Category: Blog

Saigon Vice [Book Review]

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H.L. Mencken once wrote: “Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the Black flag, and begin slitting throats.”
Well, Joseph Clarke, author of Saigon Vice, tells us that a normal man may be tempted, at times, to quit his job, move to Vietnam and begin teaching English. 
He also tells us what happens to a man when he acts on this temptation.

Saigon Vice follows Dan, thirty years old and sick of life in suburban Warwick. He has a meaningless job, a loveless relationship, high prices and cultural passivity leave his social life barren. A stagnant lifestyle all too common in modern Britain.
When Dan learns that he can make a living teaching English abroad, he quits his job, leaves his girlfriend and moves to Saigon.
The city roars with the sound of motorbike engines. Pollution fills the air. Luxury hotels and skyscrapers loom over the poverty-stricken streets. Communist imagery contrasts a capitalist reality.
Dan soon finds himself deep in an underworld of expats, who take advantage of the low cost of living and poverty-induced desperation.
During the day, Dan works at the “Fun Speak” language school. At night, he hangs out in seedy bars and bordellos, where he can satisfy every impulse and hedonistic desire.
The longer Dan spends in the city, the deeper he drifts into the underworld. Eventually, he becomes lost in a haze of hookers and cheap booze.

The chapters are short and resemble well-written anecdotes. They can be chaotic, they can be perverse, they can be sad, they can be funny. As the story progresses, they become increasingly unhinged. Together they tell the tale of a man who becomes lost in his own addictions.

Out of all the fiction I’ve read this year, Saigon Vice certainly stands out. It’s articulately crafted yet easy to read. The mix of sharp prose and casual language makes the story feel real. I found the novel to be an entertaining yet devious read.

Saigon Vice was independently published and distributed via Amazon’s print-on-demand service.
It’s understandable that Clarke wanted to avoid the Kafkaesque farce that is contemporary publishing, however the book risks getting lost in the digital deluge.
Clarke’s decision to use an AI generated cover acts against him as potential readers may dismiss the book, assuming the text is a computer generated cash grab.
I think it would be an awful shame if a great book like Saigon Vice is overlooked. Don’t judge a book by its cover and order a copy of Saigon Vice.



Toby relaxes with a copy of Saigon Vice

Aleister Crowley: The Beast Demystified: Review

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Aleister Crowley was one of the most colourful characters this country has ever produced.
It’s not surprising that over the years countless biographies have been written about the so-called “Wickedest Man in the World.”

One such book is “Aleister Crowley: The Beast Demystified” by Roger Hutchinson, which I picked up at a used book stall in Tynemouth.

Hutchinson provides a rather satisfactory discussion of Crowley’s upbringing with the Plymouth Brethren, education at Cambridge, mountain climbing expeditions, as well as his various lawsuits and scandals.

However, sometimes the book is more like “The Beast Un-detailed” than “The Beast Demystified.”
Crowley’s magickal practices and Occult religion, Thelema, are hardly touched upon at all.
Occult organisations such as A.’.A.’. are hardly mentioned. The Ordo Templi Orientis is only mentioned once, in a very passive manner.
Hutchinson does discuss Crowley’s time with Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn but focuses on the fallout surrounding the organisation.
For example, Crowley published details of their secret rites in his magazine “The Equinox.” This led to the organisation’s founder Samuel MacGregor Mathers, taking Crowley to court. Hutchinson covers the case without telling us anything about these rites at all.
Significant figures such as J.F.C Fuller and Leila Waddell become mere background characters in the narrative of Crowley’s life. 
Others, such as Israel Regardie, Grady McMurtry and Dennis Wheatley go unmentioned.
Readers with prior knowledge of Crowley’s life will be able to see that some aspects are completely glossed over.

Crowley certainly possessed many negative qualities. I think even dedicated Thelemites would have to admit this. But Hutchinson fixates on these qualities. He has almost nothing positive to say about Crowley. The book has a heavily biased tone.

Given that he doesn’t like Crowley and has no interest in Magick, I can’t help but wonder why Hutchinson bothered to write about the Beast at all.

As much as I’ve enjoyed revisiting the adventurous life of the Master Therion, I do wish I’d read a better biography.
I’ve heard a lot of good things about “Perdurado” by Richard Kaczynski. Perhaps I should have read that instead.

Jim and The Pigeon [A Very Short Story]

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The rain had stopped and the sky was an ugly shade of grey as Jim wandered down the high street.
He felt his phone vibrate in his trouser pocket. It was a text from his wife. She’d finally left him.
Jim looked down at his phone in disbelief while trying to hold back the tears.
He looked up from the small cracked screen and decided to get something to eat.
As he began to move he stepped in a puddle. The cold water soaked into his shoe and sock.
He wandered down to Tesco and purchased a meal deal consisting of a prawn mayo sandwich, a bag a crisps and a soft drink.
Jim wandered back through the high street and found his way to an empty park.
He sat down on a bench but it was still wet.
He took the sandwich out of the packaging. As he ate a single prawn fell from the sandwich leaving a white streak of mayo down his shirt landing on his trouser leg.
As he opened the bag of crisps a pigeon flew down hoping that Jim would drop some food.
Jim occasionally tossed it a crisp. The pigeon pecked at it then strutted about and cooed.
Jim watched the pigeon enviously.
The pigeon didn’t have to worry about who would clean the mayo from his shirt. The pigeon didn’t have to worry about his shoes, socks, trousers or shirt getting wet. The pigeon didn’t have to worry about his wife leaving him. The pigeons wife would never leave him.
In that moment Jim wished that he were that pigeon.
The bird flew away. It began to rain again.

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The Cleaner: A Very Short Story

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Alan worked as a Cleaner. 
He worked for a company that contracted cleaners for various businesses. They mainly provided services for offices and shops. 
Alan was contracted to work in a shop. It was one of a large chain that ran across the county. 
The shop was no more than a fifteen-minute walk from where Alan lived. He would walk there every day, arriving at 6 p.m.

Once there, he would sign in, call head office to tell them he had arrived, then go to the cleaning cupboard and gather the few things he needed to work. 
He would begin by cleaning the staff-only bathrooms because they were closest to the cleaning cupboard. 

He would then move on to the staff break room, where he would mop the floor and wipe down the cheap Formica table and the counter top, ignoring the scattered coffee cups left to dry by the sink. 

He would then carry the mop, bucket, and a few other things to the storefront while dragging behind him a vacuum cleaner by its long black nozzle. 
He would then mop the floor, clean the hand prints off the glass door, and vacuum the large carpet doormat by the front door. 
Much to the curiosity of the staff, he would mop the concrete just outside of the glass door and vacuum along the very edge of the long cashier’s desk. 
Much to the dissatisfaction of the staff, he would then empty the mop bucket in the break room sink. However, no one ever said anything about this to him.

He would then return the cleaning equipment to the cupboard, sign out, call head office to tell them he was done, then walk home. 

Alan had followed that routine every weekday for the last five years. In those five years, no one at the store had said much more to him than “Hello” and “Goodbye,” apart from at Christmas time, when they wished him a “Merry Christmas.” On one occasion, a female manager told him he needed more vacuum bags, to which he said, “Okay.”
In the five years he had been cleaning the store, he had seen many members of staff come and go. Only a few managers remained the same. 

On one summer evening, a young man who had spent the last six months working at the store spoke to Alan while he mopped the shop floor. 
“It’s pretty quiet tonight.”
“Yeah.” 

“Makes you wonder why we stay open until 8 p.m.” 

“Yeah….everyones probably out in the nice weather or watchin’ the football.”

“Yeah.”

In his five years of cleaning, this was the longest conversation Alan had ever had with anyone at the store.
 It would be another five years before he had a conversation like this again. 

After The Sun: Book Review

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I found myself browsing copies of After The Sun every time I visited my local Waterstones. Eventually, I gave in and bought a copy. I should have done so sooner.
After The Sun is the second book by Jonas Eika and the first to be translated into English. It contains five short stories (the final story being a sequel to one of its predocessors).
Each story reads like a vivid dream about cryptic relationships, hypnotic addictions, and psychic callings taking place in various backdrops. The streets of Copenhagen, the bleak corners of London, and the beaches of Mexico all become roads to twisted underworlds.
Dark and intimate, the writings of Jonas Eika occupy a strange and uncharted space between the works of J.G. Ballard and Bret Easton Ellis. 
Eika is a writer still at the beginning of his literary career. He has already gained critical acclaim and won the Nordic Council Literature Prize. I’m interested to see where this promising writer will go from here. 

Deep Astronomy and The Romantic Sciences (2023): Film Review

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A while ago I positively reviewed The American Astronaut directed by Cory McAbee.
The other day I watched Deep Astronomy and The Romantic Sciences a new film made by Cory McAbee in collaboration with the art collectives Small Star Corporation and Captain Ahab’s Motorcycle Club.

The film starts out with a man named Rudy drinking in a bar with his friends when he spots a robot in disguise as a human drinking from an empty glass. The robot tells Rudy that in a few days time she will be shot into space as humanities representation to the stars.
What follows is a collection of presentations, musical numbers, animations and tongue in cheek philosophical monologues that make up a narrative explaining why the robot is being sent to space.

The film is undoubtedly eccentric. Its unusual structure and fusion of mediums work surprisingly well.
Deep Astronomy and the The Romantic Sciences is a science fiction film based primarily around ideas. Creative in its concept but simplistic in its presentation it was shot primarily in a bar and a few dozen lecture halls.

Entertaining, humorous and perhaps even a little educational, I enjoyed Deep Astronomy and the The Romantic Sciences. I’d recommend watching it and since the film makers have uploaded it to their website where you can watch it for free and with a run time of one hour eleven minutes you’ve no excuse not to.

Of Walking in Ice [Book Review]

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In 1974 Werner Herzog was informed that his close friend Lotte Eisner was sick and possibly dying.
Determined to see his friend the auteur director set off on a pilgrimage from Munich to Paris on foot.
He departed on Saturday 23rd November and finally arrived on Saturday 14th December. Everyday he wrote an entry in a diary documenting his journey.
The diary was published in a thin volume titled “Of Walking in Ice,” which I found in a used book store then began on 23rd of November and finished on the 14th December, reading each entry forty-nine years after it was penned by Herzog.
Herzog describes the various sights he seen on his travels which he sometimes lists vaguely and other times describes in vivid and poetic detail.
He tells us of the pains he suffers, the harsh weather, the grim landscapes of desolate road sides and decaying villages, the strangers that watch him with curiosity and suspicion and his almost hallucinogenic day dreams.
Over all Herzog provides us with an account of a unique experience that is poetic, dreamlike and memorable.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas [Book Review]

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In 1970 journalist Hunter S. Thompson set out to write an article on the death of Mexican American news reporter Rubén Salazar at the hands of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department while covering the National Chicano Moratorium March against the Vietnam War. Thomson met with attorney, writer and Chicano activist Oscar Zeta Acosta who was to be his central source for the article. However the two men found the atmosphere of Los Angeles to tense to talk openly. Thompson had been asked by another magazine to help cover the Mint 400 – an annual race through the Mojave desert. The two decided to take advantage of this assignment and head to Las Vegas. Thompson completed the article that would be titled “Strange Rumblings in Aztlan” as well as his assignment on the Mint 400 but the drunken and drug fuelled antics of that now legendary road trip would become the basis of Thompson’s semi-biographical novel “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”
In this roman à clef Thompson takes on the name Raoul Duke and assigns Acosta the pseudonym Doctor Gonzo. Duke is a journalist sent to Las Vegas to cover the Mint 400. He and his attorney Doctor Gonzo acquire a fast red spots car and all the drugs they can get their hands on before driving to the city of sin in a drug fuelled haze. Their time in Las Vegas becomes increasingly more chaotic as strange substances are taken, hotel rooms are trashed and deadlines loom closer. Artist and friend of the author Ralph Steadman would provide several illustrations for the book. His twisted figures serve as a perfect companion to the story.

Originally met with mixed responses due to its loose plot and controversial subject matter the novel was eventually recognised as a modern American classic. It would find its way into the hands of a new generation thanks to a cult classic film adaptation released in 1998 directed by Terry Gilliam, starring Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro in the leading roles.
Like many I read “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” as a teenager after I seen the film. At the time the psychedelic adventure and Thompson’s antiauthoritarian attitude appealed to me. Last week I re-read it for the first time and I’m glad that I did. The wild antics still amuse me and the weird humour still makes me laugh. But what really stood out to me this time was Raoul Dukes sense of anxiety and paranoia – his fear and his loathing – that consumes him as he walks out of the hotel leaving his sky high room service bill unpaid, as he disposes of his incriminating rental car and taking out a few one on bad credit and then checks into a hotel full of cops to cover the District Attorney’s Convention on Narcotics with a suitcase packed full of highly illegal substances.
But wild antics aside in this book Hunter S. Thompson managed to capture the world-feeling of early 1970s America. Images of Richard Nixon and the Vietnam war illuminate a television screen as Duke comes down from a bad acid trip. Scattered references to the Manson family expose the scar that the Cielo Drive murders left on the American psyche. Thompson shows just how out of touch the establishment were as a passel of police officers listen to an alleged expert give an inaccurate lecture on a drug culture long gone. But most notably Thompson discusses the fading American Dream and in a sobering section often dubbed “the wave speech” he explores the anticlimactic end of the counterculture of the 1960s.

The Shards [Book Review]

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I recently finished reading The Shards – a new novel by Bret Easton Ellis.
Before now, I’d only read his first novel, Less Than Zero, and his infamous American Psycho. Both of which I thoroughly enjoyed. I read both of these books several years ago, and since then I have always intended to read more of his work but never really got around to it until the American author released this new work of auto-fiction. It took me a while to read, not just because it’s rather long, but because I wanted to savour the atmosphere and feeling that Ellis sustains throughout the story.

In The Shards – Bret Ellis – now in his mid fifties- reflects on events that have haunted him since his senior year at Buckley High School.
The story is set in 1981; the young Bret Ellis and his friends are the sons and daughters of LA’s social elite. They live a lifestyle of wealth and excess. They wear designer clothes, drive expensive cars, frequently attend parties, and have easy access to drugs at all times.
The city of Los Angeles is being prayed upon by The Trawler, a sadistic serial killer who stalks his victims, breaking into their homes and stealing their pets before kidnapping and, of course, killing them. As well as a hippie cult that emerges from the mountains to embark on a campaign of harassment and vandalism.
At the start of the new school year, Robert Mallory transfers to Buckley High and quickly infiltrates Bret’s tightly knit social circle.
Bret quickly becomes suspicious of Robert – rightly believing that he’s not exactly who he seems to be – and begins to investigate his new class mate. 
Bret, however, is hiding secrets of his own. His girlfriend, The popular Debbi Schaffer, has no idea that he’s actually gay and having affairs with two male classmates.
These are secrets he can’t let anyone else know. He can’t disrupt the social norms of life at Buckley High – something that does eventually becomes disrupted as Bret slowly learns the truth about Robert. 

Ellis manages to paint a vivid picture of the era and the city of Los Angeles as he lists the familiar names of streets, bars, and restaurants. As I previously stated, he manages to maintain a certain atmosphere throughout the fairly long book—a wild cocktail of desire, detachment, paranoia, jealousy, and suspicion—which occasionally verges on psychedelic, like a bad trip with an 80s soundtrack.
The Shards is a coming of age story from hell.

Only Ever Freedom [Book Review]

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A few months ago I posted my article The Nomads Journey in which I briefly analysed the writings of James Ellis – best known for his work on the Hermitix podcast.
Since then, Ellis has published another book, Only Ever Freedom, in which he systematises the ideas put forward in Exiting Modernity and critiques modernist attitudes toward education, credentialism, careerism, money,  normality and more. Here Ellis hopes to provide the reader with an inward sense of disconnection – allowing them to move away from the negative influence of modernism and onto the path of internal freedom.
I think this is his best book yet and I found my self frequently agreeing with the text. I think Ellis has an interesting ability to describe deep down how many feel about the modern world. Only someone already, on some level, dissident of the modern world would be attracted to such a text. If this book does not serve you as a guide to freedom, as Ellis intended, then it will paint an accurate and honest portrait of our culture.