Robin Askew "To write, as I have, with an enthusiasm for something so loathed in certain quarters is maybe asking for trouble," acknowledges Independent, New Statesman and Daily Telegraph contributor Laurence O’Toole in his introduction to this excellent survey of "porn, sex, technology and desire". He’s certainly seen enough of the stuff during his three […]
Jorge Luis Borges: The Total Library
Stephen Mitchelmore The last story in The Book of Sand, a collection of stories by Jorge Luis Borges, is itself called "The Book of Sand". It is a story about the discovery and disposal of a book whose pages never remain the same from one reading to the next. The book is in effect infinite, […]
William Gibson: All Tomorrow’s Parties
Chris Mitchell William Gibson is never going to be able to live down being the sci-fi author who coined the term "cyberspace". First used in his debut novel Neuromancer which was published during the early 1980s, it was soon picked up on as an uncannily accurate description of the then-emerging Internet. His latest novel is […]
Thom Jones – Sonny Liston Was A Friend Of Mine
OJ Irish If you don’t drink or smoke, reading Sonny Liston was a Friend of Mine will make you wish you did. If, like most people, you do, then you’ll feel better about it and want to switch up to Jim Beam and Lucky Strikes immediately. Jones’ writing is what you might call ‘Zippo Prose’ […]
Lionel Rolfe – Fat Man On The Left
Lewis Owens Despite the title, Lionel Rolfe is far more than simply an overweight Lefty. Journalist, author, musician, he is a self-confessed Californian bohemian. Indeed, Fat Man On The Left effectively captures the pulsating and often contradictory atmosphere of his Los Angeles hometown: chaotic, sometimes self-indulgent, but ultimately alive, exhilarating and highly attractive. As the […]
Tom Baker: Who On Earth Is Tom Baker?
Robin Askew At the risk of turning into one of those dreadful thirtysomething nostalgia bores, the Tom Baker incarnation of Dr Who has a special place in the hearts of those of my generation. Forever fixed in my mind is the time I queued for hours with hundreds of other grubby pre-teens in a smalltown […]
Douglas Coupland – Miss Wyoming
Gary Marshall With the success of Generation X, Douglas Coupland found himself in the role of spokesman for a disaffected generation, documenting the ennui of twentysomethings in a world where even the most radical youth movements are quickly co-opted and commercialised by the mainstream. Microserfs followed soon afterwards, a soap opera covering the tangled relationships […]
Leo Marks – Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker’s War 1941-45
Eugene Byrne Leo Marks crops up in the oddest corners of the 20th century. The only son of doting Jewish parents, his father owned the bookshop at 84 Charing Cross Road, made famous by Helene Hanff’s book. Marks read his Freud (who once visited the shop), wrote a lot of stories and produced the brilliant/notorious […]
Joyce Maynard – At Home In The World
Bethan Roberts In the last couple of years there has been a shift in confessional writing from the craze for tortured self-absorption (from Elizabeth Wurtzel and Andrea Ashworth, amongst others) to the impulse to torture a friend/relative/lover, preferably a famous one. Joyce Maynard’s book, along with the du Pre siblings’ A Genius in the Family […]
Crowded House : Afterglow
Gary Marshall In a decade where most music was aimed at eight-year-olds, Crowded House were a band out of time. The unassuming Antipodeans had no image to speak of, no manifesto or world domination plan. Instead, they created album after album of resolutely adult songs. Few bands cite them as an influence, yet you’ll find […]
Metallica : S&M
Gary Marshall Rock and classical music make uneasy bedfellows. Whether it’s heavy metal bands performing with ‘real’ musicians, orchestras tackling the hits of the day or rubbish Britpop bands trying to be taken seriously, the results are usually uninspiring. While S&M avoids most of the common traps, it’s still a flawed effort. S&M teams the […]
Michael Marshall Smith – Spares
Antony Johnston They say never judge a book by its cover, but the sheer ubiquitousness of Spares (with its oh-so-cool spot-varnished, blurry-type cover) inclined me to think it was the sort of bestselling “new fiction” which generally leaves me cold. Fortunately for me, a friend had already read it and liked it so much that […]
Kevin Kelly – New Rules For The New Economy
Chris Mitchell Despite its dry title, Kevin Kelly’s book isn’t just another self-styled business bible for the information age. Instead, it’s an overview of what he terms the “network economy”, which is not only superseding the old paradigms of the industrial economy but transforming how we live. The network economy has been brought about by […]
Charles Leadbeater: Living On Thin Air
Chris Mitchell Thanks to the globalising effect of new technologies, Britain is transforming from an industrialised economy to a knowledge based economy. Unlike previous generations, many of us make our livings not by producing anything tangible but through the absorption and analysis of information. This, maintains Charles Leadbeater, is the advent of a new economy […]
Mark Taplin: Open Lands: Travels Through Russia’s Once Forbidden Places
Gary Marshall During the Cold War huge areas of Russia were strictly off-limits to foreign visitors and, in classic tit-for-tat style, Russian visitors were allowed entry to the USA provided their travels didn’t take them anywhere there were roads, people or small animals. In 1992 both superpowers signed the “Open Lands” agreement (from which Mark […]
Susan Maushart: The Mask Of Motherhood
Bethan Roberts Often witty and certainly subversive, The Mask of Motherhood is, as the blurb puts it, not a ‘how to’ book but a ‘how it really is’ book. I’m not sure what this cliché actually means (how it is for who, exactly?), but it’s true that Maushart quickly gets to work, debunking all the […]
Ed Jones: This Is Pop
Gary Marshall It wasn’t a rock gig, it was an event. Journalists from all the major music papers were there, and even the local newspaper had marked the event with a special supplement. Celebrities air-kissed backstage, and the band took the stage in front of thousands of people. For Wigan musician Ed Jones, the gig […]
John Steele: The Bird That Never Flew
Stephen Harper The Bird That Never Flew is a crude but extraordinary autobiography. With a minimum of literary fuss, John Steele describes his unimaginably brutal life, which began in the gritty Glasgow estates of Carntyne and Garthamlock, continued in remand homes and approved schools, and culminated in stretches in the infamous "big houses" of Barlinnie […]
Meera Syal: Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee
Bethan Roberts It’s a relief to find that once you get beyond the mouthful of a title, this second novel from the fantastically talented author of Anita and Me, Bhaji on the Beach and star of the rightly acclaimed BBC2 comedy series Goodness Gracious Me more than lives up to Meera Syal’s reputation. It tells […]
Jane and Anna Campion: Holy Smoke
Chris Mitchell Holy Smoke is the novel of Jane Campion’s soon to be released film, starring Kate Winslet and Harvey Keitel. It’s an odd project, not only for being published before the film’s release (which says something about the literary pretensions of the director), but also for being a collaboration between two sisters. Challenging the […]
Salman Rushdie: The Ground Beneath Her Feet
Tim Parks ‘I always thought storytelling was like juggling,’ says the main character in Rushdie’s novel Haroun, ‘You keep a lot of different tales in the air, and juggle them up and down, and if you’re good you don’t drop any.’ In his new work, The Ground Beneath her Feet the Anglo-Indian author duly tosses […]
John Baxter: George Lucas: A Biography
Chris Mitchell Throughout his film-making career, George Lucas has continually pushed back the boundaries of technology in order to realise his ideas on the silver screen. John Baxter’s biography of the man is not only an account of Lucas’ personal history but also the transformative effect Lucas’ fascination with technology has had on the entire […]
The Onion: Our Dumb Century: Max Cannon: Red Meat
Gary Marshall damages his health laughing at The Onion’s Our Dumb Century and Max Cannon’s Red Meat According to popular belief, the phrase “American humour” belongs in the same oxymoronic category as “military intelligence” and “virtually spotless”. We British take great delight in reminding Americans that they have no sense of irony – not because […]
Hubert Selby : The Willow Tree : A Lightning Strike On The Retina
Thierry Brunet meets the uncompromising Hubert Selby Hubert Selby Jr is one of the most powerful American writers. Last Exit To Brooklyn, his first novel, was a best seller and the subject of an obscenity trial in England. The book was incendiary with its release in 1964. It’s a compassionate portrait of an overlooked America. […]
N. Katherine Hayles: How We Became Posthuman: Virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature and informatics
Björn Wiman “I am Human”, cries the protagonist in Will Self’s novel Great Apes. A phrase that may sound like a sturdy truism, in Self’s novel rings heavily: the protagonist has waken one morning only to find all human beings transmogrified into chimpanzees. The reader and the protagonist are both kept in the same suspense: […]
