Top Ten Books

[version]

did you find a copy of the book or did you read the pdf?

Read the PDF. The only physical copies I could find cost hundreds.

 

[Murphy]

Blood Meridian
The Brothers Karamazov
Dead Souls
Anna Karenina
Ulysses
Tain Bo Cuailnge and The Mabinogion (they’re like twins from late prehistory)
Valis, A Scanner Darkly or TMITHC
The Crying of the Wind
The Dispossessed
The Futurological Congress and The Star Diaries

Tough calls. Add either Junkie, Cities of the Red Night, The Man of Jasmine or The Process from the teenage TOPY library. Ten is a narrow focus

Pogue Mahone, which leaves a decision on texts worth droning over, so here’s what made it the read of recent memory

Occasional spoilers as overviews, my first review.

Possibly my favourite text hence registering, including 2 readings and 2 audiobook sessions with McCabe’s richly mesmerising gift for voices, dialects, pacing and effects. Pogue Mahone’s epic scope is brought to the forefront of your attention with as much colourful focus and force as any microdot-induced vision of mandalas or madness. Recommended by an acquaintance (cheers Jenks).

A cyclical and vertiginous expedition into the subconscious, a decades-long tale drawing on epic visions, endless hours of shattering domestic drudgery, fake/juiced personal myths and what may be one of the most uniquely malevolent craythurs ever invoked in contemporary literature. Never less than magnificent, Pogue Mahone could so easily have chosen to turn viscerally or introspectively to ‘The Troubles’, hippy yoghurt-weavers and terrorism on the UK mainland as plot movers, yet McCabe introduces another form of terror to the forefront - the gruagach and its myriad forms of mind-shattering presences.

Una Fogarty will live in your memory long after the final scene fades, as will her brother, Dan, as will all the residents and visitors of 45 Brondesbury Gardens and beyond, with their many respective fates. From exile (think Land of the Wandering Host), to being judged as manual labour, to an oh so rare spell with a majestically rendered vision of a vain and deeply flawed duplicitous lover, Una’s life is laid bare like a porthole into a very personal abyss. McCabe never looks away from the multitude of traumatic layers which have continually ruptured the Fogarty's lives, lives where repair from hypocritical exploitation is never remotely possible. Without sentiment or recourse to toady renderings of a commercialised ‘Oirishness’, Lady Ocean, Fudge Fogarty, an imperfect vision of imperfect humanity rarely seen, or worse, ignored entirely (like this review).

Not to say this is all “too much, maaan, too much” or overtly dark for the sake of darkness, to anoint its multitude of shadows. I implore you to allow the first 5-6 chapters to settle, to let McCabe’s linguistic word-play build, gaining momentum and purchase, because when the writer opens up the valves anything can (and does) happen. Is the temple haunted? Don't know. Who or what is Dan Fogarty? I have a few ideas but they don’t necessarily converge. What exactly happened at 45 Brondesbury Gardens? You decide. What followed in the succeeding years? Step inside, come and see.

A supporting cast sprinkled with gold dust, from the perverted roaming eye of caretaker Alex Gordon’s “look at the Bristols on that!” (straight out of 70’s sitcoms), to Troy M and his “sweet Lady Ocean” pretences, to Nano, to Margaret Rutherford, to Kilburn itself caught through narrow shifting windows in time, all swept away by synchronously eventful twists of fate and the cruel tricks of failing memory.

Add what may be episodes of trauma-induced psychosis and the eviscerating effects of dementia, the latter note perfect in terms of metaphor, dignity and cosmic indifference to human suffering in hugely effective waves of allegorical focus. Dementia’s role in Una’s later life is portrayed with an empathetic as well as honest eye too, fully immersing you in the “V-V-V-V-V-v-v” of doodlebug munitions mutilating entire streets of her memory and, by extension, identity. The use of vertical and scattered text is both a disorienting and gloriously wicked device, detailing Pogue Mahone's cacophony of scenes and voices.

The bardic artistry of this non-linear work is too vast to distill into a ‘review’. It contains too much wisdom, lived experience, humour and scathing detail built in as cyclical waves of events, personalities and locations. When it moves through more prose-poetic passages its accumulative effects accrue further in your mind’s eye, adding another level of perspective by tapping into a deeper familial well of intergenerational trauma as adroitly as anything in the English language.

Pogue Mahone is never less than a transformative journey into language, memory, time, the chomping bile of post-war racism's days of “no blacks, no Irish, no dogs", of one woman’s monstrous journey through labyrinthine domestic servitude, meaninglessly cleaning Albion’s office spaces while desperately navigating a muddy murky slope of flakey back-biting friends and relentless pain. It is remorselessly satirical of counter-cultural tropes, even when you're off guard. I particularly enjoyed the sparse use of Gaelic with translations, the loop of “that is to say”/'s accumulative communicative magic in creating not just believably complex characters, but seeding them into entirely realistic yet previously utterly unimaginable worlds, worlds whose many pasts and presents are constantly bleeding into each other. Lastly, spare a thought for Connie, a carer for Una later in life rendered pitch perfect with ominous contagious dread, drawing you further into McCabe's lair.

An experience the likes of which are exceptionally rare. A work for the ages - timeless, universal, unforgiving, unsparing, playful, wise and soul-shattering throughout, with only a wink for comfort. Spellbinding storytelling of the highest order.

thank the gods for Unbound

 

[william_kent]

I stand by my selection before the rum destroyed my posting ability:

Chambers English Dictionary
It doesn't get any use nowadays, it fell apart, but pre-internet was always at my side. I would have preferred the OED but the price was prohibitive.

Marseilles Tarot ( Swiss 1JJ Variant )
The ultimate avant-garde cut up novel. Stories are revealed by shuffling the cards, each representing a personality, archetype, state of being, or situation - when laid out their positions within the spread denote the relationships between them.

Burroughs Live: The Collected Interviews of William S. Burroughs
The Job is easier to find and considerably cheaper, but if you can't get enough of WSB pontificating on the same subjects over and over, again and again, then this is the one to get.

Kenneth Grant - Hecate's Fountain
One of the most accessible volumes of the Typhonian Trilogies. Grant recounts various rituals and ceremonies performed by his Nu-Isis lodge, all of which seem to invariably end in some sort of "tangenital tantrum": the officiating priestesses end up being violated by bat demons, penetrated by multiple tentacles, drowning in slime, and all sorts of other Lovecraftian style sticky endings. I am still trying to work out if Ithell Ccolquhoun is one of the participants - she was involved with the Nu-Isis lodge but unfortunately the recent Genius of the Fern Loved Gully book fails to mention it. The third part of the book deals with Michael Bertiaux which leads me to...

Michael Bertiaux - Voudon Gnostic Workbook
Insane example of creating your own personal magickal universe - subjects covered include: Zothyrian Metapsychology, Nemirion Physics, Transyuggothian Power Secrets, Magnetic Materialsm and Gnostic Genetics, Synchronistic Robotics, The Shintotronic System of Gnostic Magick, Metamathematical Pneumatology, and Esoteric Thermodynamics. I like the way the first chapter deals with mundane lucky Hoodoo ( pick a winning horse, etc ) but suddenly by chapter two there are instructions for turning yourself into a were spider capable of traversing time and space...

Egil's Saga
Icelandic badman descended from a line of shape shifters commits his first murder aged 7 years old, takes no shit, can destroy you with his hands or tongue - he is like the original battle rapper, reducing his opponents to rubble with his superior bars..one of the best Icelandic Sagas..

James Joyce - Ulysses
worth a read

Eric Hansen - Orchid Fever
This is a highly entertaining look at the Orchid world which is populated by some of the weirdest, most obsessive collectors out there, despised by enthusiasts of other plants. If you read between the lines then there is an implied conspiracy involving Kew Gardens and control of the supply of orchids with particular medicinal properties..I've bought this book several times as it gets lent out and never returned...

Theodore Roszak - Flicker
Gnostic thriller following a film enthusiast's discovery of a secret society that has been using cinema as a means of indoctrinating the general public into dualism, using the interplay of light and dark to demonstrate the conflict of the Demiurge with the true bringer of light..I've bought this novel several times as it gets lent out and never returned...

Ed Sanders - The Family
Occult crime thriller where a NY yippie travels to California and discovers a network of snuff film producing occult groups, one of which travels about with a portable crematorium to dispose of their ritual human sacrifices, all connected to a LSD crazed psycho cult leader who leads his Dune Buggy Attack Battalion into Death Valley in search of a hidden entrance to a chthonic paradise. Suffers from an overuse of the hip lingo of the time, but in turn that does give it a period feel. The UK first edition is the one to get as after publication there was a lawsuit where one of the cults objected to the way they were portrayed and the reprints are all missing the juicy stuff.

like the most boring drunk I am repeating myself ad nauseum

 

[Murphy]

Grant?

Hmmmm ..

 

[Murphy]

Nu-Isis Lodge predated German Goo Girls

 

[hmg]

1.
2.
3. The Magus - John Fowles
4. Butcher's Crossing - John Williams
5.
6.
7.
8.
9. Blood Meridian
10.

 

[version]

1.
2.
3. The Magus - John Fowles
4. Butcher's Crossing - John Williams
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Are you asking us to fill in the blanks?

 

[hmg]

Are you asking us to fill in the blanks?

You could try, but I don't think you can edit my posts.

 

[hmg]

Can't believe you added Blood Meridian in 9th spot.😡

 

[IdleRich]

I want to read something else of his before writing him off. I was thinking Distant Star, but maybe I'll try this one. I read The Savage Detectives and I may as well have read 500+ blank pages, made next to no impression.

I didn't really rate the Savage Detectives but I have read a few of his shorter ones and I found all of them a lot more powerful.

 

[IdleRich]

I watched an arty porno on the BFI player recently. It was called "Immoral tales". I just fast forwarded to the relevant bits for masturbatory purposes. It felt more highbrow than my usual wanks though.

 

[IdleRich]

I watched an arty porno on the BFI player recently. It was called "Immoral tales". I just fast forwarded to the relevant bits for masturbatory purposes. It felt more highbrow than my usual wanks though.

That's not a porno that's Borowczyk adapting the beautiful surreal tale by Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues about a girl who has to suck her cousin off in time with the rising of the tide.
Edit- oh i said that already

 

[IdleRich]

I never did a top ten cos it's really fucking hard but I'm gonna have a go (I tried to avoid ones I'd seen other people pick just to make it more interesting)

Alice In Wonderland/Through The Looking Glass etc - Lewis Carroll
The Enchanted Castle - E Nesbit
Jesus' Son - Dennis Johnson
Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino
Atomised - Michel Houllebecq
Moscow to the End of the Line (as it was called in the edition I read) - Venedict Yerofev
The Toth Family - Istvan Orkeniy
The Obscene Bird of Night - Jose Donoso
The Conversions - Harry Matthews
Ice - Anna Kavan

Maybe I wouldn't like the ones for children so much now but they arguably had a bigger influence on my life at that moment than anything I read later ever did.

 

[Corpsey]

I doubt you can even remember why you hold the opinion you hold on Death in Venice. Perhaps you knew when you read it, but it's long gone now – it's become one of your opinions you can pluck off a shelf when the occasion calls for it.

This isn't a personal criticism, btw, I think this is true of most people opining about most books/films/things.

In retrospect this may have been what led to Craner leaving dissensus.

I deflated it with that second paragraph but the first is a precise sadistic evisceration of a man who once had pride in his mental faculties

So sad

 

[IdleRich]

In retrospect this may have been what led to Craner leaving dissensus.

I deflated it with that second paragraph but the first is a precise sadistic evisceration by a man who once had pride in his mental faculties

So sad

 

[IdleRich]

I never did a top ten cos it's really fucking hard but I'm gonna have a go (I tried to avoid ones I'd seen other people pick just to make it more interesting)

Alice In Wonderland/Through The Looking Glass etc - Lewis Carroll
The Enchanted Castle - E Nesbit
Jesus' Son - Dennis Johnson
Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino
Atomised - Michel Houllebecq
Moscow to the End of the Line (as it was called in the edition I read) - Venedict Yerofev
The Toth Family - Istvan Orkeniy
The Obscene Bird of Night - Jose Donoso
The Conversions - Harry Matthews
Ice - Anna Kavan

Maybe I wouldn't like the ones for children so much now but they arguably had a bigger influence on my life at that moment than anything I read later ever did.

On a different day I would have probably picked a different children's author (Susan Cooper?), a different Latin metaphysicist (Borges or Corrasar maybe) and so on... the only thing that would always be there would be Alice In Wonderland I reckon cos it's so unique... maybe The Toth family too cos of the way I just found it and it became a kinda injoke.

Oh maybe the Yerofev cos it's really good.