hidden under a rock halfway up a pyramid, and gets on his friend’s nerves.
The rhyming poetry certainly got on mine, but his story is witty, perceptive, ridiculous. So much so that under the sea, in this techno pagan messiah’s garden, is no bad place to be. (RE)
: AFRICAN-AMERICAN
FICTION
: Oxherding Tale
Charles Johnson (Canongate £6.99) *ttt
()xherding Tale
Oxherdi’ng Tale might be Charles Dickens writing Toni Morrison, filtered through Herman Hesse — an impossible conceit of course, in terms
I of the authors’ time lines, but the
postmodernism of it might appeal to
Johnson.
This is the thoughtful, very funny tale of Andrew Hawkins who was born in the ante-bellum south of
America to an African—American
servant and a slave-owner’s Wife. Through his encounters with various
eccentrics — a philosopher, a
nymphomaniac, an undertaker, a murderer, a wife — Hawkins attempts to make sense of the two worlds his life spans: black and white. His journey from ignorance to knowledge, spiritual poverty to
' enlightenment, is reminiscent of both
Great Expectations and Siddhartha. Apparently, Johnson’s impetus for
1 writing Oxherdi'ng Tale was to see
what Buddhism had to say about the African-American experience. And it’s perhaps too much. Johnson wears his philosophy and his postmodernism a
little too openly on his sleeve. (MF)
GRAPHIC NOVEL Strange Weather Lately Metaphrog (Metaphrog £6.25) Hut
The mysterious Glasgow-based comic artists known only as Metaphrog present a collection of tales featuring protagonist Martin Nitram. His is a strange world — or should that be worlds, since a trip to a cafe tOiIet sees Martin transported into another universe? Whatever the dimension, this is a work characterised by an all pervaSive sense of paranOia and social disconnection. In fact, such is the skill of the tWin creators that the book
makes for uncomfortable reading — at times its oppressiveness is unbearable.
3 You should certainly read this, but j probably not in one sitting.
Glasgow residents will be particularly intrigued to see characters roaming along Great Western Road: the illustrations instantly recognisable
, but at the same time disconcertingly
off kilter. The final pages of the collection even feature tributes to the
authors’ favourite haunts — such hot I spots as Nice ’n’ Sleazy, The 13th Note, and A1 Books and Comics. (RF)
7OS AUTOBIOGRAPHY
The Last Of The Hippies C.J. Stone (Faber £9.99) it it
"2) need a; .i -. " -:'2i',r.i lntlcpondcn
LAS
THE OF THE HIPPIE ~
C.J. Stone eVidently thinks there’s room for another Hornbyesque autobiographical non-fiction novel set in 19705 suburbia. Wrong, C.J.; this last resort is fully booked. Replace ’Hippies’ With ’Arsenal’ or 'Music’ and you have the gist of it. Stone gets a commisSion from Faber (Within the story) to track down Piss- Off Pete to write his story of innocent
; hippiedom turning to craziness. This
search becomes the story itself as Stone meets up With old hippy friends, recalling their adventures in
LSD and free love.
The conditions are set for Stone to place an ironic, superior distance between himself and who he was then — a tired, tiresome narrative mode best executed by Joyce 75 years ago. The message of this
amateurish, padded semi-novel is
fully contained in chapter one, the rest is redundant. We lived in better times when the highly subjective, chatty memOir was mere vanity publishing. (GM)
CONTRIBUTORS THIS ISSUE: Thom Dibdin, Brian Donaldson, Clark
I Dunn, Rodger Evans, Miles Fielder, Rob Fraser, Kirsty Knaggs, Gerry McLean,
Mark Robertson
STAR RATINGS
I i t t t * Outstanding
; t t * * Recommended i it t it Worth a try
5 at * 50-50
. .. ._ ,. a _ “9.399! .,
BOOKS
‘A feisty new crime-
writing voice’ Scotland on Sunday
Wmibwfii
DENISE
MINA
“It ax}, II w, | ()‘~.II"\'.'.III‘~.'\II, HI II\ liltl I\|.. IHIHI". Il‘. \\ \‘i I(I \ ‘.\II‘.I ‘iJ\(. ( (in II uin'”
[m]. 1:. 'uilrI/I
\V'i\\ii< HI llII liiii\ (.Rl \sn Awum IHR "INI I‘IRSI (ii<i\ii Ninii
OUT NOW IN ISAN'I‘AM I’AI’ICRBACK
l3--2/ May 1999 THELIST 97