| Wednesday, November 22, 2000 |
 | Time Out's review of "Vox'n'Roll" (see below) is an object lesson in how to write a completely useless review. Jim Driver is no doubt an intelligent and well-read man. However, he is having one Hell of an off-day. I reproduce it here for purely non-profit reasons, acknowledge entirely Time Out and Mr. Driver's respective rights, and will remove this post if legally requred to do so. Like they care.
(Of the Vox'n'Roll nights at Filthy MacNasty's)But don't run away with the idea that we're talking red wine, Fay Weldon and polite applause: Vox'n'Roll leans more towards Guinness, audience interaction and hard-edged Rock'n'Roll.
No soft-edged Rock'n'Roll for this cadre of kick-botty anarchists. Having established just how hard and cool the Vox'n'Roll evenings are, Driver goes on to ennumerate about half the contibutors, concluding:
There's not a dud among them. "Vox'n'Roll" is a roller-coaster ride through the cream of contemporary fiction.
A rollercoaster ride. You may want to give your brain a few minutes to appreciate all the implications of this adventurous new metaphor. After all, "Ulysses" was not an immediate success. Consider the implication of rapid motion. Ponder the subtext of thrills and excitement. Goggle at the sheer stupidity of a mixed metaphor involving a rollercoaster ride through cream. Wonder whether a log-flume through the cream of contemporary fiction would make more or less sense. Resolve never to skip church again.
He goes on to demand to know what other collection could get away with pitting a detective mystery...against a story about the sex life of siamese twins? Or the long, fluid sentences of Will Self's hard-nosed fantasy(hard-nosed fantasy! The sheer oxymoron! The absolute lack of self-consciousness)...against the abrasive Scots dialect of Welsh's "Elspeth's Boyfriend". Driver honestly seems to believe that to put short stories of different subject matter and style in the same book is an act of shocking futurism. Bless.
After this orgasmic, running-on encomium, he concludes:
If it doesn't make you want to root out more from the writers on offer, there's no hope for you or for modern fiction.
Conversely, so long as lazy reviews splurge pointless, back-of-the-book hagiography onto intermittently interesting works, thus giving the writers no incentive to improve and the reviewer the opportunity to squeeze in that skinnychino before lunch, we are in safe hands.
God, I'm depressed. No single column has had that much impact on my mood since my care worker's strap-on.
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