The Last of London
London: From Punk to Blair isn’t a love letter to London, in the way that some collections of essays develop an authorial group-think as the writers fall in love with their shared subject. Both the tone and the content are brilliantly heterodox. There are some well-known names amid the collection — Rushdie, Hanif Kureshi, the always brilliant Patrick Keiller — as well as newer writers and experts on particular subjects. Instead of trying to capture London in a book, Kerr and Gibson have gathered a group of people with interesting perspective and stories to tell. They reflect London’s glories, and its gross inequalities, its gleaming shards and its seedy underbelly.
John P. Houghton reviews the revised edition of London: From Punk to Blair.
The North African Unit
Schneid is the theorist of our movement. He is interested in typology and time. When new thought blossoms he exterminates the thinkers. He sends us all across north Africa to do this. There are other units, in other continents. He speaks of Black Easter and cosmic dread and speculative annihilation. He sends us white papers on the psychological archaeology of repulsion. His favorite weapon is a flare gun, used up close and in the face. There is no other way to say this.
By Nicholas Rombes.