 |
| "We got literature out the ass ..." |
If you're the quiet, bookish type, never happier than when curled up by the fireside with a novel, curtains drawn against the night and a guttering candle at your elbow, then that's probably why you need glasses! Turn the furshluginner light on, ya doofus! Say ... who's that knocking at your door? Why, it's moviedom's Morgan Freeman, with this week's curated selection of reading material! Come on in, Mr. Freeman!
FX SQUEAKY CART WHEELS, WHISTLING
MF Okay loser, I got a bunch of swell books to help you forget you're a lifer with zero chance of getting your ass paroled! I bet you still fantasizing about being curled up by the fireside, huh? Well, them days are gone like a train! (grins cheerily)
YOU (sobs) Society is to blame! And rock and roll music!
MF Yeah right. Listen, I got Agricultural And Land Drainage Reform In The Low Countries In The 17th And 18th Centuries, in fourteen volumes, or I got some shitty old science fiction paperbacks.
YOU Hmm, I dunno ... them drainage books ... they gots pitchers?
MF Uhh ... nope.
YOU Got any old Oui magazines? [see below - Ed.]
 |
| Interview with Fidel Castro! Oboy! |
MF (momentary dreamy expression) Ooh yeah ... Oui Magazine. Nope. Take the paperbacks.
YOU Gee whiz. I ain't into science.
MF How about fiction?
YOU (without enthusiasm) I guess.
Morgan Freeman tosses books onto your narrow cot and wheels book cart away, whistling Don't Worry, Be Happy.
FX PRISON DOOR SLAMS
Join in the lively discussion in the comments!
Today's Book Bonanza™ is four novels by very possibly the UK's greatest novelist of the 20C! No, not me, but thanks for the thought! You'll enjoy these swell volumes for their dystopian prescience, hallucinatory imagery, and shortness!
ReplyDeleteTo get your arthritic claws onto this literary largesse, simply tell everybody out there what your favourite magazine is/was!
Radical Teacher was pretty good, but I'll stick with MAD. CYCLEtoons and CARtoons, CYCLEtoons, NatPoon
ReplyDeleteThis is hi-toned-type style of reading materials what adds glamor, excitement to everyday living!
DeleteI must have been about fifteen when I discovered Heavy Metal Magazine (Illustrated fantasy for adults, NOT about music), I loved the style, Mobius, Druillet and particularly Richard Corbans Amazonian women. When I started my first job (runner boy for an advertising agency), the newsagent near work stocked HM magazine but also ‘top shelf’ adult magazines like Oui that the older chaps at work would occasionally bring into the office - I was in there most days buying their cigarettes, they all smoked!
ReplyDeleteThe Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. I subscribed from 1968 until it folded with a whimper last year. Every issue from 1949 (I had the first issue) to 2000 and a lot after is on the Internet Archive. If it's a great SF story you read it there first.
ReplyDeleteIf you still have them, I'll take them off your hands. I'll reimburse the shipping costs as soon as I can.
DeleteI've dumped most of them but there's a box full in the loft mostly from the mid-60s. I also have some A4 copies of New Worlds from the late 60s, very avanty-gard. and lots of paperbacks from similar periods.
Deletecheaper on the Internet Archive, though.
DeleteI subscribed to the UK 'Wire' magazine from about 1990 to 2003 so that must count for something.
ReplyDeleteProbably something stupid and masochistic in the latter years.
*rheumy-eyed reminiscence* I remember when Wired was (briefly) essential reading. The irony of it being a print medium was lost on me.They bought the mcdonalds.com domain before the internet was "a thing" (imagine that) and offered to sell it to them - they were unimpressed. Wired then gave it to them, a mistake, in retrospect.
DeleteI'm referring to the Londonista mag that started out covering Jazz and ended up covering "global majority", "oppressed minority"", "international globetrotting outsider" politics through the lens of music culture and sound art. Don't think I ever picked up the original Tech Bro journal you're referring to, though I recall seeing it on the shelves in the overlooked dystopia of the 90s - probably the closest I got was Douglas Rushkoff's critical appraisal of that gestalt in 'Escape Velocity'.
DeleteMy bad!
DeleteThe New Yorker
ReplyDeleteThe American Mathematical Monthly
Downbeat
I'd buy the occasional Downbeat, but like Marvel comics and The New Yorker, it appeared erratically in the UK. I liked the crossword in the AMM.
DeleteAMM's game of "Pass the Buck and the Markov Chain Tree Theorem" is always good for laughs.
DeleteOmni was a great cover-to-cover read. Rolling Stone in its foldover newsprint years.Gandalf's Garden (had the complete run, man). Zig Zag pre-punk. CAR Magazine in its early years. In France, Les Inrocks, Metal Hurlant. NatLamp when it was funny and fat. RAW. Occasionally The New Yorker. The last time I saw the shelf prices of magazines I was horrified - ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
ReplyDeleteOnly ever had one copy of it. Bit pricey and high-minded for a dopey provincial kid like me. It was certainly handsome - felt heavy, well printed and justified in cost.
DeleteYou've peeked under my teenage bed, and politely ignored the copies of "Back Street Heroes", "Spick", and "Span".
DeleteCar magazine - now yer talkin'[! Back in the day it was Small Car. Didn't have many small cars though, was it Laurence Pomeroy talking about Ferraris? LJK Setright with incomprehensible engineering columns. Mostly a lifestyle mag IIRC.
DeleteLJK Setright's endless articles about tyres ... compulsive reading.
DeleteOK, with apologies, how do I get the Fidel Castro interview? As the man said, "a revolution can only be the child of culture & ideas."
ReplyDeleteas if you didn't know, this is reason #37 why academics don;t get invited to parties
Delete1. Spy (1986 to 1998)
ReplyDelete2. Film Comment
3. Rona Barrett's Hollywood (I'm kidding about this one!)
The best reads have been/ are; "Omni", "The Word", "Fortean Times", and "Private Eye".
ReplyDeleteI pick up Fortean Times when I see it (ie irregularly). Used to buy PE regularly but give it a miss the last couple of years.
DeleteNew Yorker, which I still read cover to cover every week. No Depression, before they got sold. I inherited an older sibling's trove of Sing Out! New York Review o' Books. Baseball America.
ReplyDelete--Muzak McMusics
Well, The Wire for underground music, El Víbora (Spain) for out-there comics and Alpinist for my old hobbie.
ReplyDeleteBat
Counterpunch, Adbusters & National Review
ReplyDelete~Jon
Helluva troika there...CounterPunch was a solid successor to CovertAction Information Bulletin which segued into CovertAction Quarterly. When I've read Nat Review on occasion over the years it gave me a headache....really a stomachache. They know better.
DeleteTrouser Press? Creem? Mad Magazine?
5GW cites Mad up above. I never considered it as a magazine, weirdly, but I bought and hoarded it obsessively. Trouser Press ... a bit like Goldmine, or Record Collector - I bought them only when they featured an act I was interested in.
DeleteI was a lowbrow, smart-mouthed reader of CREEM. Late 70s -early 80s source of things far away from my small town.
ReplyDeleteI grabbed Creem every time I saw it. I was never a big fan of Detroit music, or most of the music the staff liked, but I loved the attitude.
Deletedown at the bottom of the Mississippi (well, the last high ground, anyway), that attitude seemed beyond cool. Thud. Fell for it like a ton of bricks.
DeleteHonestly, my parents subscription to The Village Voice provided endless fascination to a kid/tween/teen in BRLA...
I was very pleased when Heavy Metal came out because my French was shite... Most of HM's material (Moebius!) came from Metal Hurlant! A similar Dutch comic magazine was Wordt Vervolgd, the French version was A Suivre. I had a subscription to Omni for awhile. Here in Thailand I used to buy UNCUT and MOJO regularly... Nowadays I'm much more critical and don't often buy magazines anymore.
ReplyDeleteSo where are the books?
ReplyDeleteThey're nicely packaged up with a FREE IoF© Fungible Token worth several trillion dollars, waiting for someone (preferably not boring old Anonymous) to ask for them.
DeleteIn one word - Omni!!!!
ReplyDeleteEveryone should check out Nargile's blogs!
DeleteOkay Farq, you started with a tease saying that you were going to offer 4 books by the UK’s greatest novelist of the 20th century. Yet you didn’t even identify the mystery novelist. Who is this person?
ReplyDeleteGbrand
We're all still waiting for a 4/5g© to politely and respectfully request a link. It doesn't seem like too much to ask.
DeleteGrovel, grovel, thanks for the link, Farq!
DeleteI'm pretty sure you've read at least one of them, Koen.
DeleteCorrect Farq, but that was probably a million years ago, so high time to read them again!
DeleteI re-read them regularly, especially "crystal".
DeleteOkay, I humbly request a link to find out who this mystery author is.
ReplyDeleteGbrand
Gbrand's personal link: https://workupload.com/file/UGGznFE7SuH
DeleteFarq,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the books. Look forward to reading.
Gbrand
Start with "Crystal", I think. Don't read the foreword!
DeleteCertainly one of the greats.
ReplyDeleteHe foresaw many of the things happening now for sure.
Thanks
Bat