POST-POSTMODERN NOVEL A Crackup At The Race Riots
Harmony Korine (Faber £9.99) *~k
Harmony Korine draws extreme reactions. The screenwriter of Kids and director of Gamma is revered as a postmodern cult of distinction or disregarded as a self-educated 23-year-old who needs to be taught a good hard lesson.
The 175 pages of text - mostly in Letter Gothic type or handwritten scrawl - are fragments of concepts and seeds of thought. There are ideas for movies, suicide notes, rumours, anecdotes and tales from the underground. Whether any of it is based on what you or I believe to be truth is another matter. And whether a lot of it is based on what lawyers call libel is yet another.
Korine is probably well aware of the narrative process - he simply chooses to ignore it. A choice which is hardly radical but he has to realise that artists of an anti-linear persuasion need to, at the very least, keep the level of interest at fair to middling. In A Crackup At The Race Riots an absolute nothingness reigns and his desire to be defiantly off-kilter wears all too thin, all too quickly.
Some wit and tricky wordplay exists within the pages ('incest is relative', ‘I gave up bowling for sex: the balls are lighter and I don't have to wear shoes') but the themes of death, perversion, dysfunction and the cult of celebrity become relentlessly mundane. Utter drivel or pure genius -— you decide. (Brian Donaldson)
‘3: a: r>~. ("3 1‘1:
Ozarks. You can be like Sammy Barlach
gay brother Jason in order to claw your
duty, this might lead to Jason's murder.
i Woodrell encourages the reader to
ambition simmer beneath the 3 deceptively laid-back prose, while
poetic eye and tragically herorc streak.
Like a sad, sentimental dog, trouble is destined to follow him throughout his life, barking and biting at his heels. (AM)
Continued over page
the
bookstop cafe '
Daniel Woodrell
drink the latte
eat the muffin
and accept your lot with quiet white trash dignity. Or you can be like Jamalee Merridew, and hope to manipulate Sammy and yOur gorgeous
read the book
chew the cud way up the social ladder. Unfortunately, in a world where homophobia is a God-fearin’ citizen’s
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Sammy’s lazy demeanour hides a
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BOOKS
Authors at Sauehiehall Street March
WATERSTON E‘S
THU
GREER — THE WHOLE WOMAN
at The Royal (Ioncert Hall. “It’s time to get angry again”.
In 1970 The Female [femur]; was published. It was a book that changed the world for a generation of women, and men. Thirty years on Germaine Greer returns to the subject of feminism — with the book she vowed she would never write. Provocative, brilliant, angry, The Whole Woman (Doubleday £16.99) is a book that is already attracting controversy on a world wide scale.
TODD MAR MCEWAN
7.30 PM
Waterstone’s are delighted to launch a new novel by author Todd McEwan. The book is called
‘Arithmetic’ and follows the story of a young boy who‘s life is thrown into chaos at the opening of Disneyland as he and his family have to be moved to a new town.
WED
arithmetic
Tickets are free. Wine and soft drinks will be served.
“One of the few real writers around“. Guardian
TUE ANOTHER BOOK 3 0 TO BURN -
MAR THE STATE OF 730 PM SCOTLAND
(IN. Reilly - ed.) A selection of writers will read from ‘the book that sounds the death knell for New labour in Scotland.” The joys, fears, hopes and desires of Scotland are given an eloquent voice by some of Scotland‘s finest poets and essayists, authors and artists. Tickets are free.
FOR TICKETS AND MORE INFORMATION 153—157 Sauchiehall Street
0141 332 9105
18 '.".’ii- 7» Ag): 1999 THE “3195