Summer Transfer Window (Stephen Glass’ first)

[NewOrleansRed]

I’ll keep my eye on the level of the Ponchartrain if maximum pishage ensues as you predict.

Have you read The Axeman’s Jazz, NOLA Red? It’s a good yarn around an actual reign of terror in the city when Louis Armstrong was a loon. Nae bad, although I think the author was as keen to display his knowledge of Delta geography as he was to tell the tale.

A Confederacy Of Dunces, however, is utter puerile pish. Fact.

We should have been in your city in May 2020. ****ing jandies. Booooo.

I have not but I’ve certainly spent enough years living in this city to have experienced my fair share of jazz and undoubtedly enough potential axe murderers. There’s a ubiquity of characters nefarious or otherwise residing in the quarter that validates the narrative in a Confederacy Of Dunces.

The Ponchatrain remains stable. No urine related levee breaks as yet.

[57vintage]

Splendid. I couldn't connect with Confederacy of Dunces at all, and it was a 'had to finish' book for a particular reason.

Here's The griff on The Axeman's Jazz:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...saNvUFO&rank=1

Good news on the levee. That semi-rare Memphis Minnie shellac disc is spared another risky play.

I'll buy you a beer if I'm ever empowered to begin my search for The Pearl of the Quarter- voulez voulez voulez vous...

[The Red Max]

Splendid. I couldn't connect with Confederacy of Dunces at all, and it was a 'had to finish' book for a particular reason.

Here's The griff on The Axeman's Jazz:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...saNvUFO&rank=1

Good news on the levee. That semi-rare Memphis Minnie shellac disc is spared another risky play.

I'll buy you a beer if I'm ever empowered to begin my search for The Pearl of the Quarter- voulez voulez voulez vous...

I'm exactly the same 57, this is my third attempt at Toole's only book to see if I really was missing something the first 2 times and its another "nah". Its like the Charterhouse of Parma for me, the worst 'great' book I've attempted.

Ray Celestin, now you're talking! Cracking reads.

[bigj]

I'm exactly the same 57, this is my third attempt at Toole's only book to see if I really was missing something the first 2 times and its another "nah". Its like the Charterhouse of Parma for me, the worst 'great' book I've attempted.

Ray Celestin, now you're talking! Cracking reads.

I thought it was laugh out loud funny but then I'm no literary expert

[57vintage]

I'm exactly the same 57, this is my third attempt at Toole's only book to see if I really was missing something the first 2 times and its another "nah". Its like the Charterhouse of Parma for me, the worst 'great' book I've attempted.

Ray Celestin, now you're talking! Cracking reads.

I get booed for agreeing with Truman Capote’s “that’s not writing, it’s typing” appraisal of On The Road, and can’t get on with The Great Gatsby either. One Hundred Years Of Solitude was sent to the Shelter shop after I junked it after slogging through about 50% of its repetitive ‘magic realism’. **** off, give me Sillitoe, Braine, Bairstow, Hardy, Dickens, Lawrence, Gaskell, new kid on the block John Clarke, and a hunner others wired into Proper Mannies’ (and other genders’) lives and challenges.

There is no finer fitba fiction than Robin Jenkins’s The Thistle And The Grail (especially the edition with the Johnny Hewitt Ullevi cover). Discuss analytically, citing and referencing accurately your sources.

[57vintage]

Fitba novel update: the latest issue of the readable (ie no crusty dusty academics involved to stoke their own egoes as they do in TLS, London Review, New York Review) book mag Strong Words, a one-man effort by the great Ed Needham, has just landed. It’s my favourite mag now that Word is no more.

Duncan Hamilton’s Injury Time gets a double page spread “A former Nottingham sports reporter has used decades of experience of professional football to craft a story of a disenchanted old local hero returning as manager in an eleventh hour attempt to defy relegation”.

Ed likes it a lot, and there’s a pawky interview with Hamilton including:
“You mention unsavoury uses for the FA Cup - are you aware of it serving other than purely decorative purposes?”
“Yes, I am”.

I’ll give it a go.

Strong Words sub:
www.webscribe.co.uk/magazine/strongwords
Tel: 01442 820580

[The Red Max]

I get booed for agreeing with Truman Capote’s “that’s not writing, it’s typing” appraisal of On The Road, and can’t get on with The Great Gatsby either. One Hundred Years Of Solitude was sent to the Shelter shop after I junked it after slogging through about 50% of its repetitive ‘magic realism’. **** off, give me Sillitoe, Braine, Bairstow, Hardy, Dickens, Lawrence, Gaskell, new kid on the block John Clarke, and a hunner others wired into Proper Mannies’ (and other genders’) lives and challenges.

There is no finer fitba fiction than Robin Jenkins’s The Thistle And The Grail (especially the edition with the Johnny Hewitt Ullevi cover). Discuss analytically, citing and referencing accurately your sources.

Pretty much on board with you 100% there, comrade, although I do like Gatsby for my sins.

[57vintage]

I thought I’d give FS Fitzo another shottie a couple of weeks ago since it must be 30+ years since I read it, and I wondered if I’d missed anything.

Canna find it. It must have been a victim of The Great Cultural Cull of 2017 when three cartons of books and 400 CDs (mostly review stuff that I’ll never listen to again) re-stocked Shelter’s shelves in its Union Street shop. Meh.

[The Red Max]

I thought I’d give FS Fitzo another shottie a couple of weeks ago since it must be 30+ years since I read it, and I wondered if I’d missed anything.

Canna find it. It must have been a victim of The Great Cultural Cull of 2017 when three cartons of books and 400 CDs (mostly review stuff that I’ll never listen to again) re-stocked Shelter’s shelves in its Union Street shop. Meh.

In fairness, I only like The Last Tycoon and The Great Gatsby, some of his other stuff I've nae time for. My own great proletarian cultural revolution was in 86 when I sold my entire record collection (well, the good stuff anyway) to One Up to fund my 21st birthday booze up. I was totally shafted by those chunts.

[Aldo1983]

Virtanen off to Hamilton on a permanent deal.