that enough? WHY ISN'T THAT ENOU<br />
<br />
The novel, like the film, is a bit much. While the film version is like watching Fellini, Bunuel and Bergman put through a mangle (John Waters is a fan), the novel is similarly excessive, with every detail thoroughly mined for psychodramatic effect as we examine a man's fucked-up childhood memories of his sexy mother, which overall is quite exhausting. Nevertheless, that someone so established in one field would throw caution to the wind and do something quite this barmy in another is to be celebrated. It is the type of novel Martine McCutcheon one day needs to write.<br />
<br />
<b>Random paragraph:</b> 'Our cover is, I suppose, not unoriginal, though at first I don't approve of it. Our atrocious efforts are bound in pubic hair. Myself rather taken by textures, I will reluctantly admit that it is a pleasant thing to handle - though in the end becoming rather goatlike and cheesy in a locked drawer. But Albin says it is such an agreeable pastime to hunt for it that I haven't the heart to deny him this one small pleasure.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Night-Games-Mai-Zetterling/dp/0586024492/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1494592420&sr=1-9&linkCode=ll1&tag=richardblandf-21&linkId=31bc14a471740ac10f4ee675c642c1e2" target="_blank">Purchase</a>Richard Blandfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02884345651132518354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8251422818675033735.post-24513488504736139962016-04-18T06:40:00.003-07:002016-04-18T06:40:49.057-07:00The Dark Philosophers<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Title</b>: The Dark Philosophers<br />
<br />
<b>Author</b>: Gwyn Thomas<br />
<br />
<b>Year of publication</b>: 1946, Library of Wales edition 2005<br />
<br />
<b>Back cover blurb</b>: 'Sex, murder and devastating black humour mark these three novellas from the 1940s. In Oscar, the narrator of death and exploitation fails to fend off the evil that envelopes him. In Simeon, the abuse of sexual and family power ends with violent death, and in The Dark Philosophers itself, the grimly humorous philosophers gather in an Italian café in the Terraces to tell the dark tale of revenge that they engineer.'<br />
<br />
<b>Status</b>: Completed<br />
<br />
<b>Reading reveals</b>: Welsh author Gwyn Thomas was once well known, speaking on BBC radio with some regularity. A high media profile did not guarantee posterity, however (take note, Will Self), and not even a TV drama of his life starring Anthony Hopkins could save him from a slide into near-obscurity.<br />
I've always imagined the Welsh valleys to generally be places of God-bothering tedium, so the version presented here is quite a surprise. For a start, everyone is quite horny. Also, everyone is forced into hard compromises just to stop themselves from sinking under at a time of high unemployment and poverty. Often, these two things intersect.<br />
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zZnSJpOU9-A/VxTi0uXUCKI/AAAAAAAAA2w/yE19siu9ltMiRBX0bWzsyNLRdWW6BajmACLcB/s1600/lbl109.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a> The first story, <i>Oscar</i>, is about a man who owns a mountain and the man who looks after the man who owns the mountain. It's a disturbing tale of precisely what money will buy you when you've got some and no one else around has. It's a gruesome portrayal of a man's bestial state, and worth checking out.<br />
<i>The Dark Philosophers</i> itself, despite being the work that defined Thomas, is possibly the one here that has aged the least well. The philosophers themselves, three only-occasionally employed clientele of an Italian coffee shop, have a wit so cynical it wears you down after a while, and their half-love of their own poverty is one step away from Python's Four Yorkshiremen. Some scenes seem to exist only to present them with easy targets, and their willingness to step over anybody in order to make a political point betrays them as being as monstrous in their own way as the capitalism they rail against.<br />
Up a hill again for the final story, <i>Simeon</i>, where a farmer turns to incest with his daughters in their remote cottage. It's quite creepy, like a children's story that goes very wrong, and also well worth your while.<br />
<br />
<b>Random paragraph</b>: '"In any case," I muttered, "I don't give a damn. Mountains, tips, Oscar, Danny, Hannah, work and pain, living and dying, it all looks terribly odd to me."'<br />
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<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00JYH6LM6/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=B00JYH6LM6&linkCode=as2&tag=richardblandf-21" rel="nofollow">Purchase</a><img alt="" border="0" src="http://ir-uk.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=richardblandf-21&l=as2&o=2&a=B00JYH6LM6" height="1" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />
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<br />Richard Blandfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02884345651132518354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8251422818675033735.post-40922356243963482102016-01-28T06:30:00.002-08:002016-01-28T06:30:20.791-08:00Live Now, Pay Later<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Title</b>: Live Now, Pay Later<br />
<br />
<b>Author</b>: Jack Trevor Story<br />
<br />
<b>Year of publication</b>: 1963<br />
<br />
Back cover blurb: <i><b>'Live Now, Pay Later</b></i> is not quite of this world, and certainly not of the next: it belongs to the world of the 'never-never,' somewhere on the outer fringe of that provincial England which Kingsley Amis and John Braine have shown us with almost shocking frankness.<br />
In Jack Trevor Story's provincial town - fast in the grip of Hire Purchase but living it up with brittle gallantry - we are shot into a convulsive existence of rapid results, devious politics, easy women, and easy payments. Somehow, though reluctantly, you have to hand it to the feckless Albert, prince of tally-boys, whatever squeezes he puts on the housewives. As they surrender to his promiscuous glamour, they seem to be caught up in a sorry serial where there's always another thrilling instalment next week. All except for Treasure: after eighteen months she had had enough.<br />
You're bound to laugh at the clipped and bawdy dialogue of this social merry-go-round. But you'll wince at the cutting edge of this brilliant writing.'<br />
<br />
<b>Status</b>: Completed<br />
<br />
<b>
Reading reveals</b>: Jack Trevor Story is best known for writing the novel <i>The Trouble With Harry</i>, made into a film by Alfred Hitchcock, and for being the inspiration for Jim Henson's '80s TV series <i>The Storytrevor</i>. Here, he explores the social menace of Hire Purchase, infecting the working classes with the promise of living beyond their means.<br />
It begins tremendously well, with the salesman and debt collector protagonist sleazing and furtively shagging his way around town as one did before the sixties properly happened. As it goes on, however, Story spreads his net too widely, and our attention is directed towards the business meetings of estate agents and the like, and the opportunity for an immersive character study is lost. Towards the end, the kitchen sink grimness of abortion, rape and the like sits uneasily with an increasingly comic plot, and a ridiculously unlikely accidental death pretty much threw me out of the book completely. You're left with the impression of a quite old-fashioned English comic novel being awkwardly dressed in new-fangled kitchen sink clothes, which is a shame, because the early chapters pack a powerful punch. The film version does very well on IMDB though, so maybe that irons it all out a bit.<br />
<br />
<b>Random paragraph</b>: 'From this Mr Callendar had reasoned there was more to Arnold than appeared on the surface; men who picked their nose in public were often underprivileged in some ghastly, unwholesome way. Later his faith was justified when he had learned that Arnold had once worked for a shady second-hand car dealer who had been handling stolen cars when the police caught up with him; it was to Arnold's immense credit, in Mr Callendar's opinion, that the car dealer and all his staff had gone to prison with the single exception of Arnold, against whom, apparently, there had been no evidence. Or at least, no believable evidence in the face of Arnold's steadfast denials.<br />
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<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0000CLNHC/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=B0000CLNHC&linkCode=as2&tag=richardblandf-21" rel="nofollow">Purchase</a><img alt="" border="0" src="http://ir-uk.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=richardblandf-21&l=as2&o=2&a=B0000CLNHC" height="1" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />
<br />Richard Blandfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02884345651132518354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8251422818675033735.post-31015580929459854822015-09-15T11:58:00.003-07:002015-09-15T11:58:50.563-07:00The Man Who Won the Pools<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Title</b>: The Man Who Won the Pools<br />
<br />
<b>Author</b>: J.I.M. Stewart<br />
<br />
<b>Year of publication</b>: 1961, Penguin edition 1963<br />
<br />
<b>Back cover blurb</b>: ''E were a mardy one as a nipper, our Phil. Steady work and steady money - that's 'is motto,' said Phil Tombs's auntie on TV when he won almost a quarter of a million on the pools.<br />
<br />
Nobody expects Phil to stay steady, however: they either take him for a rid, treat him like a proper nit, or try to organize his life for him. But Phil is no fool, and he makes an enterprising, amusing, and provocative hero as he learns the social nuances and the power of cash, charging from one adventure to another with proletarian gusto.<br />
<br />
The author of <i>A Use of Riches</i> in this entertaining novel employs his incisive style to depict the English social maze through his hero's intrigued and piercing gaze.'<br />
<br />
<b>Status</b>: Completed<br />
<br />
<b>Reading reveals</b>: Young man from a working class environment so emotionally constipated it's a wonder everyone doesn't throw themselves onto the road in frustration wins the pools. He doesn't seem that excited about it, and neither do his friends. This makes the first half of the novel a bit of a trudge as he listens to various Marxist-informed opinions about how he can invest it in co-operatives and the like.<br />
<br />
After a while, he goes to London and things get more interesting as he finds himself being duped into investing in a strip club and in the schemes of a mad inventor. Then there's some more class stuff and the book ends.<br />
<br />
Although it provides a neat window into ideas about wealth and class in pre-Beatles Britain, Oxford don Stewart, whom, one suspects, has never lived like common people, completely fails to grasp the desire those without have to improve the material lot of themselves and their family, something which Thatcher would understand and exploit all too well some years later.<br />
<br />
Overall, a worthwhile period piece that leaves you wondering why someone so devoid of dreams would bother playing the pools in the first place.<br />
<br />
<b>Random paragraph</b>: '"All right, But what I say's true. The rich don't get much life - not really. They know what they're sitting on the lid of. It seeps up through their fat behinds and seeps into their heads as a haunting guilt and anxiety. You can see it in their gilded youth. All that stalking about in breeches and bowler hats is a sham. There's a complete failure of confidence underneath."'Richard Blandfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02884345651132518354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8251422818675033735.post-80361908964576546162014-09-30T07:48:00.000-07:002014-09-30T07:48:17.609-07:00Hard Luck<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Title</b>: Hard Luck<br />
<br />
<b>Author</b>: James Maw<br />
<br />
<b>Year of publication</b>: 1986, Grafton edition 1988<br />
<br />
<b>Back cover blurb</b>: '"<i>Hard Luck</i> by James Maw is the extremely funny and touching, sentimental history of two boys growing up on a new town council estate called Prospect in post-war Britain; class, poverty, domestic violence, well-meaning idiocy and welfare bureaucracy are accurately flayed through the experiences of the endearing and astonishingly well sustained voice of one of their child victims... Dickensian satire and genuine affection... pure pleasure... take it on holiday and be grateful for mercies given"<br />
NEW STATESMAN<br />
<br />
For Tom and Richard, the Prospect estate is a territory to be explored and taken over. For their parents - doting Ellen and not-so-doting Frank - the estate is a brave new world (even if the underground pipes and valves don't work as smoothly as anticipated). Yes, times are changing; there's cuddly blue Winceyette instead of linen, and brightly coloured modern things instead of old fashioned junk. There's television, with fascinating programmes like "Criss Cross Quiz" and the "Dickie Henderson Show" (and Kennedy's assassination). But while nearly everyone is supposed to be having it good like never before, life for Tom and Richard isn't so easy. Their parents divorce and the twins go into the Crab Apple Home when Ellen ends up in hospital. Then there's the 11-plus...<br />
<i>Hard Luck</i> is a brilliantly evocative novel - as colourful and unique as <i>Oliver Twist</i> and <i>Huckleberry Finn</i>.<br />
<br />
'The kind of detail that evokes an era'<br />
LITERARY REVIEW'<br />
<br />
<b>Status</b>: Abandoned p. 102<br />
<br />
<b>Reading reveals</b>: Here in my final entry before I hand over this blog to the masses, I am looking at a book from the inner borders of lostness. Hard Luck was well-reviewed when it came out in 1986, as attested above, and even won an award and shit, so why has it already slipped away from the collective book-reading memory? <br />
On one level, it seems an injustice. The book is funny and well-observed. Detailing the experiences of growing up in a New Town in the late '50s, early '60s, it consists of a series of working class set-pieces, in which Christmas trees are stolen and pubs are waited outside of and that sort of thing, And yet, I stopped reading. I suppose the lack of a strong narrative thread wore me down. There are only so many tales of poverty line-level cheekiness you can absorb before you want something more.<br />
Also, there's an assuredness to the book's belief in its own loveability that jars now. It's all a bit too cosy, even when detailing child neglect and domestic violence. That and the fact it makes so little use of its main characters being twins they may as well have just be one character most of the time.<br />
For all that, the fact that someone in their late-twenties would write a book so nostalgic for the era of their own childhood, presenting it as a distant world gone forever, is quite fascinating, You couldn't imagine someone wanting to do quite the same thing now. (Although I sort of did in my second novel <i>Flying Saucer Rock & Roll</i>, but moving swiftly on...) It seems to be the thing to do here because of the series of fractures between the early '60s and the mid '80s (the Sexual Revolution, punk, Thatcherism) that made the recent past feel a very long time ago back then. I remember being dazzled by old episodes of <i>Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)</i>, and they were only fifteen years old back then. Late '90s <i>A Touch of Frost</i> doesn't have quite the same disconnect.<br />
So, <i>Hard Luck</i>, possibly over-praised at the time, but still worth a look.<br />
<br />
<b>Random paragraph</b>: 'But after a few weeks Frank tired of the scotch eggs. "Oh no, not another blinkin' scotch egg," he'd yell as he sat down at the table.'<br />
<br />
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Richard Blandfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02884345651132518354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8251422818675033735.post-52255422817512241692014-09-17T09:51:00.005-07:002014-09-17T09:51:59.864-07:00Jack in the Box<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-M6aZ7SC1GNI/VBm8CNWmnWI/AAAAAAAAA0o/kKtw8hGvVmY/s1600/lbl87.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-M6aZ7SC1GNI/VBm8CNWmnWI/AAAAAAAAA0o/kKtw8hGvVmY/s1600/lbl87.jpg" height="320" width="210" /></a><b>Title</b>: Jack in the Box<br />
<br />
<b>Author</b>: William Kotzwinkle<br />
<br />
<b>Date of publication</b>: 1980, Abacus edition 1981<br />
<br />
<b>Back cover blurb</b>: 'Can a young man from a small mining town find happiness as a human being? Can Jack Twiller, his mind warped by Masked Man, Tailspin, Tommy and Secret Agent X-9, ever abandon the comic book heroes of his youth and find true maturity? Does he even want to?<br />
A hilarious odyssey through American comic-book culture of the 40s, Jack's story is witty, nostalgic and real. In this brilliant and original novel William Kotzwinkle confirms his reputation as one of the most exciting of the younger generation of American writers.'<br />
<br />
<b>Status</b>: Completed<br />
<br />
<b>Reading reveals</b>: Last entry I made an attempt to read the irredeemably awful <i>E.T. The Book of the Green Planet</i>. Despite the book's startling lack of merit, I was nevertheless curious as to how established author Kotzwinkle got the E.T. gig, and so read one of his earlier works. Although he is generally a fantasy/sci-fi writer, <i>Jack in the Box</i> is a coming-of-age tale, and weirdly enough it's very good indeed.<br />
Each chapter moving on the narrative with a jump of months or years, the passing time unacknowledged in the text, Kotzwinkle manages to convincingly capture the various states of mind from child to adolescent, as his young protagonist Jack Twiller grows from playing cowboy games in the street on to drunken house parties as a rock 'n' roll greaser. There's one particular moment that captures the first stage in the death of childhood, where Twiller finds he can no longer play, that is one of the truest things I have read in fiction for a very long time. There's also a scout camp from Hell, and confusion about the manliness of vomiting that pre-dates Alan Partridge,<br />
You can see why Spielberg sought him out. Both have an intense understanding of childhood and its joys and fears. Shame that the meeting of minds didn't work out better.<br />
<br />
<b>Random paragraph</b>: 'They went straight to the place where Spider had been going up and down on Nancy. Crutch stared at the sandy grass. "I thought you had to do it on a flat rock."'<br />
<br />
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Richard Blandfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02884345651132518354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8251422818675033735.post-50143943428200237302014-09-01T12:24:00.001-07:002014-09-01T12:24:25.571-07:00E.T. The Book of the Green Planet<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dorszLXY_ow/VATHRkZ8OTI/AAAAAAAAAzM/0CkO66KUcpo/s1600/lbl86.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dorszLXY_ow/VATHRkZ8OTI/AAAAAAAAAzM/0CkO66KUcpo/s1600/lbl86.jpg" height="320" width="195" /></a></div>
<b>Title</b>: E.T. The Book of the Green Planet<br />
<br />
<b>Author</b>: William Kotzwinkle<br />
<br />
<b>Year of publication</b>: 1985<br />
<br />
<b>Back cover blurb</b>: 'THE WORLD'S FAVOURITE STORY CONTINUES...<br />
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in his adventure on Earth captured the hearts of tens of millions, becoming a cult classic. This new story begins where the film ended, as E.T.'s ships is rising into the heavens.<br />
In his wonderful new adventure, E.T. goes home to his beloved Green Planet, filled with strange and fascinating creatures. But he's lonely. E.T. misses Elliott and the good days on Earth... living in a closet, drinking beer, and wearing a wig.<br />
Here is the story of how E.T. solves his problem...'<br />
<br />
<b>Status</b>: Abandoned p. 34<br />
<br />
<b>Reading reveals</b>: Hard to imagine now, but established author William Kotzwinkle's novelization of Steven Spielberg's <i>E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial</i> was the biggest-selling novel of 1982 in the US. Spielberg was so impressed by Kotzwinkle's take on the story, complete with the dubious addition of E.T. falling in love and lust with Elliott's mom, he gave him the task of puffing out his own vague ideas for a sequel into an original novel.<br />
I actually purchased this when about nine years old. I don't think I ever finished it. I remember being overwhelmed by the task of trying to picture what was described, as E.T. returns to his home planet and encounters all sorts of strange life-forms in mind-blowing environments. <br />
Still, the book haunted me. Would reading as an adult be a more fruitful experience, my mature mind more up to the challenge laid down by the text?<br />
The answer is no. It is dreadful. The human characters, whose day-to-day lives E.T. clumsily interrupts with telepathic messages, bear virtually no relation to their movie counterparts, while the alien creatures E.T. hangs out with, actually giant sentient plants, are called things like Jumpums, Flopglopples and Beeperbeans and are as irritating as their names suggest.<br />
My nine year-old self was right to give up on this. You should listen to him. But please first purchase the book via the link provided below as I get a percentage.<br />
<br />
<b>Random paragraph</b>: 'The youthful creature was tending a crop of legumes called Igios Atra, or as they were more affectionately known - Beeperbeans, which gave off a sharp beeping sound when their blossoms opened. As it was springtime, there was considerable beeping going on, and the worker had corks in his ears.'<br />
<br />
<br />
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Richard Blandfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02884345651132518354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8251422818675033735.post-14604257102762373732014-08-26T07:52:00.003-07:002014-08-26T07:52:54.553-07:00(George)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2SK-P3NNdW8/U_yejTOC5mI/AAAAAAAAAy0/7p6RpZrG2QU/s1600/lbl85.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2SK-P3NNdW8/U_yejTOC5mI/AAAAAAAAAy0/7p6RpZrG2QU/s1600/lbl85.jpg" height="320" width="210" /></a></div>
<b>Title</b>: (George)<br />
<br />
<b>Author</b>: E.L. Konigsburg<br />
<br />
<b>Date of publication</b>: 1970, Macmillan edition 1971<br />
<br />
<b>Status</b>: Completed<br />
<br />
<b>Inner cover blurb</b>: 'George is a little man who lives inside Ben, but his is no still small voice. George speaks out loud and clear and his opinions quite frequently fail to coincide with Ben's. For instance about William. Ben thinks William is great. He admires everything he does, and William is not only four years older but conspicuously successful. George thinks William is a phoney.<br />
The only other person who knows about George is Howard. Ben's kid brother, and he knows because, except for Ben, he is the only person George has ever spoken outloud to. George finds Howard a comfortable friend. They look at the world in the same way, except Howard can see it.<br />
That was how it stood the year that Ben was twelve and Mr Berkowitz announced that the seniors in the Organic Chemistry class were going to be allowed to do research. This meant that William and Ben could no longer be lab partners. Ben was sore but George was glad. He felt Ben was getting too absorbed in science and he felt it would lead to no good. He was right, but it took some pretty sensational happenings and an alarming period of non-communication before they (and Howard) were on speaking terms again. In fact things might have made headlines and changed a lot of lives for the worse if it hadn't been for George.<br />
<br />
<b>Reading reveals</b>: EL Konigsberg was a treasured American children's author, but <i>(George)</i> is one of her less-treasured books. The premise of a boy with another personality living inside him is great, but George never reveals himself to be that interesting. Then the plot gets bogged down in some tedium about talented high-school kids doing university-level research and some missing lab equipment that you can't imagine any young reader getting that excited about. Maddeningly, the story sparks into life when enquiries are made into the protagonist's mental health, and there's a timely LSD scene, but nothing leads anywhere of consequence. A frustrating book that has the capacity to be a classic, but just skims the surface of its material. Oh well. At least it's got pictures.<br />
<br />
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Richard Blandfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02884345651132518354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8251422818675033735.post-18185269819602679562014-08-18T06:55:00.001-07:002014-08-18T06:55:32.906-07:00My Merry Mornings<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Mm30YvJuhUg/U_ID-JzjpCI/AAAAAAAAAyk/7QL8Vt5Ioew/s1600/lbl84.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Mm30YvJuhUg/U_ID-JzjpCI/AAAAAAAAAyk/7QL8Vt5Ioew/s1600/lbl84.jpg" height="320" width="208" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Title</b>: My Merry Mornings</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Author</b>: Ivan Kl<span style="background-color: white; color: #252525; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">í</span>ma</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Date of publication</b>: 1983, Readers International Edition 1985</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Status</b>: Completed</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Back cover blurb</b>: 'A popular young writer during the Prague Spring, Ivan Kl<span style="background-color: white; color: #252525; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">í</span>ma was banned from publishing in the aftermath of the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. He has continued to write, however, and his works circulate in hand-typed, lovingly bound "padlock editions", along with other banned writers like Kafka, Orwell, Kundera and <span style="background-color: white; color: #252525; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">Š</span>kvoreck<span style="background-color: white; color: #252525; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">ý</span>.' </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Reading reveals</b>: A collection of stories, one for each day of the week, detailing the life of an intellectual forced to work a series of menial jobs under the Czech communist regime. How purely autobiographical they are are is open to question (the author's wife and family zip in and out of existence throughout the book, while any woman who meets him immediately wants to sleep with him, despite his looking like a hobbit in a Beatle-wig on the back cover), but nevertheless the stories are sprightly and joyful, as the title states, despite the underlying grimness of the situation. An engaging and surprisingly sexy tour of Communist-era hospitals, building sites and live carp street sellers.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Random paragraph</b>: 'I think she worked as a shop assistant. Whenever I saw her she was giggling at something, no doubt under the impression that laughing made her look sexy. In bed, or so Mr Mixa maintained, she demanded it three times - first with him on top, then from the left and thirdly from the right. Mr Mixa related all this in order to show how virile he was despite his age and his bulk.'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0930523059/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=0930523059&linkCode=as2&tag=richardblandf-21">Purchase</a><img alt="" border="0" src="http://ir-uk.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=richardblandf-21&l=as2&o=2&a=0930523059" height="1" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />
Richard Blandfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02884345651132518354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8251422818675033735.post-23647820066547868162014-08-02T14:41:00.001-07:002014-08-02T14:41:23.813-07:00The Revolt of Gunner Asch<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-d9QmmoOC0CE/U91aV4If1lI/AAAAAAAAAx8/WaN4qplxvXM/s1600/lbl83.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-d9QmmoOC0CE/U91aV4If1lI/AAAAAAAAAx8/WaN4qplxvXM/s1600/lbl83.jpg" height="320" width="195" /></a></div>
<b>Title</b>: The Revolt of Gunner Asch<br />
<br />
<b>Author</b>: H.H. Kirst<br />
<br />
<b>Date of publication</b>: 1954, Fontana edition 1971<br />
<br />
<b>Status</b>: Abandoned, p. 16<br />
<br />
<b>Back cover blurb</b>: 'The "Catch 22" of the German armed forces<br />
Gunner Asch is fed up with his brutal barrack-room companions, with his Nazi bosses, and with the horror and stupidity of the coming war. Also, he is seeing far too little of his girl. But what can one man do against the mightiest army in the world? It is a known fact that every army has its weak spot. So Asch finds the Wehrmacht's - and strikes hard!'<br />
<br />
<b>Reading reveals</b>: Former Nazi Party member H.H. Kirst's 'Gunner Asch' series was a huge success, selling millions of copies across Europe, and re-published regularly in the UK from the mid-50s to the early-80s. The writing (or at least, that of the translation) was too perfunctory to engage me, and anyway, I hate books about soldiers because I never know who outranks whom.<br />
What is more of interest to me is the sheer wrongness of the covers they ended up with in the UK. Generally, they were a photographic/cartoon combo featuring German military/Nazi uniforms and women's breasts, neatly encapsulating the weird relationship with WWII some sections of the British public somehow developed in the following decades. Here is a prime example:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--JXWIV-ySDQ/U91aeVb6pWI/AAAAAAAAAyE/0FfDxFwYsCY/s1600/GunnerAsch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--JXWIV-ySDQ/U91aeVb6pWI/AAAAAAAAAyE/0FfDxFwYsCY/s1600/GunnerAsch.jpg" /></a></div>
Why would you publish that? Why would you buy it, unless you were into that stuff that Max Mosley definitely wasn't? I've actually seen even worse covers on books by Kirst wannabes (you could see nips, and swastikas), but couldn't bring myself to acquire them for the library. There are limits. Even here, there are limits.<br />
<br />
<b>Random paragraph</b>: 'Johannes was now standing in front of the entrance to the barrack block. He looked up. He could just make out the shape of a woman leaning out of a window. It was Lore Schulz, the sergeant-major's wife.'<br />
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Richard Blandfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02884345651132518354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8251422818675033735.post-12589424821409505282014-08-02T13:31:00.000-07:002014-08-02T14:50:34.328-07:00The Fall of Valour<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PNtIqqGwmyI/U91Kp3QzkQI/AAAAAAAAAxs/M5NF3pxj5tw/s1600/lbl82.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PNtIqqGwmyI/U91Kp3QzkQI/AAAAAAAAAxs/M5NF3pxj5tw/s1600/lbl82.jpg" height="320" width="207" /></a></div>
<b>Title</b>: The Fall of Valour<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Author</b>: Charles Jackson</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Date of publication</b>: 1948, Ace edition 1960</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Status</b>: Completed:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Back cover blurb</b>: 'TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT</div>
<div>
Mr. Jackson has handled this difficult painful them with skill and sensitivity.</div>
<div>
OBSERVER</div>
<div>
There is an undoubted earnestness and care in his sketch of the university professor whose marriage is coming to grief and finds himself in new deep waters with his love for a young soldier.</div>
<div>
NEW STATESMAN</div>
<div>
The Fall of Valour is a work of great competence.</div>
<div>
OXFORD MAIL</div>
<div>
I... was thrilled by the exact understanding of the problems that beset every overworked husband and underloved wife.</div>
<div>
by the author of The Lost Weekend'</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Reading reveals</b>: In <i>The Lost Weekend</i>, Jackson dealt with the thorny subject of alcoholism. In this follow-up, he dealt with the still thornier subject (for 1948) of a male university professor falling in love with a sailor. This is the sort of story that <i>Far From Heaven</i> intimated would have been untellable at the time actually being told. True, much of the detail is hidden in delicate phrases, but squint and there are periods, contraceptives and erections all over the shop. It speaks of a time when sexual categories were so crudely defined, people could be left utterly out of touch with their desires, not knowing who or what it was they wanted. Of course, we've fixed all that now and everything's fine.<br />
Swimming in a fog of interiority, there'a <i>Death in Venice</i> languor from which the inevitable unwanted erection emerges. Although the characters see homosexuality as a shameful state one step above child molesting in the pervy scheme of things, the book doesn't, and is ultimately humane in its treatment of the issue, and its exploration of a time when some men went to war and some didn't, and some men were thought of as men, and some were not.<br />
<br />
<b>Random paragraph</b>: 'Cliff gazed moodily into the surf, his forehead troubled and frowning. "Gee, sometimes I even think-" He broke off suddenly, as if disgusted with himself."<br />
<br />
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Richard Blandfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02884345651132518354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8251422818675033735.post-14870600034918548382014-07-08T04:57:00.001-07:002014-07-08T04:57:23.002-07:00Buddwing<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mFqoIWa-NPQ/U7vblr5K7vI/AAAAAAAAAw8/OlguyCo65hM/s1600/lbl81.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mFqoIWa-NPQ/U7vblr5K7vI/AAAAAAAAAw8/OlguyCo65hM/s1600/lbl81.jpg" height="320" width="196" /></a></div>
<b>Title</b>: Buddwing<br />
<br />
<b>Author</b>: Evan Hunter<br />
<br />
<b>Date of publication</b>: 1964, Mayflower-Dell edition 1965.<br />
<br />
<b>Back cover blurb</b>: THE BIG NEW NOVEL BY THE AUTHOR OF BLACKBOARD JUNGLE<br />
STRANGERS WHEN WE MEET<br />
BUDDWING<br />
Evan Hunter's magnificent new novel is the story of a journey of discovery. Its nameless protagonist wakes up in Central Park, faced with a terrifying riddle: who am I? His quest takes him into the myriad city: Chinatown and the wild spree with a sailor; the Italian all-night wedding feast: the scavenger hunt with the glossy rich woman on an emotional bender; Harlem... and at the last shift of the kaleidoscope, the final revelation.<br />
<br />
<b>Status</b>: Completed<br />
<br />
<b>Reading reveals</b>: Evan Hunter is, of course, better known as the crime writer Ed McBain, although neither was his real name. The Hunter pseudonym, one of many, was mainly used for serious literary efforts that tended to not hang about for long despite making an immediate splash, such as <i>Blackboard Jungle</i> and <i>Last Summer</i>, the latter a personal favourite of mine and big influence on my second novel <i>Flying Saucer Rock & Roll </i>with its presentation of adolescence as a conduit for evil. <br />
Despite separating out his 'serious' and genre efforts in this way, Hunter nevertheless tended to employ a snappy, noir-ish style, which lends everything a veneer of brutal kitsch, not unlike that found in Sam Fuller films such as <i>Shock Corridor</i>.<br />
<i>Buddwing</i> (quickly turned into the '60s Hollywood curio <i>Mister Buddwing</i>) tells of a man who wakes up with no memory of who he is. This is slowly revealed to him as he wanders New York, getting himself into various scrapes and having a ridiculous amount of sex before lunchtime. Past and present, fantasy and reality intermingle, building up to a big reveal which isn't as exciting as you'd hope for. <br />
Not quite the momentous insight into the human condition than it seems to think it is, and therefore a bit pretentious, and at times weirdly naive (characters say 'I love you' about twenty minutes after meeting), it nevertheless contains a fair number of good bits, with Hunter's skill with dialogue keeping things afloat. A middling book from a fascinating author.<br />
<br />
<b>Random paragraph</b>: 'The old man leaned closer to him. Buddwing saw his eyes for the first time. They were clear and blue and staring at him brightly, reflecting the late afternoon sun. They were the eyes of a lunatic.'<br />
<br />
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Richard Blandfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02884345651132518354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8251422818675033735.post-60608825458689810822014-06-16T07:45:00.002-07:002014-06-16T07:45:54.254-07:00Percy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Title</b>: Percy<br />
<br />
<b>Author</b>: Raymond Hitchcock<br />
<br />
<b>Year of publication</b>: 1969, Sphere edition 1971.<br />
<br />
<b>Back cover blurb</b>: '"The first transplant of a human male genital organ took place at the Royal Bowchester Hospital, this afternoon. The condition of the recipient, a 33 year old married man, is completely satisfactory..."<br />
...Except for the fact that James Anthony Hislop had a burning urge to identify the previous owner of his new equipment, nicknamed Percy. Armed with a list of possible donors, he set out to track down their wives and girl friends....<br />
....To see if they would recognise Percy<br />
....Or if Percy would recognise them.'<br />
<br />
<b>Status:</b> Completed<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Reading reveals</b>: This sex farce about the world's first penis transplant by Syd Barrett-substitute Robyn Hitchcock's dad was made into an apparently dreadful film with a rather good soundtrack by the Kinks. Indeed, the title of the main theme, 'God's Children' can be sourced back to a sentence in the novel.<br />
The book itself pulls in two directions, one interesting, the other less so. The protagonist's efforts to hang on to his wife as his pious best friend tries to destroy their marriage through moral objections to the operation is a somewhat Pinter-esque power struggle. Much of the story, however, is taken up with his efforts to identify his new member's former owner, which pretty much involves trying to have sex with various dead people's widows. It's all a bit too Robin Askwith to be bothering with now. Still, a quirky, relatively worthwhile novel.<br />
<br />
<b>Random paragraph</b>: 'They just don't understand. Only a year or two ago, he could stand in the shower in the changing rooms and be the envy of both teams.'<br />
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Richard Blandfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02884345651132518354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8251422818675033735.post-64840465191628811632014-05-28T06:35:00.006-07:002014-05-29T05:27:15.747-07:00Ordinary People<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Title</b>: Ordinary People<br />
<br />
<b>Author</b>: Judith Guest<br />
<br />
Year of publication: 1977. Fontana edition 1981.<br />
<br />
<b>Back cover blurb</b>: 'AN ORDINARY FAMILY - Shaken by the tragic death of one teenage son - face new heartbreak.'<br />
<br />
<b>Status</b>: Completed<br />
<br />
<b>Reading reveals</b>: I've long been a fan of Robert Redford's film version of Ordinary People, in which Judd Hirsch plays the world's best psychiatrist (too bad he's fictional), and we find Hollywood taking a long, unsentimental gaze at the world of everyday mental health - a rarity indeed. In it, and the novel on which it is based, a family recovering from the death of one son in a boating accident must now deal with the attempted suicide of his guilt-ridden brother. <br />
Perhaps even more so than the film, Guest's book captures the reality of grief - a constant scream in the background as life goes on. It's dropped off the radar in the UK, but well worth tracking down. A warm, humane book that asks us to go a bit easier on ourselves.<br />
<br />
<b>Random paragraph</b>: 'A tiny seed opens slowly inside his mind. In the hospital the seed would grow and begin to produce thick, shiny leaves with fibrous veins running through them. More leaves to come. Like tiny, curled up fists they will hit at him. He tightens his grip on the arms of the chair. The wood is sticky and wet under his hands. He wets his lips nervously. "What time is it?"'<br />
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Richard Blandfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02884345651132518354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8251422818675033735.post-51099910206346165052014-05-28T06:35:00.002-07:002014-05-28T06:36:21.316-07:00Futility<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Title</b>: Futility<br />
<br />
<b>Author</b>: William Gerhardie<br />
<br />
<b>Year of publication</b>: 1922. Penguin edition 1974.<br />
<br />
<b>Status</b>: Completed<br />
<br />
<b>Back cover blurb</b>: 'Written shortly after the First World War, and published in 1922, this novel made its young author an instant success. Gerhardie uses his wartime experiences in <i>Futility</i> to throw into relief his main theme; this was perhaps the first work to strike the 'waiting' motif that was to become fashionable many years later with Beckett's <i>Godot</i>. Against a tragically unchanging background is set the story of an Englishman brought up in Russia and the pathos of his growing love for Nina, the second of three bewitching daughters. Their father gathers about him an army of wrangling dependants, but his hopes of a fortune rise while his actual fortune diminishes. When asked at a crucial stage what he will do he decides, "I think I'll wait. It can't be long now."'<br />
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<b>Reading reveals</b>: Not really a Lost Book, more a declared classic that not many people bother with and goes out of print quite a lot. I was attracted to reading a novel with the most unappealing title imaginable, just for reasons of perversity. <br />
Set in Russia either side of the Revolution, the absurd story of <i>Futility</i> is as described above. Although stylistically it's very much trad, the internal logic is quietly modernist. It's sort of 'cosy Kafka', with all the characters somehow conspiring to ensure that nothing ever resolves for any of them. Pleasingly odd.<br />
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<b>Random paragraph</b>: 'They had been sitting silently for a time. Nina seemed sad; Sonia and Vera sulky. It was twilight, but no one had thought of switching on the light. No one would dance. I played the piano for a while, and then stopped.'<br />
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Richard Blandfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02884345651132518354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8251422818675033735.post-62160500652992304182014-05-27T07:38:00.002-07:002014-05-28T06:34:20.471-07:00MacBird!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Title</b>: MacBird!<br />
<br />
<b>Author</b>: Barbara Garson<br />
<br />
<b>Year of publication</b>: 1966. Penguin edition 1967<br />
<br />
<b>Back cover blurb</b>: '"MacBird! is one of the best and most-needed political parodies of the post-war period."<br />
Robert Brustein<br />
"I have nothing to say about the political truth of this play, but I am sure a kind of genius has gone into the writing."<br />
Robert Lowell<br />
"To the artists of the stage, who give us all mankind in all its disguises and so give us ourselves as we truly are, I pay tribute..."<br />
Lyndon B Johnson<br />
27 March 1966<br />
(a statement for World Theater Day)'<br />
<br />
<b>Status</b>: Completed<br />
<br />
<b>Reading reveals</b>: Do you like Shakespeare? Do you like satirical plays about Lyndon B Johnson? Then Macbird! may as well have been written especially for you. A product of the sixties underground theatre (originally published by the Grassy Knoll Press), it's a pretty effective mash-up of Macbeth and the assassination of JFK and LBJ's subsequent presidency. Alluding to the 'LBJ did it' school of thought, it's savage stuff, with Kennedy getting shot off-stage just a few years after the actual event. <br />
A Black Muslim, Marxist and Beatnik Witch set the tone, and although you'd need some hefty knowledge of the time to appreciate the details, the quality of the writing means its not a total period piece, even though it was presumably designed to auto-destruct soon after being written. Doesn't appear to have been performed since 1968, which makes sense.<br />
<br />
<b>Random lines</b>: 'REPORTER: Your majesty, how do you plan to deal<br />
With rebel groups which thrive in Viet Land?<br />
MACBIRD: What rebel groups? Where is this Viet Land?<br />
Who gave them folks permission to rebel?'<br />
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Richard Blandfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02884345651132518354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8251422818675033735.post-15377983944384487272014-05-23T09:28:00.000-07:002014-05-23T09:28:36.491-07:00Lost Book Library Reading Round-Up no. 15The final Lost Book Library Reading Round-Up. After this, new entries will adopt a whole new mutant form that will terrify and arouse in equal measure.<br />
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<a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/the-killing-gift.html" target="_blank">The Killing Gift by Bari Wood</a><br />
<br />
Status: Completed<br />
<br />
Very enjoyable supernatural police procedural. This is the book that 'Lamia' by Tristan Travis could have been. An unforeseen side-effect of an early X-Ray machine used during pregnancy leads to the birth of a child that people can't help but dislike. She turns out to have psychic powers she herself is unaware of, and anyone who crosses her ends up mysteriously and horribly dead. Enter a curious policeman seeking to solve the mystery. As ever, I wasn't totally convinced by the ending, but overall, a quirky, imaginative book that explores the instinctive distrust of those that seem other. Its utter obscurity is undeserved.<br />
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<a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/punish-me-with-kisses.html" target="_blank">Punish Me With Kisses by William Bayer</a><br />
<br />
Status: Completed<br />
<br />
Somewhat sordid sex thriller oddity. A promiscuous young woman is murdered, leaving her dowdy younger sister to explore her kinky life and solve the crime. Along the way there is much identity-shifting, and a crazy sub-plot involving a cat-centred form of psychotherapy that leads to a draw-dropping twist. Grubby but engaging.<br />
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<a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/man-in-white.html" target="_blank">Man In White by Johnny Cash</a><br />
<br />
Status: Abandoned p. 56<br />
<br />
For a devil-may-care rockabilly with a take-no-prisoners attitude to life and a fuck-you mentality towards authority, Johnny Cash devoted a lot of his time to unquestioning subservience to the Higher Power of God. The introduction to this novelised account of the life of Paul the Apostle is well worth reading, detailing as it does Cash's near-death encounter with an ostrich. The book itself is pretty much the Bible with the gaps filled in with extensive historical research. It's not bad, although everyone pretty much speaks exposition, but also not compelling enough to demand a full read.<br />
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<a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/the-actress.html" target="_blank">The Actress by Henry Denker</a><br />
<br />
Status: Abandoned p. 39<br />
<br />
Joyously lurid story of a seductive actress and her mental health problems, populated entirely by characters incapable of sticking to the point during important conversations ('It made dark stains on her black leotard. Dark stains....'). If it were a film I'd watch to the end, but a whole book of it would take up too much valuable Buzzfeed time.<br />
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<a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/a-chemical-romance.html" target="_blank">A Chemical Romance by Jenny Fabian</a><br />
<br />
Status: Abandoned p. 18<br />
<br />
Glam-era scenester decadence. Far too much astrology to be bothering with.<br />
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<a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/dangler.html" target="_blank">Dangler by Charles Gaines</a><br />
<br />
Status: Completed<br />
<br />
If asked to imagine a novel written by the inventor of Paintball, the average person in the street could be forgiven for imagining a bad one. Dangler, however, is actually pretty decent. A product of the seventies crisis of masculinity that brought you <i>Deliverance</i> and<i> Straw Dogs</i>, it tells of a outdoor activity park manager who attempts to make his elite clientele regain their sense of innate superiority over the lower orders through gruelling wilderness exercises. Needless to say, it all goes wrong. The novel sags in the middle when, just when you expect it to go full-on crazy, it instead descends into soapiness and some tedious sub-plot about tax. By the end, however, it's all rather gripping. Let us now enjoy Charles Gaines's author photo.<br />
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<br />Richard Blandfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02884345651132518354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8251422818675033735.post-65560123277475534352014-02-18T04:42:00.001-08:002014-02-18T04:42:22.994-08:00Lost Book Library Reading Round-Up no. 14The penultimate round-up of the Great Lost Book Library Reading Backlog.<br />
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<a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/game-in-heaven-with-tussy-marx.html" target="_blank">Game in Heaven With Tussy Marx by Piers Paul Read</a><br />
<br />
Status: Abandoned p. 24<br />
<br />
This opened with an intriguing premise of a conversation in the afterlife involving Karl Marx's daughter, but soon moved on to the class-obsessed seduction story material that bored me in the last novel by Read I tried to read. I'm sure what he's doing is lovely, but it's not for me.<br />
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<a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/harris-in-wonderland.html" target="_blank">Harris in Wonderland by Philip Reid</a><br />
<br />
Status: Completed<br />
<br />
As you'd expect in a detective novel written under a pseudonym by two Private Eye staffers, here the establishment is corrupt, while those angry enough about it to get radical are figures of fun. The moral ideal to be aimed for here is, naturally, that embodied by the socially conservative investigative journalist. The story is sometimes engaging, sometimes not, but there's a good courtroom scene and a decent twist, as well as some enjoyable counter-cultural stuff if you like that sort of thing.<br />
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<a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/the-bender.html" target="_blank">The Bender by Paul Scott</a><br />
<br />
Status: Abandoned p. 26<br />
<br />
Very well-written early work by The Jewel in the Crown-meister. Nothing particularly wrong with it, but I'm getting weighed down by the sheer number of class angst post-war novels I'm having to wade through. The plot hung on some gubbins about an inheritance and a debt I couldn't get my head round, and accountancy-based stories just aren't my thing. You should definitely read it, though. It's probably brilliant.<br />
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<a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/seventeen-part-one.html" target="_blank">Seventeen Part One by Soya</a><br />
<br />
Status: Completed<br />
<br />
The Lost Book Library is amply stocked with recollections of teenage sexual encounters which are definitely those of a fictional character and not the author. I was determined to finally get through one of these, despite the fact the psychological reaction they trigger is not dissimilar to that experienced by Springfield when Principal Skinner announced he was a virgin. This one, by renowned Danish novelist Carl Erik Soya and set just before WWI, is actually good stuff. It's more a novel about adolescence, despite the sexy packaging, and by the end of Part One, the protagonist still hasn't got his end away. (He doesn't even get to first base) It does, however, detail a boy on the verge of adulthood trying to make sense of the world he is about to enter very well. It's also an example of the past being a foreign country, with everyone only having a bath once every fortnight and children playing with toys well into their teens. Having said that, apparently blackheads were an issue even back then.<br />
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<a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/the-marriage-of-young-stockbroker.html" target="_blank">The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker by Charles Webb</a><br />
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Status: Completed<br />
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Despite being reissued as a classic every decade or so, I didn't think Webb's The Graduate was much cop. The inarticulacy of its protagonist seemed unlikely and dishonest. Here, in Webb's third novel, the young stockbroker of the title is refreshingly vocal, and we actually get to know what his problem is as his marriage disintegrates under the weight of his voyeurism and the tactics of his interfering sister-in-law. Although his wife does irritatingly display some Benjamin-esque vagueness, this is overall a much more satisfying book than The Graduate, although less high-concept. The dialogue crackles, and Webb's standard film treatment-style is juxtaposed with some fine interior monologues as the protagonist recalls a visit to a now very tame-sounding porn cinema. A strong entry in the suburban ennui genre.Richard Blandfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02884345651132518354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8251422818675033735.post-8835951485431865842013-12-31T04:46:00.002-08:002013-12-31T04:46:27.445-08:00Lost Book Library Reading Round-Up no. 13Another round-up of these things.<br />
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<a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/the-season-of-witch.html" target="_blank">The Season of the Witch by James Lee Herlihy</a><br />
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Status: Abandoned p. 55<br />
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I really wanted this, by noted author of <i>Midnight Cowboy</i> Herlihy, to be good, but it's just not. I haven't read <i>Cowboy</i>, but as a concept it's brilliant, due to the contrast between the down-home cowboy and his New York environment, and the gap between what he thinks he'll end up doing and what he actually has to do. Here, a suburban hippy teen goes to New York, accompanied by a gay friend hiding from the draft board (which I found odd as I thought pretending to be gay was considered an excellent way of avoiding the draft) and this is less interesting as a story than <i>Cowboy</i>, as she's exactly the sort of person you'd expect to be clogging up the East Village in the early '70s. As for the main character of 'Witch', she is the most annoying, selfish, manipulative, control-freak masquerading as a free spirit you could ever hope to avoid meeting. Now this is fine in itself, but I wasn't convinced Herlihy knew how unpleasant his protagonist was. Anyway, there was no sign of a plot in sight, and with only an idiot for company, and the dreaded journal device employed, I decided this wasn't my scene.<br />
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<a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/beat-on-damask-drum.html" target="_blank">Beat On a Damask Drum by Troy Kennedy Martin</a><br />
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Status: Abandoned p. 31<br />
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This early Vietnam War novel from 1959 is intriguing, in that it prefigures the central premise of Apocalypse Now, only with Martin Sheen as an attractive Hollywood movie actress and Marlon Brando as her childhood friend. Also interesting is the way so many of the themes of later Vietnam stories are present - that this is a war like no other, with the Westerners struggling to get to grips with guerilla warfare and a sense that they have stumbled into something truly alien and un-graspable. Also un-graspable, however, were the the interactions between the characters. A French general seems weirdly interested in dictating exactly what sort of drink the actress can have with her meal. Apparently aroused by this control freakery, and despite of there being no obvious sexual attraction between the two, she then sleeps with him. Someone more interested in war novels than me should definitely read this, however, because there's something worth exploring here.<br />
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<a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/downstairs-at-ramseys.html" target="_blank">Downstairs at Ramsey's by James Leigh</a><br />
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Status: Completed<br />
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I didn't have high hopes for this, as quite frankly it looked fucking dreadful, but to my surprise it turned out to be one of the best books I've found in the Lost Book Library so far, and on the quality/obscurity graph it scores very highly indeed. A retired thespian rents the downstairs of his Los Angeles home to a pair of swinging sixties bachelors who unexpectedly become legal guardians of a fourteen year old girl. She has large breasts and so it all goes wrong. The situation is depicted in a surprisingly un-lecherous manner, while Leigh's smooth prose goes down like a banana milkshake. It's not a perfect novel - it hangs about at the end when it really needs a definite conclusion - and I wasn't entirely convinced by all the reactions to the girl's burgeoning sexuality. (Having said that, the Savile business has demonstrated that there were some very strange ideas about sex with minors floating about in the wake of the sexual revolution which we all had to have cultural amnesia about for several decades in order to stop us from going collectively mad.) Nevertheless, it's a sparkling piece of work, and Leigh can really write, so it's a mystery why he has left so little of a trail. <br />
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<a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/revelations.html" target="_blank">Revelations by Phyllis Naylor</a><br />
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Status: Completed<br />
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A woman belonging to a fundamentalist church becomes the guardian of her deceased free-spirit brother's son (which makes it the second Lost Book in a row to begin with an unexpected guardianship). Her nephew makes her question her faith, and soon she is breaking free of her church's strict teachings. At first, the depiction of her repression seems a bit heavy-handed, and her likely way out of it somewhat predictable. Soon, however, there are some serious curveballs being thrown in there, and the way in which her sexuality manifests itself is a big whoah! moment. Written in the 'invisible' style that creative writing teachers the world over assure us is the best of all possible styles, this is a good, solid novel that you wouldn't really want to be better.<br />
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<a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/see-kid-run.html" target="_blank">See the Kid Run by Bob Ottum</a><br />
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Status: Abandoned p. 98<br />
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This pulpy tale of knife-wielding New York wrong'uns started out magnificently, with a range of remarkable characters - a teenage thief who knows how to make himself invisible, his exploitative social worker trying to use him as material for her doctorate, a bin-scavenging woman armed with an imaginary icepick - but the whole thing is torpedoed by a ludicrously violent police officer, whose assault on an eleven year-old career criminal makes any suspension of disbelief impossible. He's simply the wrong character for this story. A shame, because stylistically and imaginatively, this was joyfully unusual.<br />
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<br />Richard Blandfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02884345651132518354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8251422818675033735.post-65025125867840974002013-10-16T07:28:00.002-07:002013-10-16T07:28:58.335-07:00Lost Book Library Reading Round-Up no. 12Yet another reading round-up. Backlog slowly but surely getting unclogged...<br />
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<a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/body-charge.html" target="_blank">Body Charge by Hunter Davies</a><br />
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Status: Completed<br />
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Not so much a good book, more a curious one. A sexually fluid football-playing minicab driver becomes involved in the lives of his clients, particularly those who are or might well be gay. It takes him a while to really get stuck in, however, which is excellent practice for a minicab driver, but doesn't make for great storytelling. Then, when he does, the plot flails in all directions with a murder and a SPOILER ALERT surprise wife thrown in near the end. This novel is more interesting as social history, with skinheads, football hooligans and '70s attitudes to unemployment bobbing about in it. Also, the capturing of the parklife of the time, with enthusiasts spontaneously grouping to play sports or engage in hobbies like model boating in a way they don't today, is fascinating. Read while listening to Badfinger and contemplating James Bolam's face.<br />
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<a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/the-satyr.html" target="_blank">The Satyr by Robert DeMaria</a><br />
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Status: Abandoned p. 52<br />
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Another entry into the Lost Book sub-genre of the literary sexual confessional, in which a character who is definitely made-up and not the author recounts his experiences, usually involving a lot of precocity and a side-helping of Freudian mother-love/hate. Generally written in the '60s or '70s by serious authors, but nevertheless packaged as soft porn. This one comes with an introduction by Anthony Burgess, who thinks DeMaria is brilliant. Bearing in mind Burgess didn't like his own A Clockwork Orange, we might guess his judgement is a bit off. And it is. This novel is perfectly well written, but it just lacks the charm needed to make you want to hang around a story like this much. There's some main plot where the protagonist wants to kill his mother, but summoning up the energy to care whether he does or not is nigh-on impossible. I'm generally against the book club criticism of the main character being unsympathetic, but in this case... the main character is unsympathetic, and it stops the story from working. Essentially, a seemingly nice guy wanting to do something horrible is a story. Someone unpleasant wanting to do the same, not so much. <br />
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<a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/the-dolly-dolly-spy.html" target="_blank">The Dolly Dolly Spy by Adam Diment</a><br />
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Status: Abandoned p. 22<br />
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Imagine if James Bond was less a weird sadist and more just a bit of a knob, and you'd pretty much have Diment's hero Philip McAlpine. Although he's meant to be a groovy spy, by 1967 he's totally square, dissing teenagers, hippies, rock music and Top of the Pops. Other people still read these books occasionally, which means I don't have to.<br />
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<a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/another-part-of-house.html" target="_blank">Another Part of the House by Winston M. Estes</a><br />
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Status: Completed<br />
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Overall, a very fine slice of Americana from a pretty much-forgotten writer. A ten year-old boy grows up in a small Texan town during the Depression, and we encounter the various town characters as they struggle, waiting for the New Deal to kick in. Annoyingly, there's a plot flaw that left me feeling underwhelmed at the end (a confrontation that really needs to happen doesn't) but along the way, it's a warm, poignant portrait of a community, with a segment featuring a death in the family and its aftermath a particular stand-out. <br />
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<a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/such-good-friends.html" target="_blank">Such Good Friends by Lois Gould</a><br />
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Status: Abandoned p. 51<br />
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This story of a dry-witted New Yorker whose husband goes into a coma seemed perfectly good until I hit a plot point I just couldn't get my head around. The doctor instructs her to phone up all her friends and get them to donate blood in order to save him. It ought to be Type O Positive, but it's not essential. This struck me as a bit strange. Surely the doctor's first port of call would be the blood bank? And wouldn't it absolutely have to be the right type of blood? After all, that's the point of having blood types in the first place. I don't know, maybe in '70s New York, blood of varying types was regularly drained from friends and pumped into people, but it doesn't sound right to me. Anyway, I couldn't get past the sheer weirdness of this scenario and bailed.<br />
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<br />Richard Blandfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02884345651132518354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8251422818675033735.post-83282737215943895452013-09-02T02:40:00.003-07:002013-09-02T02:40:52.611-07:00Lost Book Library Reading Round-Up no. 11<br />
From bumper crop to crop o' shit.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FbzRwsx0UFY/T9zPwvRbwAI/AAAAAAAAAL4/ImlOKtWn3Jk/s1600/lbl51.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FbzRwsx0UFY/T9zPwvRbwAI/AAAAAAAAAL4/ImlOKtWn3Jk/s200/lbl51.jpg" width="120" /></a><a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/gorgonzola-wont-you-please-come-home.html" target="_blank">Gorgonzola, Won't You Please Come Home? by Clyde Ames</a><br />
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Status: Abandoned p. 54<br />
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In the '60s, spy spoofs in TV and film were seemingly as numerous as proper spy stories. By the '80s, out of context, they made no sense at all, but nevertheless cluttered up my childhood with their camp incoherence. This novel is the written equivalent of these films and TV shows. A spy with the name of Al Fresco seeks to combat the international pirate Eva De Struction. Despite the terrible pun names, it's not without wit ('The three poodles wagged their tails and thought their deep poodle thoughts'), but if you strip it down, it's pretty much just saying 'pretty ladies got boobies' over and over again. Somewhere between the scenes in <i>Casino Royale</i> that have Woody Allen in and the the ones that don't.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XfmRVqxRJbc/T-HggKadVLI/AAAAAAAAAME/v3hfPpV8P_I/s1600/lbl52.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XfmRVqxRJbc/T-HggKadVLI/AAAAAAAAAME/v3hfPpV8P_I/s200/lbl52.jpg" width="123" /></a><a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/virgin-planet.html" target="_blank">Virgin Planet by Poul Anderson</a><br />
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Status: Abandoned p. 25<br />
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A planet becomes populated entirely by women after a single-sex colonial spaceship crash-lands (Men and women, on the same spaceship? That's just madness!). Couldn't really be bothered with this as I generally don't like sci-fi where you have to familiarise yourself with a whole other society, and anyway, it's not a proper lost book. So, moving on...<br />
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<a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/confessions-of-spent-youth.html" target="_blank">Confessions of a Spent Youth by Vance Bourjaily</a><br />
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Status: Abandoned p. 40<br />
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Curious one this. Narrator who is definitely a fictional character and not the author recounts his sexual exploits. You'd think with it's professed theme, it would be aimed squarely at the wanking market, but there's a lot of well-written padding, and therefore veers into fictional memoir territory. Maybe it's for masturbators who enjoy a well-crafted paragraph. Anyway, at 500 pages it's way too long and not a promising enough idea for me to be bothering with.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JURgHkTjZ4M/T-rvVq8nwGI/AAAAAAAAAMc/3c2B1PgRv1Y/s1600/lbl54.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JURgHkTjZ4M/T-rvVq8nwGI/AAAAAAAAAMc/3c2B1PgRv1Y/s200/lbl54.jpg" width="116" /></a><a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/the-fun-house.html" target="_blank">The Fun House by William Brinkley</a><br />
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Status: Abandoned p. 32<br />
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Satirical look at a New York picture magazine. There's a nice Mad Men vibe to it all, and the situations are reasonably interesting, but there's no story to speak of, more a bunch of anecdotes, and at over 400 pages, again, it just doesn't justify the commitment. Dropped out at the point the narrator goes off on one about how career women weren't satisfactorily feminine. Which brings us to...<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-a4I3GEhzE3s/T_QyuH3bbGI/AAAAAAAAAMo/fDo6K_GUBkA/s1600/lbl55.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-a4I3GEhzE3s/T_QyuH3bbGI/AAAAAAAAAMo/fDo6K_GUBkA/s200/lbl55.jpg" width="121" /></a><a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/a-woman-in-space.html" target="_blank">A Woman in Space by Sara Cavanaugh</a><br />
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Status: Abandoned p. 34<br />
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A female astronaut encounters resistance from her fellow space explorers at a level that goes beyond mere sexism and into some sort of mental disorder. Initially very amusing, as the opening chapter contains gems of paragraphs like:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
'General Jameson, who had been one of the pioneers of the initial man on the moon programs, had been placed in charge of the moon base project. His orders - establish a base on the moon! His budget - unlimited. Time factor - full speed ahead . His objective - beat the Russians who were considering the same goal. A moon base.'</blockquote>
Ultimately, the one-noteness of it all gets wearisome, but if you want to read an account of the battle for acceptance in the workplace by women transposed into space, then this is definitely the book for you.<br />
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<br />Richard Blandfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02884345651132518354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8251422818675033735.post-49372726920097530672013-08-16T14:39:00.003-07:002013-08-16T14:39:47.890-07:00Lost Book Library Reading Round-Up no. 10A bumper crop this time round!<br />
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<a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/lamia.html" target="_blank">Lamia by Tristan Travis</a><br />
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Status: Completed<br />
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Lengthy supernatural police procedural by the enigmatic Tristan Travis - thought by some to be a pseudonym by Ken Kesey, who provided the back cover blurb. How likely is this? I would certainly consider it a possibility. While maybe not the most obvious novel you might imagine Kesey writing after he took some mind-blowing drugs, got driven around in a camper van by the <i>On the Road</i> guy and kick-started flower power, it certainly has a similar feel to the equally meandering<i> Sometimes a Great Notion</i>. It's easy to forget that Kesey the novelist and Kesey the cultural icon are two very different things. There's an eye for detail here that is the equal to Kesey's (if you read <i>...Notion</i>, it's evident that he was a guy who really knew his logging). Even if it's not by Kesey, it feels like he's covering up for somebody talented, albeit someone not necessarily firing on all cylinders. There's an assuredness to the style that it just wouldn't make sense for someone to develop, utilise for just one novel, and then disappear into the ether.<br />
But is it any good? Yes and no. Chapter by chapter it's perfectly entertaining, and I was happy to read all of it. Many of the scenes are startling, original and quite freaky. There's a lengthy flashback that's a prime slice of American Gothic, and could be sliced off and presented as a work in its own right. As a whole however, it doesn't add up. A key character remains a blank throughout. If they were filled in, I could see the novel operating on a whole other level. Meanwhile, there's a snickering attitude to the female anatomy which is adolescent and plain unpleasant at times. The ending is so frustrating it made me think about Neil LaBute's <i>Wicker Man</i> remake, and o one should ever be made to think about that. An enigmatic book, then, which would probably be an intriguing footnote in literary history, regularly visited, if it were just that bit, well, better.<br />
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<a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/hurry-on-down.html" target="_blank">Hurry On Down by John Wain</a><br />
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Status: Completed<br />
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The first of three books I acquired by semi-forgotten '50s/'60s author Wain. I had high hopes that this story of a privately educated young man seeking to escape the class system would be the LBL Holy Grail of a genuinely great lost book. It's not, although it is interesting. As the back cover blurb says, it does point the way forward to Amis, Murdoch and the Kitchen Sink school, but crucially doesn't make the leap itself. It starts off very well, and is funny, and there are some great scenes as the protagonist goes from job to job trying to find a place for himself. There's a particularly good bit when he gets a job writing radio comedy. It also, however, falls into the regular Lost Book trap of being too picaresque, with situations abandoned rather than resolved. As is also often the case in the Lost Book Library, the female characters are woeful, with a particularly tiresome chapter in which our hero struggles to come to terms with the 'sluttishness' of a girl he's not even involved with. Both Wain and his character know the world is changing, but neither of them appear to have any clue of where it might be heading.<br />
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<a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/smaller-sky.html" target="_blank">A Smaller Sky by John Wain</a><br />
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Status: Completed<br />
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This later novel by Wain is very different. It has a structure and everything. A scientist leaves his job and family to spend his days on Paddington Station. It's a very Laing-ian version of mental illness, with madness a sane reaction to an insane world. The scenes in which the scientist fights to maintain his place on the station are powerful, with him having to fake various scenarios in order to justify his presence, before having to jump from a moving train. Less successful, however, is a subplot involving a nefarious TV presenter infiltrating his family in the hope of a scoop. Here, Wain's complete inability to create a believable female character lets him down again, culminating in a scene where the wife lets a relative stranger tell her to deal with her upset over a missing child by going into the kitchen and doing some baking. Even with relations between the sexes being different back then, I'm pretty sure that would still have earned you a slap. A partially successful novel.<br />
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<a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/death-of-hind-legs-and-other-stories.html" target="_blank">Death of the Hind Legs and Other Stories by John Wain</a><br />
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Status: Completed<br />
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Turns out that while Wain has his flaws as a novelist, as a miniaturist he is quite brilliant. A man talks his reluctant brother-in-law into becoming a wrestler. A childhood home is returned to only to be found to be fitted with modernist decor. A retired engine driver visits his old engine. A female journalist discovers that 'We Are All Prostitutes'. The back half of a pantomime horse dies on stage. Beautiful, sad little moments, realised with a perfect sense of timing. I suppose I could pick holes in some of them, but I don't feel like it really. A very strong collection, and a highlight of the Library so far.<br />
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<a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/passage.html" target="_blank">The Passage by Victor Wartofsky</a><br />
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Fun pulpy afterlife nonsense. A journalist with the depth of tissue paper loses his wife and daughter in an accident and gets mixed up in a world of organ transplants, psychics, skeptics and paranormal research. I wouldn't say it gave you much insight into the human condition, and there are some plot turns that will make you go 'eh?' but it's surprisingly well-researched and there's a passage about what the consequences might be of proving the existence of the soul which is astute. If you enjoy ridiculous things from over thirty years ago then you'll enjoy this.Richard Blandfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02884345651132518354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8251422818675033735.post-82294676435806384782013-04-16T05:10:00.002-07:002013-04-16T05:10:33.567-07:00Lost Book Library Reading Round-Up no. 9<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/memory-of-eva-ryker.html" target="_blank">The Memory of Eva Ryker by Donald A. Stanwood</a><br />
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Status: Abandoned, p. 132<br />
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I was disappointed by this Titanic-themed mystery thriller, as it looked like the best novel ever written by anyone ever. After over a hundred pages of the hero improbably jetting all over the globe to the point of silliness and casually hitting a woman in the face very hard along the way, I decided to call it a day. It's not all bad, however. The cover has a peephole in it, and there's actually an inner cover underneath. Do you want to see it? Of course you do.<br />
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<a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/emu-and-little-red-riding-hood.html" target="_blank">Emu and Little Red Riding Hood by Michael Sullivan</a><br />
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Status: Completed<br />
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Not much to say about this basic retelling of the Little Red Riding Hood story with Emu (but disappointingly, not Rod Hull) shoehorned in, except that it contains this extraordinary picture by artist Elphin Lloyd-Jones:<br />
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<a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/caretakers.html" target="_blank">The Caretakers by Dariel Telfer</a><br />
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Status: Abandoned, p. 54<br />
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This was actually pretty decent, and I only abandoned it because it was very long, I'd got the gist, and life is short. A fictionalized account of a working life in a mental hospital from the early '60s, it shows a disturbing world that has only very shortly departed, with trainee staff terrified of the patients they are sent to treat simply because they are mentally ill. The book posits the then-radical notion that the patients are just normal people who just happen to be sick and deserve to be treated with dignity. It could be argued that it tries to have its cake and eat it, in the manner of Tod Browning's Freaks, with the case studies presented both for our understanding and our titillation. Nevertheless, it's a brave work for the time, and should certainly be read by anyone with an interest in changing attitudes to mental health.<br />
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<a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/garden-of-sand.html" target="_blank">A Garden of Sand by Earl Thompson</a><br />
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Status: Completed<br />
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I've expressed my admiration for this book earlier, and recommended you all go out and buy it. That some of you may not have done so fills my heart with sadness. Meanwhile, here's Earl Thompson's impressive author pic. <br />
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<a href="http://lostbooklibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/grounding-of-group-6.html" target="_blank">The Grounding of Group 6 by Julian F. Thompson</a><br />
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Status: Completed<br />
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Very enjoyable '80s teen lit about a sinister boarding school and its unorthodox way of dealing with problem students. Can't say too much about it without giving away the big twist (which I think I already did last time I mentioned it but anyway). Although something of a sensation in the US at the time, it's not so well-remembered over in the UK. This is probably because it is rooted in the banal truths of American high-school life, rather than the mythic version we lap up so voraciously, and so feels a bit alien. Nevertheless, it's a great premise leading to a strong story, enthusiastically told. Anybody interested in the growth of the YA genre should check out this landmark title.<br />
<br />Richard Blandfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02884345651132518354noreply@blogger.com0