The Hit List

[Fez]

howl and other poems - allan ginsburg

'I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,' so begins the evocative descent into ginsburg's portrayal of the beat generation and the stained yet vibrant world the movement inhabited. as its chief poet and lryicist, ginsburg doesn't flinch from the task of describing the details of this existence as boldly and beautifully as was demanded, a fact that had the first print run of the collection of poems impounded by the san fransisco police under the obscene publications act and had its openly homosexual author in court to defend himself against the charges handed down by a legal establishment threatened and confused by what the beat generation was expressing. a modern classic and the perfect companion to kerouac's prose

[Fez]

if you were wondering why ive collected the reviews from the 'beat generation' and 'fear & loathing' thread into one place, which is something i should have done in the first place, then here is the reason...

THE ELECTRIC KOOL-AID ACID TEST - tom wolfe

in the late sixties the beat generation had opened the doors for youthful freedom of expression, the hells angels were terrorising suburbia with the threat they might arrive in town at any moment and fuck or kill everything in sight, and the use of LSD was about to explode. ken kesey and his drug addled followers, known as the merry pranksters, were bringing LSD to the masses and encouraging everyone to join the party; mass gatherings known as the acid tests. the authorities attempted to put a stop to this by sighting kesey as the ring leader for the entire hippy movement and put him in jail, only for him and the hardcore of his entourage to go on the run in mexico.

this is an interesting if aimless account of the merry pranksters as they toured america in the back of a day-glo painted school bus, consuming massive amounts of acid and filming the whole thing for 'the movie' - a four hour film of some drug addicts getting high and talking gibberish. there is a large cast of characters including most interesting a middle-aged neal cassidy who inspired jack keroac to immortalise him in 'on the road' and occasional appearances by allan ginsberg. kesey himself was obviously a huge personality who people would naturally gravitate toward no matter what he wanted to do, and its interesting to follow him in real life and then compare what was going on in his seminal novel 'one flew over the cuckoo's nest'. along the path to discovery, the hells angels are invited to join the party and some sort of loose alliance was formed at least by the gang members who liked getting high, but the union of artists and hooligans was never a predictable one.

if anything the only major flaw in this account is wolfe's own position in the action; most of the stories of the acid tests are recounts from people who where there, prompting the thought if you were at the acid tests how the hell can you really remember what happened? wolfe's own meetings with kesey were few and he has none of the insight of hunter thompson who put himself into the middle of the situation to better understand it, though to be fair the acid tests were already dying out before wolfe began recording what went on. probably most frustratingly the author attempts to write like the merry pranksters spoke, which on the one hand he cant do because he never seems to take any acid himself and junkies talk a lot of non-sensical crap anyway.

the ending is also a bit of an anti-climax though based on what actually happened. kesey is eventually sent to prison and gets out after a year, taking his family to oregon so he can start writing a not-so-successful novel and never recaptures any of the combative attitude of twelve months earlier, instead seeming to deflate and drift off into obscurity. cassidy is found dead at the side of some railway tracks, probably of an overdose and the other pranksters too seem to just fragment and turn into 'squares'. despite all this it is an interesting read but i cant help wondering how much better it would have been if hunter thompson had decided to follow the merry pranksters instead

[Fez]

ON THE ROAD WITH THE RAMONES - monte a melnick & frank meyer

godfathers of punk and one of the best rock n roll bands to stalk the planet, this is a detailed account of the twenty-two year career of the ramones using indepth interviews with everyone who was there with particular insight from monte melnick; a long-term friend and tour manager for the band throughout their years on the road. as a devoted fan who never got the chance to see the band perform, i was engrossed throughout and finished the 309 pages in two days finding out about some shocking stuff i had never previously been aware of. johnny ramone was a right-wing control freak who enabled the band to keep going with a tough regime of pre-planned routines, the impossibly tall joey suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder and had his heart broken when johnny stole his girlfriend, and dee dee, my bass weilding idol, was a manic depressive drug addict who suffered from violent mood swings. its a brutal background of broken friendships and vindictive professional dedication to the greater ramones' brand that makes it all the more remarkable they managed to stay together for so long.

[stimpsonslostson]

Fez have you read "Scar Tissue" its Anthony Keidis autobiography. ?
Its an account of how the Chilis became one of the biggest acts on the planet, despite drug addictions and artistic difficulties. I was slightly disappointed with the book, everytime it looks like things are on the up, addiction rears its head and things go horribly wrong again. It kinda made me wanna slap him and suggest that he was p*ssing his life away. it made me feel that he is a lucky addict rather than a musician with a problem.

At the opposite end of the spectrum
"Its not about the bike" Lance Armstrong .
My admiration for Armstrong is well known. I actually like the selfish bull headed approach he shows to everything- many others take it to be arrogance (I think its an essential characteristic of any top athlete). This book is the story of his early life, cycling career, battle with testicular, brain and lung cancers and then his subsequent victory in the Tour de France. Its an incredible account of his determination not to let the cancer win, and is a testament to his drive. I also appreciated the fact that its not a plea for sympathy as so many other "cancer books" can be.
P

[Fez]

THINGS THE GRANDCHILDREN SHOULD KNOW - mark e everett

i dont usually bother with autobiographies because the glut of these self-satisfying nobodies who have committed a record of their non-existent talents to paper in the last few years have destroyed what was once a fascinating section of non-fiction. thankfully, some people have remembered the important thing about an account of your own life is to actually live one first and mark e everett, known to the music world simply as E, has a fascinating and tragic history. the creative genius behind 'the eels' is the last member of his family after the early death of his father of a heartattack, the depressed quantum scientist hugh everett jnr, losing his mother to cancer, and seeing the slow decline of his sister to drugs and alcohol after being raped. several close friends would also be lost to the big C as E's music career finally began to gather momentum when he was in his thirties, and this is just the sideshow to an unusual upbringing and the personal problems related to it. yet there is no self-pity in this account of what went on, just an honest and very humourous appraisal of his life up until this point with an array of mad youthful sexual encounters for someone who claims to be a loner, and a bitingly critical attack on the money hungry love of the music industry. one of the few genuinely interesting people operating in modern music.

[Fez]

redemption song: the definitive biography of joe strummer - chris salewicz

entering the final chapters of the near six hundred page tomb on the life of punk’s most inspirational frontmen, i cant help but think i should have enjoyed this journey through the strummer years a lot more than it feels i actually did. the accounts of the musician’s life are rendered in exhaustive almost day to day detail, punctuated with the informed comments of people who were there to share the moment, including occasionly opposing views to offer a more balanced analysis of what went on. yet throughout this supposed close scrutiny i never felt the person at its heart was being judged in a totally unbiased manner; even when behaving a pig-headed idiot the author seemed to side with his subject and give him the benefitt of the doubt. because of this hesitation to strike at the nerve, i don’t believe the true impact of some fundamental events were properly explained.

the childhood suicide of strummer’s brother isn’t properly put into context to illustrate its emotional impact; constant repeats of the comment ‘it obviously effacted him deeply’ do not offer any insight into what the mental toil was. likewise, the root and branch explanation of the scottish family tree does nothing to highlight how it then operated as part of musician’s life, instead merely pushing the polite limits of my ability to absorb useless information. the memories of the years in the clash are not for those who seek a better understanding of how the band operated as a unit either, instead, though probably understandably, focusing on strummer’s role as generation’s spokesman but again not damning the punk icon when he got it wrong.

there is a great deal to learn about strummer from this weighty text, yet limitations inherent in the author’s style are even marked on the covers; why such an overblown title? where is the redemption if even the author cant bring himself to say the great joe strummer was occasionaly a bit of a bastard? how can this be a definitive biography if I am still left with fundamental questions about important events? an interesting read but one with as many flaws as the man it was written about.

[Mike]

Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky

A tale of three parts though only the first two were written (the third was planned but the author was taken to a concentration camp).

Synopsis from Amazon: Celebrated in pre-WWII France for her bestselling fiction, the Jewish Russian-born Némirovsky was shipped to Auschwitz in the summer of 1942, months after this long-lost masterwork was composed. Némirovsky, a convert to Catholicism, began a planned five-novel cycle as Nazi forces overran northern France in 1940. This gripping "suite," collecting the first two unpolished but wondrously literary sections of a work cut short, have surfaced more than six decades after her death. The first, "Storm in June," chronicles the connecting lives of a disparate clutch of Parisians, among them a snobbish author, a venal banker, a noble priest shepherding churlish orphans, a foppish aesthete and a loving lower-class couple, all fleeing city comforts for the chaotic countryside, mere hours ahead of the advancing Germans. The second, "Dolce," set in 1941 in a farming village under German occupation, tells how peasant farmers, their pretty daughters and petit bourgeois collaborationists coexisted with their Nazi rulers. In a workbook entry penned just weeks before her arrest, Némirovsky noted that her goal was to describe "daily life, the emotional life and especially the comedy it provides." This heroic work does just that, by focusing—with compassion and clarity—on individual human dramas

Mike's comments! The characters are charming, separate and sometimes not at all likeable! Very captivating read and a good novel. Part 1 is very very polished. Part 2 feels unfinished (from the notes she was shipped off during the editing process). Because of this the above feels slightly abrupt in the ending. A must read for anyone who wants to feel really lucky for NOT being involved in a major war. . . .

[Fez]

hitler: my part in his downfall / rommel? gunner who? / monty: his part in my victory / mussulini: his part in my downfall / where have all the bullets gone / goodbye soldier / peace work - spike milligan

holding only a loose grip on sanity, the second world war was a mad enough to place to be before bombardier terrence ‘spike’ milligan was drafted into the royal artillery; and even then the enlisting officers were hard pressed to find the reluctant catford native. spanning the years between his recruitment to the great conflict through to the early period of the post-war entertainment business, these memoirs are a surreally funny and often tragic recount of a young man’s struggle to survive a nightmare aided only by a warped sense of humour, jazz and stockpiles of his mother’s fruitcake.

the early volumes focus on life for new soldiers to the disorganised british army before posting to algiers and the africian leg of the war effort, where no man seems to have a uniform that fits properly and changes in position are decided at random to keep both the enemy and the troops guessing to what might happen next. the wild humour that would make the goon show such a success is already in operation, and makes the accounts concerning milligan’s shell-shocked transfer to a hospital camp after being caught in a mortar barrage all the more vivid. when the six edition begins to follow his love affair with an italian ballerina, there’s a brilliant depiction of a twenty-something torn between his feelings, lusts and chocolate rations, while the last instalment gives an insight into the tough existence of a touring musician playing to serving troops prior to the formation of the goon show.

its impossible to reproduce any of the passages here and give you a proper idea of how hysterical the writing style is, and backed by a slew of personal photographs and detailed descriptions of all the places he visited, from africa to the italian invasion, demobbed london to occupied germany, this is more than just another autobiography, it’s an inspiration to anyone who hates ‘cold collation’! argghh!

[stimpsonslostson]

Making Money- Terry Pratchett
A follow up to "Going Postal" this book follows Moist von Lipwig as he assumes control (via suitably amusing circumstances) of the Ankh Mopork bank and mint.
The book shows all of Pratchetts trademark satire and humor, however I cant give the full ... I increasingly feel that Pratchett is trying to make the books and stories too complex and multistranded. A simple narrative without some of the extra political intrigue would have lead to a better resolved conclusion. This is a small quibble tho- I did really enjoy the book and would recommend it. (Just not as much as the guards books- which I always love).
p

[Mike]

Making Money is a good book but the style has become slightly formulaic and although Pratchett has created some memorable books this is not one of those I would choose to re-read. I give this one about .

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt

A tale about his miserable Irish Catholic childhood in New York and then Limerick during a recession and World War II. It is a sometimes scary tale where he learns to deal with an alcoholic and then absent father. The class boundaries between the rich and very very poor, scrabbling for food and fuel. He describes his resorting to theft and skulduggery to be able to eat and save his fare to travel to America. In addition he survives severe Conjunctivitis and Typhoid!

You get the impression he is actually being very flattering to himself and less so to his parents and those surrounding him. In fact you could call it a good capture of his child self. I thought the unintentionally amusing part of the tale is his immediate sex marathon with a New York lady (who's husband is away shooting) on his first night in the new country.

All in all a touching tale with some very disturbing sentiments, his affair and relationship with a girl with consumption is disturbing and his mother resorting to sleeping with her cousin for free accommodation is just plain freaky! Quite captivating.

[Fez]

dharma bums - jack kerouac

sal paradise metamorphosises into the rather more understated name of ray smith, and the search for freedom depicted in 'on the road' transfers from the simple pleasure of existence as a traveller to the more philosophic pursuit of buddist enlightenment. this time led toward the ultimate goal by the charismatic poet japhy, a more soulful and less self-destructive pressence than that of dean moriarty, kerouac follows his mentor up mountains and into the wilderness before setting out alone to find his own place in the world at a national park look out point atop mount desolation.

this isnt quite as engaging a read as the book's more successful predecessor, partly it would seem because of the often bewilderingly confused route of enlightenment involving rambling philospical passages that dont reveal anything of much significance. you can shout 'everything is empty' as loud as you want jack, but what the flying fuck is it supposed to mean? the most insightful element of the novel was probably a reoccuring and unintentional recount of small details; kerouac's alcoholism is a constant shadow in the background that the author doesn't dwell on, and this creates a clash of ideas on the page when religion meets addiction and smith seems unable to acknowledge the latter might stunt the development of spiritual understanding.

it is actually a rather awkward sticking point that japhy and smith can have these spiritual debates about putting mental peace above physical need, because i dont think a few hours of meditation and then an evening of sex and alcohol balance each other out, especially when its obvious everyone enjoys the hedonism far more than the buddist purity. this is also the reason that in the end i find myself siding with the more cynical view of allen ginsberg in the novel, again appearing under a different moniker as he did in 'on the road', who doesn't believe paying lip-service to buddism is going to produce any more enlightenment that a dedicatated drinking session.

[Fez]

naked lunch - william s burroughs

a lurid attraction exists at the diseased heart of this captivating clash of drug addiction and perverse sex. populated exclusively by the ugliest and most erotic cast of characters, there are haunting passages of desperation and startling sexual energy most would be unable to imagine, let alone posses the stomach to commit to print. leaping, twisting and ejaculating from one extraordinary scene of depravity to the next, the narrative runs wild with its ideas, finding guttural beauty and skin-crawling humour in everyplace; from steel clean brothels to the vomit inducing surgery of the insidious doctor benway. what jg ballard called a ‘roller-coaster ride through hell’, naked lunch expels most other modern literature to the doldrums of banality - reading may never be as enthralling and dangerous an experience again.

[Mike]

Not posted here in a while what with all the iPhone excitement. However here is a review of the latest read.

Something Happened by Joseph Heller

This is a novel about the general melaise (books tagline) in America following the second world war. The main character Bob Slocum tells the tale of his working and home life as a middling excecutive in a sales company. He details problems with his work, family and society as a whole. It is sex obsessed and hypocritical and racist which is the point I feel the author was trying to achieve! It paints a portrait of the middle classes living an obsessed and fearful existance.

It is very good and the dialogue and opinions age with the main character. My rating is

[Mike]

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

This is the tale of Anna Karenina, a beautiful and lovely society lady of Petersburg who is changed by a chance meeting during a visit to her Brother in Moscow. This novel follows the life of those around her and shows Russian Society, Human Relationships and Destiny. It is supposed to be a tragedy and I am sure it will end badly! However I am part way through at the moment and had some gems to share with you.

There are many sentences that imply smut without needing to say anything. For example one young lady of society in Moscow called Kitty is examined by a celebrity doctor who 'insists on sounding the invalid'. It implies later that this includes private naked fondling of the 'patient'. She then goes on to admit to her sister that she has 'the coarsest and monsterous fancies' - she conceals that this is regarding her Brother in Law!

[Fez]

the bible: the old testament according to spike milligan

the anarchic wit of the late comic genius rewrites some of the old testaments most memorable tales with mixed results. reading like an idea for a joke taken too far, the creation story provides laughs on pretty much every line but soon after the humour begins to taper off despite gods constant appearances to his chosen race in a variety of daft locations. there are still some cracking lines further into the retelling as moses battles to lead his people to the promised land amid rising mortgage rates and attempts to smite everyone who so much as looks at the prophet funny, but without the personal dimension that made milligan’s war diaries so memorable, this is ultimately disappointing by comparison. however, being relatively short this would be perfect fodder to kill off the boredom of a long train journey and is still better than anything ben elton ever turned his hand to.