HAHAHAHAHAHA!

(A bit late, but whatever)

Seriouly, did you not just read the first lines of the book. This isn’t the place to be heroic.

I once had the pleasure of be seated at the same time as one of my favorite comment authors, Philip Pilkington. I could only blush with envy on reading sentences that ended with “…hence the charges of pretension.” My dog remarked “you’re a lot like Pilkington, you both have ears.” I’m going to put that on the cover of my novel.

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/sds_today95.jpg

What you’re trying to pass off here as a critique tells us nothing about this work, but everything we need to know about you.

You wasted your time writing this piece. Further, you are wasting your readers’ time. If you have nothing more to offer the world than this, we’d all be better off if you just kept it to yourself.

thanks.
(angrily beats off)

http://safe.plushdx.us

And if you wondered, you do need a permit for to hold a demonstration. Not to hand out flyers though.

Dr. Faustus by Thomas Mann:
A nazi composer sells his soul to Lucifer in exchange for future greatness. He bangs this syphilitic prostitute to seal the deal.

Dr. Adder by PKD protege K.W. Jeter:
A megalomaniac surgeon cuts pieces off of LA prostitutes to make them more attractive to perverted military bigwigs.

Dr. Faustus has long philosophical digressions as it is narrated by this windbag ex-schoolteacher. Dr. Adder has pictures.

No wonder two of my all-time favorite “great books” are The Curve Of Binding Energy and Origins Of Radar.

What’s the point of this review? Anyone can shit on someone else’s creation, as you’ve done here. Okay, the novel sucks, as do many others. So… point us in a different direction, or at least read the damn thing cover the cover and provide some insight, beyond namedropping Wodehouse and generically towing the eXile editorial line.

Contemporary fiction might as well be balkanized, lifeless indie-rock, with 4 minute songs at mid-tempo and occasional crooning. No money in them, either. Not sure why publishers published the shit out of them in the 90s when nothing sold, and nothing was good, either. And those blurbs! You wouldn’t know if something WAS ACTUALLY GOOD OR NOT.

I see your point, but I still love “Zap Gun”. PKD work is broadly divided in two type of stuff: the all time, mind crushing masterpieces that leave you dizzy and change forever your life (Ubik, Maze of Death, Our Friends from Frolix 8, Clans of Alphane Moon, Man In High Castle, Do The Androids, Time Out of Joint, Flow My tears, Valis etc etc etc – and of course the best of the lot, 3 Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch) and the stuff that maybe is not mind blowing, but still great because Dick had this great talent of putting here and there great scenes or great concepts that make reading them worth the effort. Say, Galactic Pot Healer, Dr. Bloodmoney, GamePlayer of Titan, Simulacra, Trasmigration of Timothy Archer, Counter Clock World, Comic Puppets, etc etc etc and, of course Zap Gun. EVERYONE of them has a least a single outstanding idea or scene that make it stick with you forever. Keep in mind that he was writing for Ace Books or any of those publisher who were exploiting him, taking speed to write all day and all night and pay the bills and the alimonies to ex wives, and STILL churching up stuff that was better than 99% of what you read today. if that’s not talent…

It’s interesting to note that the same is true for PKD short stories (that a lot of people ignores). I mean, take “The Days of Perky Pat” – it’s something recycled out of Palmer Eldritch and it STILL a new angle on the same material, still fresh and awesome. And of course the wholly original short stories are even better. “Upon The Dull Earth”, “Retreat Syndrome”, “A Little Something for Us Temponauts”… I could go on forever.

Stapledon: my favourite is “Star Maker”, it’s well written, and I understand why some people is crazy about his books, but for some reason I’ve never been a big fan of him. But that’s just me, I suppose.

My list – I’ve forgot to add three names: Lovecraft, Fritz Leiber (because of Big Time, A Spectre is Haunting Texas, and expecially Our Lady Of Darkness – I mean, does anyone knows it?) and William Hope Hodgson (because of House on The Borderland and of course The Nightland – speaking of whom, Greg Bear has written a great novella somehow based on it – “The Way of All Ghosts”, worth finding on Internet).

As I said before – that’s the stuff people will remember 1000 years from now…

It refers back to the “backdrop…of Strindberg”; not only does the novel rip off…er…pay homage to Strindberg, the author makes the characters talk as if they are in a play as well, although the exerpted dialogue looks more like bad Sam Shepard dialogue than Strindberg.

The sociologists call it the “Culture Industry”. The idea is that the industry produces material for tired office workers, lawyers and minor public officials. The material has to be familiar because these people have no time/energy to put into working over new/unfamiliar material (a similar criticism could be laid against some of the “literary theory” coming out of this site… I wonder why…).

The Culture Industry theory actually works surprisingly well in day-to-day reality. I’ve noted that doctors who have done their time in the emergency room and have moved into private practice often have an interest in real literature. I think the reason is that their brains are working properly because they generally attend various conferences etc. Then you talk to the busy middle-classer and he tells you how he’s heading to Spain that summer and he intends to tackle Joyce or Proust – of course this never happens because the poor bastards’ brains are fried from office-speak, so they reach for whatever crime trash they secretly slipped into their bags before they left.

‘The problem with “modern” novels (and I suspect that was Dolan/Eileen point) is that they’re not only tedious and badly written – they’re totally irrilevant. I mean, try reading PK Dick “The Penultimate Truth” – originally written in 1964.’

Hmmm. PKD was capable of writing tedious and badly written prose with the worst of them. Have you read ‘The Zap Gun’ for example? But as you say, the relevance makes even books like that well worth a read.

That’s a seriously good list of authors you have there. If you like them, I’d recommend checking out my current favorite, Olaf Stapleton, a mostly forgotten author from the 1930s who wrote what have to be the most (literally) awesome novels ever. Check out ‘Last and First Man’…