Three Guys One Book

I can’t remember how many times I’ve had an opportunity like this. Sam Taylor came to me with a great idea. We here at the blog would read his three books, The Republic of Trees, The Amnesiac, and the forthcoming The Island at the End of the World, and wrap it all up with an interview. Reading all of an author’s work you really get to

Continue reading Sam Taylor Interview Part 1.

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Dennis Haritou: It’s been a while since I’ve read God Is Dead by Ron Currie, that sulphurous book, but I am still washing the brimstone off my hands. After some time has past between yourself and a book, like with people, your experience starts to distill and you only remember the principal points, together with some of the specifics that impacted you, that represent the collision of your mind with the story.

What I most remember about Dead is the palpable sense of physical risk, a vulnerability so incisive that it could be tasted and smelt. I associate it with a spiritual risk, an attempted raping of the soul, and the genuine presence of evil. The physical risk to the body, the fear

Continue reading Watching Ron Currie Writing

Jason Chambers: Welsh first introduced Scottish detective Ray Lennox in Filth, a darkly comic novel about crooked Edinburgh cop Bruce Robertson’s unraveling, In Crime, he relaxes the debauchery (well, a little) and focuses on Lennox – a young detective in a spiral of his own. His career and life in disarray after a case gets disastrously out of control, Ray flies to Florida with his fiance Trudi to relax and plan their wedding. Haunted by unexplained demons, he quickly disappears into the seedy Miami underground, binging on booze and coke, and partying with a strange set of dismal and threatening characters. Sobriety and

Continue reading Crime by Irvine Welsh

Continue reading It's fun to be smart.

It is the first time I can remember buying Playboy magazine and actually being able to say that it was for research. I’ve heard rumblings that James Ellroy had completed the third volume in the American Underworld Trilogy that started with American Tabloid, and The Cold Six Thousand, which are both eviscerations of the late 50’s and early 60’s American political scene and brilliantly extruded through the rusted steel mesh colander Mr. Ellroy call’s his own. But sadly, my son was having a complete fit about the great injustice I was forcing on him when I said “No” to a bag of candy at 10 in the morning. So I mistakenly picked up the November issue, which didn’t have the

Continue reading The New, New, New…