An American Flag
‘I’m an American. My flag is American. My body is American.’
Brad’s jaw squared up, his pecks ribbed and tucked, whilst his legs made scissors through the waves.
All the time Miranda watched and absent-mindedly rubbed almond oil over her hide; her booty crack filling and spilling warm granules of sand onto her toes.
Funeral Dave stayed supine; his cool undertaker’s body bringing his heart beat down below 40; his mind imagining the sun as a seaweed tangled fanny box.
By Alan McCormick & Jonny Voss.
This Is Not An Exit
For the critics have a point; the overwhelming vibe of Ellis’s work is a flat low hum, the high white note of a plane overhead, the song of the void: ‘a view that confirmed you were much more alone than you thought you were, a view that inspired the flickering thoughts of suicide.’ Clay gets strange stalkey texts and emails and is followed by men in cars. Throughout this spare novella there is a sense of a darker story acted out behind the scenes. We see it in shadows and details. Only Hunter S Thompson did paranoia this well. The sense of impending doom, when there’s not a cloud in the sky.
Max Dunbar reviews Bret Easton Ellis‘s Imperial Bedrooms.
Fanaticism
Tomorrow night, Thursday 8th July, at 6.45pm, cultural critic and lecturer at Goldsmiths, Alberto Toscano will talk at the ICA in London about his new book, Fanaticism: On the Uses of an Idea. Toscano’s book explores the critical role fanaticism played in forming modern politics and the liberal state. Tracing its development from the traumatic […]