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Mametz (Paperback)
Aled Rhys Hughes; Contributions by Jeremy Hooker
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R475
R392
Discovery Miles 3 920
Save R83 (17%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Rhys Hughes' funniest novel, revised and expanded in a luxurious
new edition with new material, comprises the tall tales of one
Mister Gum: adventurer, pervert, and the world's most infamous
creative writing tutor. Through Mister Gum we encounter a brief and
sordid history of Britain and British literature, come to challenge
the presumptions of creative writing pedagogy and re-examine the
limits of narrative (and good taste). This is a world of Lynne
Trusse, an Empire's ludicrous obsession with the Rabelaisian and
modern man's vain quest to reassert his dominance in all things.
Joel Lane provides a brief but thoughtful introduction on this new
edition, while Rhys Hughes offers an all-new afterword where he
discusses the literary impact of the first edition of this most
British of satirical novels.
Welsh writer Rhys Hughes regards this as his favourite book, and
with good reason. It is one of the funniest and most intelligent
books from the lighter side of macabre writing I have ever seen. It
clamours with a cast of pirates, floppy-wristed welsh bards,
explorers and inventors, imps, squonks, moving public houses, M R
Jamesian revenants, M R Jamesian punctuation, blueberry pies,
trousers, noses, clocks, carrots . . . I cant list them all here,
there isn't room. Like all the best books, this quirky and surreal
collection is hard to classify, but it lies in that region where
the macabre and eerie worlds of classic horror and fantasy become a
basis for something else - for a dark and original sense of humour
filled with unexpected cross-references, homages, satires and black
comedy. What makes this collection remarkable is not just the
delightfully murky and skewed tales themselves, but the complex and
ingenious way they all lock together and interrelate. I was going
to say 'tessellate' but if this is a tessellation then it is filled
with impossible-sided polygons, non-Euclidean three-dimensional
geometry, unexpurgated curves and cracks from which
blueberry-scented steam emerges with a screaming hiss. But what is
without doubt is that 'The Smell of Telescopes' is a magnificent
book and a cornerstone of the rather oddly shaped corner of
literature that it occupies. Since the first edition went out of
print, the unavailability of this book has been a great crime of
literature. And Eibonvale Press is, as always, dedicated to the
righting of the world's more substantial wrongs.
There are few students in my class. When one considers what the
subject is, this isn't surprising. I teach myself. In other words,
I impart to my students facts and fancies based on my life and
ideas. It's the least popular class in the university and I doubt
it will be funded for another term. But none of that is my fault. I
wanted to teach a proper discipline such as ecology, but the
authorities wouldn't let me. They insisted that I teach myself; and
as a result, I do so. The students are given an assignment. They
each have to write a short piece about how I spend my free time.
But this is information I've always kept secret. I can't imagine
how they're expected to know anything about my private life,
certainly not in detail. Clearly I'm being spied on. Unless it's
guesswork? I read the essays anxiously. Yes, only some of them have
got it right...
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