Benny Bunter
Well-known member
I read it loud to myself in a John Gielgud voice, brilliant fun
If you can't understand my love for this book you don't understand me I'm a Latin American romantic with a passion for salsa music I would rather die than to make my living anywhere but in the dust of the streets writing love poetry for schoolgirls
Who wrote that? I suppose the thing is, I'm not sure that I really like reading books about music and/or musicians really. Not if it's just literally a book about the music. Maybe if it's about a culture, a scene or something it is likely to be more to my taste... but really I think I would like a book about music more if it just sort of used the music(ian) as a jumping off point and the book was really about something else. But that's never going to happen if it's about a big proper rock star such as Bowie or a band that everyone loves such as Can. I mean I love 'em too but no-one is gonna write a book ostensibly about them that is about something else.when it arrived in the post the Stubbs one gave me the same feeling as I had when i bought the one about Can ( 'all gates open" ), like I CAN NOT BE ARSED
I'm reading love in the time of cholera and I fucking love It don't care if it's a girls book. A Colombian women made me promise to read it years ago cos apparently I'm in it, but I've not got to that bit yet. I could never face it before, it seemed too obscene but now I've made the committed I'm besotted. It's the best
The other day when we were in London we met up with my ex-flatmate, he (inevitably) lives on a house-boat now, but his girlfriend works at the National Theatre and she told us that a new play - Much Ado About Nothing - was just about to start and that if we rang early enough we might be able to get tickets for the opening night, which is press day. That's a good thing to do cos turns out the tickets on that night cost between ten and twenty quid, whereas on the other nights the cheapest ticket anywhere is forty-six pound (which is too much if you ask me, I honestly don't think you get forty six pounds worth of entertainment from an ancient two hour comedy play). There were only two seats left, one in the stalls and one in the circle but we got them anyway.The language and the characters. In other words, not really the plots (though they are really good as well).
And the sheer depth. It's not just Shakespeare's genius that's mind-blowing but also that the audiences at the time understood it. Really made me think how thick popular audiences are these days in comparison
Magic realism is very easy to parody and take the piss out of... which is normally a sign of something that is good. You can't do that with something really bland and boring cos there is nothing to grab onto in the same way. It's a long time since I read LITTOC or 100YOS for that matter or even any of his other ones but I definitely loved them in the moment.its stunning how good this book is and how much smarter it is than thomas pynchon anyone who knows about writing will tell in an instant but this is a very wise review