BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Robert Stone

 
 
Stoat-ROW ROW FIGHT THE POWAH
20:06 / 02.04.04
Anyone else a Robert Stone fan? I'm totally over the moon that he's got a new book out... the fact that I'm thirty pages from the end now depresses me somewhat.

I first got into this guy by reading a William Gibson interview, wehere he said he basically nicked the narrative voice for Neuromancer from Dog Soldiers. I, of course, went out and got me a copy of Dog Soldiers, and, verily, it rocked, becoming one of my favourite books of all time.

The thing I love about Stone is that he writes thrillers that think they're just contemporary novels. Or the other way round; I'm not sure. And that all the important shit happens behind the scenes... you're just left with his characters bobbing in its wake.

And they're all different, yet all recognisably Stone- Outerbridge Reach is (as far as I can tell) a fictionalised account of the last days of round-the-world sailor Donald Crowhurst... Dog Soldiers is one of the greatest post-Nam books I've read, and also one of the greatest books about drugs I've ever read... even his first novel (and, imho, his weakest), A Hall of Mirrors, throws up more questions than it answers. (Alcoholic, apolitical DJ gets a plum gig doing spots for a far-right political party...)

This is a guy who (apparently) based the last quarter of Dog Soldiers on his experiences at one of Kesey's legendary "Acid Tests"...

what's not to like?
 
 
Grandma loves children
(prev. Old dear. Gin. Problems)
06:35 / 03.04.04
Stoat,

Dog Soldiers - Was this to do with R Stone's old mates, Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac as reimagined as vietnam vets doing a heroin deal out of South East Asia ? If so, I'm there.

Anyway, on the subject of hard-edged, cynical, hippy American novelists, ( I'm guessing Stone fits the bill, ) have you read any TC Boyle ? If not, I guess anything's good, apart from possibly the one about Kellogs Cornflakes and enemas etc, Anthony Hopkins buck-toothed in the movie, howling on about his morning ablutions. I suppose I'm at heart I'm a prude, but the toilet in literature seems to be somewhere you go to do coke, or have sex, or do anything other than develop a philosophy based on fibre. Y'know, or being Nick Hornby.

Anyway, Drop City, by TC Boyle - If you're short of anything innaresting to read on the tube, you could do a bit worse.
 
 
Stoat-ROW ROW FIGHT THE POWAH
10:06 / 03.04.04
Was this to do with R Stone's old mates, Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac as reimagined as vietnam vets doing a heroin deal out of South East Asia ?

It'd never occurred to me that that's who the characters could be based on... but it makes a lot of sense now I think about it!
 
  
Add Your Reply