Microlives: A Compelling Collection of Flash Fiction Stories by Amanda Hodgson

A review by R J Dent

In her previous collection of short stories, Feed the Need, Amanda Hodgson looked unflinchingly at eating, food, digestion and consumption in all of its various permutations.

Microlives, subtitled, A Compelling Collection of Flash Fiction Stories is exactly what it says it is; a very compelling, and a very contemporary, collection of flash fictions about people linked by a specific location. And in Microlives, Amanda Hodgson shows us around a small block of flats in an unnamed city and introduces us to a range of characters, all going about their lives, trying to cope, trying to live, trying to survive, all trying to find tiny slices of joy in their hard existences.

As Amanda Hodgson warns: ‘Ria is tired. Pat is praying. Liam likes feet and Billy likes films. Microlives takes the reader to a small block of flats to hear the voices within. Find out why Claire is screaming and Join Della as she revisits her past.’

And we, as readers, do find out, although Amanda Hodgson offers no easy or pat solutions to the myriad problems life throws at her characters, with several of them unable to achieve any real sort of redemption at all.

The stories in Microlives are realistic, but they are most definitely not from the George Eliot or Thomas Hardy school of realism. Amanda Hodgson’s prose, influenced as it is by Jenny Diski (The Vanishing Princess, Nothing Natural, The Dream Mistress) and J.D. Salinger (Franny and Zooey, The Catcher in the Rye), is more akin to J.G. Ballard (High-Rise, Concrete Island) with her iced-scalpel turn of phrase and her psychological insights.

The stories in Microlives reward close reading because they give us (as readers) a better understanding of certain human conditions, human needs, and minor, but nonetheless important, human achievements.

Product Details:

Title: Microlives: A Compelling Collection of Flash Fiction Stories

Author: Amanda Hodgson

Format: Kindle Edition

File Size: 1207 KB

Published: August 2019

Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited

Language: English

ASIN: B07YK1Z56T

Microlives: A Compelling Collection of Flash Fiction Stories by Amanda Hodgson is available to buy here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Microlives-Compelling-Collection-Fiction-Stories-ebook/dp/B07YK1Z56T/ref=sr_1_3?qid=1575210558&refinements=p_27%3AAmanda+Hodgson&s=books&sr=1-3

 

Rodney Matthews: Another Time, Another Place

R J Dent’s in-depth article about fantasy and science fiction artist, Rodney Matthews.

 

 

Jean Genet (1910-1986)

Jean Genet (19 December, 1910-15 April, 1986) was a French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist.

Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but he later took to writing.

Throughout his five early novels, Genet works to subvert the traditional set of moral values of his assumed readership. He celebrates a beauty in evil, emphasizes his singularity, raises violent criminals to icons, and enjoys the specificity of gay gesture and coding and the depiction of scenes of brutality and betrayal.

NOVELS:

By 1949, Genet had completed five novels, three plays, and numerous poems, many of them considered controversial for their explicit and often deliberately provocative portrayal of homosexuality and criminality.

Our Lady of the Flowers (Notre Dame des Fleurs, 1943) is a journey through the prison underworld, featuring a fictionalized alter-ego by the name of Divine, usually referred to in the feminine, at the center of a circle of queens with colourful sobriquets such as Mimosa I, Mimosa II, First Communion and the Queen of Rumania.

The Miracle of the Rose (Miracle de la rose, 1946) is a fictionalized autobiography which describes Genet’s time in Mettray Penal Colony.

The Thief’s Journal (Journal du voleur, 1949) is also a fictionalized autobiography and it describes Genet’s experiences as a vagabond and prostitute, as he wanders across Europe.

Querelle of Brest (Querelle de Brest, 1947) is the story of a murder set in the midst of the port town of Brest, where sailors treat life with brutal carelessness.

Funeral Rites (Pompes funèbres, 1949) is a story of love and betrayal across political divides, inspired by the death of the narrator’s lover, Jean Decarnin, who was killed by the Germans during the Second World War.

PLAYS:

Jean Genet’s plays present highly stylized depictions of ritualistic struggles between outcasts of various kinds and their oppressors. Social identities are parodied and shown to involve complex layering through manipulation of the dramatic fiction and its inherent potential for theatricality and role-play.

In The Maids (1947), the eponymous maids imitate one another and their mistress.

In Deathwatch (Haute Surveillance, 1947), three prisoners are locked up in the same cell. One is to be guillotined. Confinement traps each of them in solitude and immense unhappiness, which lends them a certain dignity.

Splendid’s (1948) is a full-length drama, and

Her (Elle, 1955) is a one-act play.

In The Balcony (1957), the clients of a brothel simulate roles of political power before, in a dramatic reversal, actually becoming those figures, all surrounded by mirrors that both reflect and conceal.

In The Blacks (1959), Genet offers a critical dramatization of what Aimé Césaire called negritude, presenting a violent assertion of Black identity and anti-white virulence framed in terms of mask-wearing and roles adopted and discarded.

The Screens (1961), Genet’s most overtly political play, is an epic account of the Algerian War of Independence.

NON-FICTION:

Genet wrote an essay on the work of the Swiss sculptor and artist Alberto Giacometti entitled The Studio of Alberto Giacometti (L’Atelier d’Alberto Giacometti, 1957).

It was highly praised by Giacometti himself and by Pablo Picasso. Genet wrote in an informal style, incorporating excerpts of conversations between himself and Giacometti.

Prisoner of Love (Un Captif Amoureux, 1986) is a memoir of Genet’s encounters with Palestinian fighters and Black Panthers. In 1970, he had spent two years in the Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan. Visiting Beirut in September 1982, Genet found himself in the midst of the Israeli invasion of the city. He was one of the first foreigners to enter Shatila refugee camp after the massacre of hundreds of its inhabitants.

POETRY:

Genet also wrote several poems.

• “The Man Condemned to Death” (“Le Condamné à Mort”) (written in 1942, first published in 1945)
• “Funeral March” (“Marche Funebre”) (1945)
• “The Galley” (“La Galere”) (1945)
• “A Song of Love” (“Un Chant d’Amour”) (1946)
• “The Fisherman of the Suquet” (“Le Pecheur du Suquet”) (1948)
• “The Parade” (“La Parade”) (1948)

These poems have been translated into English by Jeremy Reed and George Messo and published as Jean Genet: The Complete Poems.

Jean Genet developed throat cancer and was found dead on 15 April 1986, in a hotel room in Paris. He is buried in the Spanish Cemetery in Larache, Morocco.

Jean Genet’s books are available at:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jean-Genet/e/B000APBLYE

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The Love Song of Daphnis & Chloe by Nigel Humphreys

A review by R J Dent

The Love Song of Daphnis and Chloe

by Nigel Humphreys

Edited by Catherine Edmunds

Published by Circaidy Gregory Press

ISBN: 9781906451882

 

 

Daphnis and Chloe (Greek: Δάφνις καὶ Χλόη, Daphnis kai Chloē) is the only known work of the 2nd century AD Greek novelist, Longus.

The Love Song of Daphnis & Chloe began when Nigel Humphreys read George Thornley’s 1670 English translation of Longus’ Greek novel, Daphnis and Chloe, written on Lesbos.

Nigel Humphreys became obsessed with the task of re-interpreting Longus’ pastoral romantic novel into an epic modern poem that would appeal to twenty-first century readers and retain the beauty, charm, romance and humour of the original.

First and foremost, The Love Song of Daphnis & Chloe is the story of a boy (Daphnis) and a girl (Chloe), each of whom is exposed at birth along with some identifying tokens. A goatherd named Lamon discovers Daphnis, and a shepherd called Dryas finds Chloe.

 

Each decides to raise the child he finds as his own. Daphnis and Chloe grow up together, herding the flocks for their foster parents.

And so it was preordained –

decreed by divine intercession –

that they raise them as their own.

And having shared their dreams…

they introduced their children

to their work as herdsmen…

Inevitably, Daphnis and Chloe fall in love, but being naïve, do not understand what is happening to them.

Yet among them Daphnis

was unable to settle since

he had seen Chloe naked,

honeyed, tender, scented

and more lovely than Venus

in all her sensuousness.

Philetas, a wise old cowherd, explains to them what love is and tells them that the only cure is kissing. They do this.

All they saw was that kisses

had endangered Daphnis

and day-dreaming Chloe

in that mazy month of May.

Eventually, Lycaenion, a woman from the city, educates Daphnis in the skills of love-making.

And so Lycenia…

finding him primed and greedy,

slipped slickly beneath him

and shepherded his limbs

to where they longed to be.

What followed came naturally…

Throughout the book, Chloe is courted by suitors, two of whom (Dorcon and Lampis) attempt with varying degrees of success to abduct her. She is also carried off by raiders from a nearby city:

Yet Chloe was with her herd

and fled from the invaders

to the Nymphs’ Cave begging

them to spare her and her kin

in the name of the Goddesses.

And she is only saved by the intervention of the god Pan.

Oh, you most cruel dissolute

of mortals! … restore

Chloe to the Nymphs with all

her flocks. Awake therefore

and send the maiden ashore

with her sheep and goats,

and I will steer her home,

and guide her to her lands.

The story concludes with both Daphnis and Chloe being recognized by their birth parents, after which, the couple get married and happily live out their lives in the country. On their wedding night:

… the stars,

moon and planets hurrahed.

The married pair were squired

to their room in rush light

by pipes and flutes, and Daphnis

lay with Chloe skin against skin.

Cuddling tightly and kissing,

entwining and twisting…

 

Nigel Humphreys’ The Love Song of Daphnis & Chloe is a beautifully written modern epic version of an Ancient Greek classic. Humphreys has taken Longus’ prose and given us a delightful poem of incredible warmth, wit and wisdom.

 From the back cover:

Bucolic shenanigans on the Island of Lesbos

Poet Nigel Humphreys has done something unique and surprising with the ancient text of Daphnis & Chloe, taking a rambling 2nd century prose narrative and transforming it into an epic poem in the oral tradition of Ancient Greece.

Daphnis & Chloe is complemented in this edition by five new Daffyd ap Gwylim translations, which Humphreys has returned to the original cywydd form in order to recapture the colour and humour of the 14th century Welsh troubadour poet.

 

 

THE LOVE SONG OF DAPHNIS & CHLOE

by Nigel Humphreys

Edited by Catherine Edmunds

Published by Circaidy Gregory Press.

ISBN: 9781906451882

Follow Nigel Humphries:

Website:

http://nigelhumphreyspoet.webs.com/daphnis-and-chloe-2015

Circaidy Gregory Press:

http://www.circaidygregory.co.uk/nigel_humphreys.htm

Amazon:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Love-Song-Daphnis-Chloe-Dafydd/dp/1906451885

 

Vladimir Nabokov’s Lilith, translated by R J Dent

 

Lilith

 

I died. The sycamores gave shade;

shutters were shut upon the dust

of the hot streets steamily teased

by the torrid Aeolus.

 

I slowly walked, and the fauns walked;

It seemed as though I recognised

the great god Pan in every faun.

Good. I must be in Paradise.

 

Shielding her face against the sun,

there stood a naked, slender girl;

her honeyed skin attracted me;

lilies were threaded in her curls.

 

She had the grace of a woman.

I watched her small nipples harden

and I recalled a sweet springtime

in another new-grown garden,

 

when through the trees by the river,

I had one time watched, emboldened,

the miller’s youngest daughter step

out of the water, lithe, golden,

 

with a damp wisp between her legs.

And now, still wearing the coat

I had on when murdered last night,

with a rake’s predatory gloat,

 

I advanced upon my Lilith.

She stared at me with her green eyes,

until my clothes burst into flame

and burnt to ashes in a trice.

 

In the room behind her I saw

a Greek divan, a spread-out shawl,

a table, pomegranates, wine;

some erotic art covering the wall.

 

With two fingers she shamelessly

took hold of my hot member’s head

with unselfconscious, childish glee.

“Now come along with me,” she said.

 

Without inducement or effort,

but slowly to extend delight,

like wings, she gradually opened

her soft sweet brown thighs to my sight.

 

How enticing, how inviting,

her moist pink rose! And with a wild

cry, she fell on my throbbing length,

slicker than that remembered child.

 

Snake in snake, vessel in vessel,

smooth-fitting parts, I moved in her

through ascending rhythms, feeling

unendurable pleasure stir.

 

But suddenly she flinched, and pushed

me off her, moved fast, stood over

me, grasped the shawl and twisted it

around her waist and up, covered

 

and strong again; with me about

to come, to spend, for me, nothing

left. A strange wind made me stagger.

I ran to the door. “Let me in!”

 

I shouted, noticing with horror,

that I stood outside in the dust

where loudly-yelling youngsters

were staring at my engorged lust.

 

“Let me come in!” And the goat-hoofed

crowd increased. “Quick, let me come in!”

“I am about to come…” I yelled.

 

The door stayed shut, the crowd watched, quiet,

as I spurted out my semen.

I knew then that I was in hell.

 

 

 

Lilith

by Vladimir Nabokov

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Translated into English by R J Dent

Copyright © R J Dent (2016)

 

 

 

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A Box of Stars Beneath the Bed

OUT NOW! A Box of Stars Beneath the Bed: National Flash Fiction Day 2016 Anthology.

 

 

A Box of Stars Beneath the Bed is an anthology of flash-fictions, published to celebrate National Flash-Fiction Day (UK), and showcasing the very best talents to have written in this challenging miniature literary form. The stories in A Box of Stars Beneath the Bed are in a variety of genres, styles and forms, ranging from horror to romance, from fantasy to dark reality, from urban terror to comedy. Many of the stories in A Box of Stars Beneath the Bed will resonate with readers long after reading.

 

A Box of Stars Beneath the Bed

Contents

Foreword: The Editors

Before the Sun Comes Up: Tim Stevenson

Miss Scarlet in the Shed: Tracy Fells           

Cold Hands: Rhoda Greaves

Ambush: Richard Holt       

Outsider: Laura Huntley     

Theseus in Belleville: Anne Elizabeth Weisgerber

Bocca Baciata: Ruth McKee        

Health and Pleasure, Glorious Sea!: Sharon Telfer      

Gingerbread: Virginia Moffat

A Marionettist’s Musings While on a Park Bench: Charley Karchin

Bubblegum Barbie: Emily Devane      

Lifer: Adam Trodd       

Shirts – A Fable: R J Dent

Sam, 29: Martha Gleeson

Three Kids, Two Balloons: KM Elkes            

Who? What?: Ashley Chantler

Pub Quiz: Alison Wassell

Sushi and Kitty Cats: Kaitlyn Johnson

Desert Blossom: Annie Mitchell

Premiums: Ian Shine             

Misunderstanding: Vivien Jones        

Wakes Week: David Hartley      

Burning Faith: Frankie McMillan

Pigeon English: David Cook         

Kittiwakes: Catherine Edmunds

The Door Closes: Kevlin Henney

Clippers: Debbi Voisey      

I Go on the Morrow to Murder the King: Joy Myserscough

Special Delivery: Calum Kerr         

Grains: Joanna Campbell

Panda: Fat Roland          

Fish Supper: Laura Tickle         

The Vineyard: Catherine McNamara

What We Threw Into the Lake: Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

The Pleasure Principle: Rob Walton         

Onion: Damhnait Monaghan

My Aunt Aggie: Paul McVeigh      

A Box of Stars Beneath the Bed: Jon Stubbington

A Collection: Diane Simmons

Kelly Loves Traffic Light Jelly: Jeanette Sheppard

Yellow: Nuala Ní Chonchúir

424 Likes: Jennifer Harvey

Manspreading: Marie Gethins 

Wake Up: Oli Morriss          

When Dreams are Large and Tusked: Ingrid Jendrzejewski

Ten Things that Happened After My Funeral: Santino Prinzi     

What the Therapist Said: Jude Higgins        

Gregor Samsa Quits the Track Team: Beverly C. Lucey

Honesty’s Not the Best Policy: Brendan Way       

Orphans: Chris Stanley       

And the Red Flower: Nina Lindmark Lie

One Last Pickup: Sarah Hilary         

Sunday Morning: John Holland      

About Unemployment and Rats: Bernard O’Rourke

Captain Strix: Zoe Gilbert         

Latchkey: Fiona J. Mackintosh

Lips: Nik Perring         

Map Reading: Jane Roberts        

How to Make Lolo: Michelle Elvy       

Family Values: Jonathan Pinnock

Blackbird Singing in the Dead of Night: Claire Fuller         

Hornet’s Nest: Sally Burnette      

The Taste of Sock and Rubber: Cathy Bryant       

In the Café: Sherri Turner       

On the Invisibility of the Deaf: Debbie Young

Flying Ant Day: Judy Darley          

Marzipan Bride and Groom: Sal Page

I Believe in You: Meg Pokrass        

When She Was Good: Safia Moore         

Injuries in Dust: Poppy O’Neill     

We Can Be Asteroids: FJ Morris             

Purple with a Purpose: Amanda Saint      

Little Ghosts: Jan Carson           

The Night Life of Wives: Angela Readman

The Jumper: Anne Patterson

A One-Word Yet…: Ingrid Jendrzejewski

Storm: Gemma Govier

Jessie Learns How to Keep A Secret: Alison Wassell

Illumination: Judi Walsh           

When Words Aren’t Enough: Lucy Welch          

Christmas: James Watkins

Always One: Tracy Fells           

Notes: Elaine Marie McKay

Energy Efficient, Extremely Slim, Easy to Install: Ed Broom

 

A Box of Stars Beneath the Bed: National Flash Fiction Day 2016 Anthology is out now!

To purchase the paperback edition of the anthology, please follow this link here: A Box of Stars Beneath the Bed. (paperback)

To purchase the e-book edition of the anthology, please follow this link here: A Box of Stars Beneath the Bed. (e-book)

Follow R J Dent’s work on:

Website: http://www.rjdent.com/

Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/R.-J.-Dent/e/B0034Q3RD4

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Walter Tevis (1928-1984)

Walter Tevis (February 28, 1928 – August 8, 1984) was an American novelist and short story writer.

He is the author of six novels and one short story collection. Three of his novels have been made into films: The Hustler, The Color of Money and The Man Who Fell to Earth.

Walter Tevis taught English literature and creative writing at Ohio University from 1965 to 1978, where he was a university professor.

He spent his last years in New York as a full-time writer.

Walter Tevis died of lung cancer in 1984.

Works:

The Hustler 1959 (novel)

The Hustler tells the story of a young pool hustler, Edward “Fast Eddie” Felson, who challenges the legendary Minnesota Fats. After losing to Fats, Eddie meets Bert Gordon, who teaches him about winning, or more particularly about losing. Tautly written, The Hustler is a treatise on how a loser is beaten by himself, not by his opponent; and how he can learn to win, if he can look deeply enough into himself.

The Hustler was adapted into a 1961 film, starring Paul Newman as Fast Eddie. The film was a critical and commercial success. It remains widely regarded as a classic.

The Man Who Fell to Earth 1963 (novel) 

The Man Who Fell to Earth is about an extraterrestrial that lands on Earth seeking a way to ferry his people to Earth from his home planet, which is suffering from a severe drought.

The Man Who Fell to Earth was made into a 1976 film, starring David Bowie as the extraterrestrial, Thomas Jerome Newton. It was directed by Nicolas Roeg.

Mockingbird 1980 (novel)

Mockingbird opens with the failed suicide attempt of Spofforth, the dean of New York University, who is an android who has lived for centuries, yet yearns to die. Spofforth then brings a teacher, Paul Bentley, to New York. Bentley has taught himself to read after a Rosetta Stone–like discovery of a film with words matching those in a children’s primer. Bentley says he could teach others to read, but Spofforth instead gives him a job of decoding the written titles in ancient silent films. At a zoo, Bentley meets Mary Lou and explains the concept of reading to her. They embark on a path toward literacy. Spofforth responds by sending Bentley to prison for the crime of reading, and takes Mary Lou as an unwilling housemate. The novel then follows Bentley’s journey of discovery after his escape from prison…

 

Far from Home 1981 (short stories)

Far from Home is a collection of short stories, written between 1955 and 1984 by Walter Tevis. Tevis wrote more than two dozen short stories for a variety of magazines. “The Big Hustle”, his pool hall story was published in Collier’s on August 5, 1955, and was illustrated by Denver Gillen. Over the next twenty years, Tevis published short stories in The American Magazine, Bluebook, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Galaxy Science Fiction, Playboy, Redbook and The Saturday Evening Post. These stories were collected together and published as the short story collection Far From Home in 1981.

The Big Bounce (first published in Galaxy, February, 1958) is one of the stories from the collection:

 

The Steps of the Sun 1983 (novel)

 

The Steps of the Sun is set in the year 2063. China’s world dominance is growing, and America is slipping into impotence. All new sources of energy have been depleted or declared unsafe, and a new Ice Age has begun. Ben Belson searches for a new energy resource.

 

 

 

The Queen’s Gambit 1983 (novel)

The Queen’s Gambit traces chess prodigy Beth Harmon’s life from her childhood in an orphanage through her struggles with tranquilizer and alcohol addiction to her triumphant rise through the Grandmaster ranks.

Eight-year-old orphan Beth Harmon is quiet, sullen, and by all appearances unremarkable—until she plays her first game of chess. Her senses grow sharper, her thinking clearer, and for the first time in her life she feels herself fully in control. By the age of sixteen, she’s competing for the U.S. Open championship. But as she hones her skills on the professional circuit, the stakes get higher, her isolation grows more frightening, and the thought of escape becomes all the more tempting…

The Color of Money 1984 (novel)

The Color of Money is a sequel to Tevis’ first novel, The Hustler (1959). The novel is set twenty years after The Hustler. Fast Eddie now runs a pool hall of his own. After seeing a lookalike of Minnesota Fats on the television, he decides to go in search of the real one, whom he finds in the Florida Keys. Eddie persuades Fats to go on a national tour. He meets Arabella, an English woman, who moves in with him. The finale is set at Lake Tahoe, where Eddie manages to beat a number of younger players.

The novel was adapted into a 1986 film directed by Martin Scorsese. The film differs greatly from the novel in terms of plot, and does not feature the Minnesota Fats character.

 

Information on Walter Tevis and his works is available at:

http://www.waltertevis.com/

 

Walter Tevis’ novels and short stories are available at:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=walter+tevis

 

 

Walter Tevis (1928-1984)

Copyright © R J Dent (2016)

 

Follow R J Dent’s work on:

Website: http://www.rjdent.com/

Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/R.-J.-Dent/e/B0034Q3RD4

Blog: https://rjdent.wordpress.com/

twitter: https://twitter.com/RJDent

facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rjdentwriter

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Richard Brautigan

Richard Brautigan (January 30, 1935 – September 16, 1984) was an American novelist and short story writer.

His writing is often considered to be either black comedy, parody or satire – or a combination of these.

Richard Brautigan has written ten novels. They are:

A Confederate General from Big Sur (1964, ISBN 0-224-61923-3)

Trout Fishing in America (1967 ISBN 0-395-50076-1)

In Watermelon Sugar (1968 ISBN 0-440-34026-8)

The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966 (1971 ISBN 0-671-20872-1)

The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western (1974 ISBN 0-671-21809-3)

Willard and His Bowling Trophies: A Perverse Mystery (1975 ISBN 0-671-22065-9)

Sombrero Fallout: A Japanese Novel (1976 ISBN 0-671-22331-3)

Dreaming of Babylon: A Private Eye Novel 1942 (1977 ISBN 0-440-02146-4)

The Tokyo-Montana Express (1980 ISBN 0-440-08770-8)

So The Wind Won’t Blow It All Away (1982 ISBN 0-395-70674-2)

An Unfortunate Woman: A Journey (1994 ISBN 0-312-27710-5)

Richard Brautigan has also written a collection of short stories, Revenge of the Lawn: Stories 1962-1970

Richard Brautigan’s novels and short stories are available from:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Richard-Brautigan/e/B000AQ48CA/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1465120516&sr=1-2-ent

 

 

 

 

 

Thunder Island by James Howard Kunstler

 

Andy Newmark is having the time of his life on Thunder Island, but the 1967 Summer of Love also brings with it some important lessons about growing up.

In this coming-of-age novel, set in the summer of 1967, 17-year-old Andy Newmark graduates from high school and lands a job at a run down beach club on the famous barrier island east of New York City. It’s the legendary summer of love in the USA with the Vietnam War ramping up in the background and on Thunder Island it’s all about sex, drugs, and rock and roll. It is Andy’s first time living away from home with no one to answer to but the hard-drinking board members of the rattletrap club. The threat of the military draft hangs over Andy as makes his way into the adult world.

The reader is carried along by Andy’s sense of exploration as he works, makes friends, surfs, and experiments with drugs, alcohol and sex. All the while, the fear of not being accepted by a college and therefore being drafted to fight in Vietnam hovers over him. Gradually overcoming personal conflicts, his parents divorce, his fear of failure and the social ills he encounters, the war, the prejudice he experiences as a Jew, the decadence of Thunder Island, by summer’s end, Andy feels comfortable with himself and the dimensions of the adult world he is entering.

Andy and his friends are likable, even if they seem as deeply characterized as the people in the rock songs that play everywhere on Thunder Island. And, like many novels of initiation, this is a simple story of innocence and discovery. Thunder Island has charm.

Steeped in the news and social events of the time as they appeared to young adults then, Thunder Island offers a sentimental, nostalgic version of adolescence in the late 60s.

 

James Howard Kunstler says: ‘The story takes place at a Hamptons-like beach resort town in 1967.  It’s about what happens to a New York City kid the summer after he graduates from high school, with the Vietnam War looming in the background.  Surfing, drugs, young love.’

This was one of James Howard Kunstler’s early novels, published some time before he became better known as a social critic and author of the acclaimed non-fiction books The Geography of Nowhere, The Long Emergency, and Too Much Magic.

James Howard Kunstler is the author of many novels including World Made By Hand, The Witch of Hebron, Thunder Island, Maggie Darling — A Modern Romance, The Halloween Ball, An Embarrassment of Riches, and many others.

He has published three novellas with Water Street Press: Manhattan Gothic, A Christmas Orphan, and The Flight of Mehetabel.

His non-fiction includes The Geography of Nowhere, The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, Home from Nowhere, The Long Emergency, Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology and the Fate of the Nation.

 

 

Flesh and Excess: On Underground Film by Jack Sargeant

Flesh and Excess: On Underground Film

by Jack Sargeant

Jack Sargeant’s new book, Flesh and Excess: On Underground Film is published by Amok Books and is dedicated to exploring Underground Film since 1999. Flesh and Excess: On Underground Film sees film-studies author Sargeant return to the physical, body-focused, extreme and transgressive films that first interested and intrigued him in the 1980s, when he wrote and published his first essays on cinema.

In Flesh and Excess: On Underground Film, Sargeant’s focus is on the historical, theoretical and philosophical content of the films he analyses. Starting with an exploration of the return to the shock of the body in underground film in the 1980s and the growth of underground film in the 1990s, Sargeant explores and defines an underground cinema that remains radical and contemporary, informing subcultures and independent cinema today.

Primarily focusing on a handful of key works by two award-winning underground filmmakers (Usama Alshaibi and Aryan Kaganof), Sargeant examines the desire – even the need – for a shocking bodily representations and interventions.

Punctuating his writing with philosophical analysis, and with explorations of areas as diverse as industrial culture, surrealism, butoh dance, fine art and medical fetishism, the book challenges the reader to examine the very nature of pleasure, of viewing and of experiencing cinema.

The American underground film scene from the late 70s, 80s and 90s has finally been carefully documented and analysed in Flesh And Excess, which contains a number of insights into the underground scene and situates it in a specific historical perspective.

Flesh and Excess is an important book. In it, a marginal world is discussed and explored in an incisive and intelligent manner. Several films that deal with excesses of the body are explored in almost forensic detail. The book deals with transgressive cinema, and so may not be for everybody, but for those who need a map through the lesser-charted waters of transgressive cinema this book is an informative, entertaining and challenging guide.

Flesh and Excess: On Underground Film is comprehensively illustrated throughout.

Book details:

ISBN-13: 978-1-878923-28-8

ISBN-10: 1-878923-28-5

Film /Filmmaking

$ 19.95/Paper

256 Pages

90 photo illustrations

Flesh and Excess: On Underground Film by Jack Sargeant is available at:

http://www.amazon.com/Flesh-Excess-On-Underground-Film/dp/1878923285

Here is a short book promo film featuring Jack Sargeant talking about Flesh and Excess: On Underground Film:

 

 

Reviews:

“Flesh and Excess is a work of passionate scholarship. More than a history of transgressive cinema, Sargeant examines the persistence of underground art across generations, and the particular appeal of cinema that enfolds physical pleasures and horrors. It’s a clear-eyed and fascinating book.” — Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick and Where Art Belongs

“At last! This is now the definitive work on underground film.” — Jon Reiss, filmmaker and author of Think Outside the Box Office

 About Jack Sargeant:

Jack Sargeant by Claudia Herwig

Jack Sargeant’s most recent book is Flesh and Excess: On Underground Film. Previous titles include Against Control, Deathtripping: The Extreme Underground and Naked Lens: Beat Cinema. His writings on film and culture have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals, and DVD releases, including the Throbbing Gristle DVD box set.

Jack Sargeant appears as an interviewee in the documentaries Blank City, The Advocate For Fagdom and Llik Your Idols, amongst others. He has lectured on underground film, beat culture, William S. Burroughs, J.G. Ballard and many other topics across the world. Jack is currently program director for the Revelation Film Festival.

Other books by Jack Sargeant:

Against Control (2014)

Naked Lens: Beat Cinema (2008)

Deathtripping: the Extreme Underground (2007)

No Focus: Punk On Film (with Chris Barber) (2006)

Bad Cop / Bad Cop (as editor) (2003)

Guns, Death, Terror (as editor) (2002)

Death Cults (as editor) (2002)

Lost Highways: A History of the Road Movie (with Stephanie Watson) (2000)

Cinema Contra Cinema (1999)

Suture 1 (1998)

Born Bad (1996)

Jack Sargeant’s books are available at:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1?ie=UTF8&text=Jack+Sargeant&search-alias=books&field-author=Jack+Sargeant&sort=relevancerank

Follow Jack Sargeant’s work on:

http://www.jacktext.net/index.php?index

 

 

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