MAD

While few will personally identify with the events in The Mad Man, it's a book which is thought-provoking and challenging in a very fundamental way. Delaney explores parts of the human psyche and sexual appetite which seem nearly impossible to understand, yet carries the willing reader to a point of insight and self-identification which seems surprising at the start. At times revolting, titillating, and bizarre, it's an always-fascinating walk down a path which few will travel in real life. At the same time, it's a mental "gedankexperiment" which will broaden the reader's idea of normal, and ultimately will change their worldview.

While many readers have focused on the sex, with which, yes, 'The Mad Man' is rife, this is only one element in the novel among many. As a straight reader, I found myself engrossed in what is essentially a high-brow murder-mystery.

Timothy Hasler, a brilliant Korean-American philosopher and linguist, has been knifed to death at the Pit, a seedy gay bar. Years later, John Marr, a Ph.D. candidate whose dissertation is based on Hasler's work, becomes obsessed with uncovering the circumstances surrounding Hasler's death. A gay man himself, Marr is outraged at "the self-righteous drivel" that one academician uses to excuse himself from completing a biography of Hasler---that is, he was horrified by Hasler's sexual tastes. In search of answers, Marr retraces Hasler's footsteps, even taking an apartment in the building where Hasler once lived. More and more, Marr turns up in quarters of the city generally avoided by the bourgeoisie.

"In these doorways, bars, porn-magazine and peep-show shops, the movie theaters where sight itself is so dimmed, in such theatrical darkness true vision is ... largely absent. In one sense, all the encounters ... here take place on some dreary Audenesque plain where a thousand people mill, where no one knows anyone else, and there is nowhere to sit down. [...] Any exchange resembling real conversation takes place quietly and ceases when someone else walks by."

Hyper-educated, for the most part middle class, Marr unexpectedly finds himself involved in a series of intimate encounters with the homeless men in his neighborhood. His sexual exploits gradually drift further and further from the mainstream until a passage in one of Hasler's journal's makes perfect sense both to him and to the reader.
" ...To live within the tethers of desire is-again and again-to be shocked at how far they have come loose from reason ..."

Delany, however, is not merely interested in sexual liberation, in adults pursuing their desires no matter how bizarre (so long as everyone consents and violence is not involved), he meticulously presents an assertion that, like an image in a hall of mirrors, repeat itself, evolving into analogy and gaining in magnitude as it does. Take for example, the so-called "Hasler grammars", described as "the realization that large-scale, messy, informal systems are necessary in order to develop, on top of them, precise, hard-edged, tractable systems ..." In other words, clear and observable order is built upon a foundation rather nebulously composed of what would be considered chaotic. Apply this linguistic construct to recent Manhattan history and it is, in a sense, a message to Rudy Giuliani that without the city's underworld and its denizens, the law and order---the Disneyland---he so wants New York to be, simply could not be; one exists only in relation to the other.

From the rarefied and esoteric to the instinctive and purely carnal, from the grand analogy to the concrete detail minutely observed, 'The Mad Man' is a dense weave that rivals Delany's most richly layered narratives. Recently re-released in an exceptionally handsome edition, I recommend it to any reader who wants an author to engage him, or her, in a multi-level game of chess.

The more I read of Delany, including his theoretical, non-fiction and autobiographical work, the more I recognise the incredibly skilful way in which he TRANSFORMS his experiences and desires into fiction. This book is a love story. Those who finish the book may agree with me; those who baulk at the sexual practices vividly (and, to non-enthusiasts, overwhelmingly) described may be baffled by this comment. Yet description of the central character's excitement in the gradual merging of his two interests (philosophical investigations and sexual investigations) is an extraordinary ride through emotion, thought and language. Times Square Red/Blue has hints of where some of the ideas came from. Bread and Wine probably more. This is Anti-Pornography - see The Scorpion Garden in Straits of Messina - a Queer affirmation and celebration. Read it for the superb writing as much as for the story, the politics, the sex.

This book appears to be a collection of someone's (or some committee's) favorite articles from The Baffler, a literary magazine whose main job seems to be poking jabs at our culture. The title certainly doesn't help in determining that as "Boob" itself is such a multi-use word nowadays. Furthermore, many Americans west of the Mississippi have never heard of the New Economy and could care less about about literary criticism.

I think the audience for this book is really limited and not consistent with the title or the book cover. However, once you get past the first couple of reallllly dry essays, there are some that are worthy of more attention.

The first two chapters might turn you off, I came close to stopping my reading of the book, but was urged on by friends and it payed off. The first two chapters are rather dense and not so witty, but soon after that this book really takes off. I am not totally 100% on the unifying theme of these essays, they claim to be poking a hole in the idea of the New Economy, but they all add up to more of a poking holes in various aspects of society -- of the "hip" society.

The essays tend to have a sense of humor about them as they go about their disections of culture. A few take themselves too seriously, one about the Mississippi river is just bizarre. I don't know that there is anything particularly groundbreaking here, much of the exposed secrets of the New Economy can be summarized "rich man bad, poor man good." You'd think they could be a little more insightful than that. I am not fully with the politics of this book, but I give it its five stars for being quite readable and, in the end, making us think.

Boell's ability to describe very different character's points of view is excellent. This is a very good book for anyone who is interested in German anti-war literature.

Like Graves, Sassoon and Owen in the First World War, Heinrich Böll brought a mix of apathy and disgust to his writings about World War II as well as a literary sensibility that condemned him to this genre. Böll, along with Günter Grass, author of The Tin Drum, and Arno Schmidt, is considered one of the most influential German writers of the postwar period.

The Mad Dog represents the third extraction from material left by Böll at his death in 1985 and contains nine previously unpublished stories and a novel fragment, all written between 1936 and 1950. I think they represent the best introduction to Böll available. They also anticipate his best work, the novels, Billiards at Half-Past Nine and The Clown. The Mad Dog will probably have the most appeal to readers who are already familiar with these great novels and who want to listen to the source of Böll's recurring themes.

Youth on Fire represents the earliest work contained in this book and is a poignantly clumsy parable of Heinrich, a sixteen year old boy of Wetherian turn of mind. When Heinrich meets a woman, however, his life takes a very different course. In a demi-parable uttered by one of the characters there is a flash of the mature Böll's bitter humor.

The Fugitive and Trapped in Paris, composed ten years later, are the antithesis of Youth on Fire. These two stories are of a desperate and solitary soldier, in the former, an escaped POW or a deserter and in the latter a German soldier cut off from his unit during secret battles. In these stories, the iconic and discursive idealism of Youth on Fire is replaced by the naturalistic German Expressionism that became Böll's signature in the years immediately following the war and which reached its peak in one of his most famous stories, Stranger, Bear Word to the Spartans We.

The Fugitive is very close to the model of Böll's postwar work and consists of a dramatic narrative of claustrophobia and fear that concludes abruptly and violently.

The Rendezvous contains one of Böll's recurring themes: the difficulty of love. Böll was a writer whose sense of the absurdity of Eros was as highly developed as was his sense of the absurdity of Thanatos. Although many of his stories, such as the beautiful My Pal With the Long Hair, celebrate the triumph of love, most of them seem to center on love's impossibilities instead. Centering on a turbulent and mysterious affair, The Rendezvous contains an implicit riddle, much like Hemingway's Hills Like White Elephants.

The Tribe of Esau is an unusual early experiment in the use of a female character's perspective and The Dead No Longer Obey, according to the translator's notes, reworks a passage from the draft of a play entitled As the Law Demanded. This story is yet another soldier parable with a characteristic poetic and rhetorical twist.

The Tale of Berkovo Bridge and the novel fragment, Paradise Lost stand out as the work of the mature Böll and neither is really heretofore unpublished material. The former contains the reflections of a German military engineer who rebuilds a Russian bridge to facilitate the retreat of 1943 and offers a piece of absurdity as an effective metaphor for the regimented chaos of war. The Tale of Berkovo Bridge anticipates Böll's greatest novel, Billiards at Half-Past Nine and also contains a manipulation of emblem that some of Böll's readers have found objectionably schematic.

The text of Paradise Lost was, in part, incorporated into Der Engel schwieg and Böll also published two extractions of it as Night of Love and The Gutter. As it is published in this collection, Paradise Lost is a returning-soldier story that dwells on yet another of Böll's recurring themes: the seemingly random and poignant stasis of solitary objects amid decay. Returning to the home of his lover after seven years' absence in the war, the narrator notices a section of a rain gutter hanging down just had it had prior to his leaving.

The most palpable current in all of Böll's writing, however, is sorrow. It is abundantly present in this collection and it seems to stand as an apposite elegy for the twentieth century. This collection is a wonderful introduction to the writings of one of this century's most talented German writers.

Kirsty Brook's Mad Love is hillarious. Buy a couple and send them to ex-girlfriends with the bits that apply to your own relationships highlighted.

So go on, laugh at the misfortunes of others. It's healthy.

Five stars doesn't do this book justice. How can only 5 stars describe a book that had me rolling around the floor laughing clutching at my sides tears streaming down my face?

Pretty embarrassing as I was reading it on a bus.

Mad Love is Kirsty Brooks' second book, and this time she has collected stories of the strangest things that occur in relationships and dating. What makes this book so good is the way she has taken stories from people of all ages, so you get a good spread of material from the present going back to the 1940's and 50's.

Everyone will love this book. I love it so much I've given at least 3 copies as presents.

Don't go on a date without it.

The story of Brigadier Calvert's life is one sprinkled with tragedy. He was truly one the the great special operations soldiers in history. So much could have been learned from him that wasn't.

Unlike so many British Commanders, he lead his men from the front. He picked up the name "Mad Mike", when he intentionally took another British Commander, who was getting his men killed, out to a point zeroed in by Japanese Machine Gunners. This was a man who was willing to get killed to save his men. He did this in full view of his men who fully expected him to die.

The book about him, could have been written better. It didn't quite do him the justice that it could have. I hope that the British government will vindicate and apologize to him. God bless you General, you are truly an exceptional human being.

David Rooney is truly an expert in the history & politics of the Burma Campaign during the Second World War. His works to date have confronted many of the false stereotypes and slurs against a number of the warriors of the unique and horrifying war in Burma. Rooney has already re-established the rightful place for Major-General Orde Wingate DSO in his book 'Wingate and the Chindits' and the Wingate's very significant contribution to the successful outcome of the Burma Campaign.

David Rooney now brings to light at last, the life of Brigadier Michael Calvert DSO and the part he played as a 'Chindit' Commander, under the command of Wingate, in the two 'Chindit' Campaigns in Burma (1943 & 1944). Until this book, Calvert's life and achievements have been dogged by negative opinion and spurious comment at every opportunity both during the War and up to his death. The negativity shown towards Calvert was not helped by his own blunt and forthright attitude to those who did not see eye to eye with the Chindit raison d'être. This book at last portrays Calvert for what he was; a successful warrior in warfare and suffering from hardship and 'down on his luck' in peacetime.

Calvert was never better than when he shared the battlefield with the men he commanded, and this book shows that Calvert had a grasp of military knowledge and experience which he put to the test and proved time and time again. Rooney shows that Calvert was also a 'self-critic' owning up to his mistakes and often regretting some of his own words and deeds but highlights Calvert's 'aerial view' of strategy and tactics on the actual battlefield. Rooney writes with clarity and understanding and this book should occupy a space on the bookshelves of all military historians, readers of military history and be essential reading for army officers today who aspire to be true leaders of fighting men. Rooney places Calvert where he should be; a leading battlefield commander of the 20th century whose experiences and knowledge offer a timeless contribution to the lessons and art of war.

On a personal level, Calvert's peacetime suffered from the opinion of his contemporaries, and military commentators. Calvert never received the acclaim and recognition that his latter wartime contribution deserved. He was not awarded any formal decoration for his daring and success as commander of 77 'Chindit' Brigade during and after 'Operation Thursday' in 1944. Rooney makes this clear. He was however, awarded the American Silver Star by US General 'Vinegar Joe' Stilwell during that part of the campaign, despite the obvious antagonism between them. This shows quite clearly that despite their personal opinions of each other during the war, Stilwell recognised Calvert's major contribution to the defeat of the Japanese in northern Burma during 1944. This also serves to highlight the serious flaw in the opinions and assessments of the hierarchy of the British and Commonwealth Armed forces during the Burma conflict, who at that time and since the war must feel some shame that they denied a man who deserved better treatment from those whom he served.

This book was written and published before 'Mad Mike's' death in November 1998 and should stand as Calvert's official biography. It rises above the subjective ingrained inaccuracies aimed at Brigadiers' Calvert's professional and personal reputation. It puts him and his detractors in their rightful places! This must have at least been some small comfort to the 85 year old Brigadier Calvert, whose last few months were spent at The Royal Star & Garter Home in South London, until his death in November 1998. It was there that Calvert knew that there were persons in both official and unofficial capacities who cared about him, who offered him the chance of physical comfort and professional recognition. Such a small price to pay!

This book has marvelous images of just some of the fine works that George Ohr created. The summaries of his life are correct to some extent but it failed to provide any deatails of his offspring or how they may have carried on the innate artist abilities, this is why I only give it four stars.

this man was a a head of his time. i have never seen anythig that has come out of the 1800's that looked any thing like this.The photography is great and the biography is good , but the pottery is the best i have ever seen he had great form and great glaze you could not ask any more from a potter

i thouht that this book was very funny. the art drawing's where great! the words where well used. i also did not get some of the jokes.but over all it was great.

The Usual Gang of Idiots has stirred up another wonderful book! This is one of my favorites because I love the quotes of the one and only Alfred E. Neumann. Also, one of my favorite MAD writers, Sergio Aragones edited this book! This book is a must-have!

Wow, time flies when you enjoy a series. This sixth edition involves a pretty good mystery, a marriage of convenience, revenge, time travel, and friendship willing to go the illegal distance.

I could hardly believe the blurb that came with the book saying Brenda married her ex-boyfriend's slim ball agent Lemmy Crenshaw, but it looks like it's true, and knowing Brenda, there's one heck of a story behind it. It seems Lemmy came to Brenda with a problem. She agreed to help out under certain conditions. When off and on love interest Johnny Verlone finds out, he reveals all creating a vengeful mad hatter. Brenda's anger and frustration at being tricked is apparent in her language and demeanor, a perfect mood for revenge certain to backfire. To get back at Lemmy, Brenda becomes a bra napper, and just her luck, in mid-revenge, she becomes a possible murder witness. During the mystery, her relationship with Johnny spins like a whirling derby with so many breaks up in one storyline that it's dizzying.

The same familiar characters return with Brenda. Elizabeth, her neighbor and friend, Ralph, her doorman and protector, Chuck Rily, who has this time travel thing going on, and of course Dweena who wouldn't dare be left out of the action, illegal or otherwise. It's amazing what one will do for those one associates with, especially in acts of revenge. It certainly makes for great entertainment, and readers will be entertained with Brenda and her cohorts' revenge until about chapter eleven when the mystery begins. Brenda turns to Detective's Turner and McKinley who have to deal with a department problem named Duxman. The characters personal lives and the mystery play well simultaneously. The murder mystery, with some great light moments, is pretty impressive. The turns fooled me, and the murderer revealed took me by surprise. Ms. Wilson has a great sense of humor and it shows - even through Brenda's intense moments. It's a fun series.

If Brenda Midnight used her brain she would have said no when her boyfriend's sleazy agent Lemon B. Crenshaw asked her to marry him. He wins her hand in matrimony by persuading her that he illegally resides in this country, but not for long as the INS has caught up with him. If deported, Lemon explains that he will not be able to rejuvenate her boyfriend's sagging career. Unbelievably, Brenda falls for the entire sad sack story and marries Lemon even though they keep separate residences.

Brenda becomes furious when she learns she must remain married to Lemon for six months. Her ire rises to stroke levels when she finds out he actually needed to wed her to win a bet. Determined to get even with the slimy Lemon, Brenda breaks into husband's apartment and steals her husband's valuable brassiere collection. A thump in the apartment above frightens Brenda who flees Lemon's apartment. At the elevator, she runs into a rude stranger. At home Brenda learns that someone murdered the wealthy philanthropist who lived above Lemon. She knows what the thump was and tracks down her fellow elevator rider. Each accuses the other of murder to the bewildered police.

Barbara Jaye Wilson writes humorous mysteries that will appeal to fans of cozies and amateur sleuth tales. Some of the one-liners throughout MURDER AND THE AND HATTER will leave the audience deeply laughing. Whimsical characters from previous works augment a tender feeling of familiarity while propelling the complex mystery forward without giving many clues to the reader. Ms. Wilson makes reading fun.

Harriet Klausner

During the late 1950's, and early 1960's, television was still in it's infancy. (Some people still think that it still hasn't grown up!) Through the magic of television, the major movie studios particularly Universal Studios, found a new life for their old movies, and a way to recycle them to the new generations that never had the opportunity to see them. Universal Studios packaged a large percentage of their pre-1948 horror films, and distributed this bundle as Shock Theatre. Along with this package, they encouraged the local television stations to have a macabre host in hopes that they would expand viewership, and increase their ratings. Movie hosting, which was once popular on radio, initially crossed over to television, (Remember "The Twilight Zone", and "Alfred Hitchcock Presents?" You do? Then you're old!) Some of these movies were good, some were bad, some were just plain awful, but they were very inexpensive, and they made for great padding on those hard to fill time slots particularly, late Friday and Saturday nights. The mating of movie, and host proved to be a huge success, with the host achieving local star status. This was all long before video games, VCR's, and all of the things we have clamoring for our attention span today. As a kid growing up in Los Angeles, I lived for those Friday, and Saturday evenings when the likes of "Jeepers Creepers", "Seymour," and later "Elvira," creeped me out, as they cracked me up. This same thing was happening all over the country to the local television stations that had this horror movie package, and the ones that didn't, soon did, when they saw the popularity that their rivals were achieving. Often imitated, always unique, and different, these local weird hosts provided a special place for many of us growing up in that era. Elena M. Watson, in her book, "Television Horror Movie Hosts," has chronicled a piece of television history, that may seem trivial on the surface, but has proven itself unforgettable to those of us who were a witness to it, and in thinking about it, you realize the long term influence that these hosts has had on television, and it's generations of viewers since then.

Back in the days when there really was such a thing as local television, stations across the country used local personalities to host late night horror movies. Many times these assorted mad scientists, vampires and ghouls were much more entertaining than the movies they showed. The late Elena Watson's Television Horror Movie Hosts helps relive the days when local television had personality and wasn't just full of syndicated reruns. Even if you are too young to have experienced these days, you will enjoy this book. It chronicles the lives of the hosts and hostesses from the big names such as Elvira, Ghoulardi and Count Gore De Vol to the lesser known characters whose careers were short lived. All and all this throughly researched book is a fascinating read that shows the creativity behind some of the more interesting people and times in television.

True, Herr Doktor Skal?

Just from its title alone I was delighted to discover
this book. Mad science, scientists and 19th-20th
century Scientism is a remarkably important and overlooked
aspect of our culture and its progress.
And Professor Skal gets closer to providing
a history and understanding of this cultural
iconography than anyone has ever been able to do.
Much credit is due him!
However, as fascinating and stimulating and just plain right
as most of his thesis proves to be, equal parts suffer from
that most dread of all contemporary ills - ACADEMIC HUBRIS!
(And yes, I know he is not an academician. But a rose by
any other name...)

The last three chapters and the conclusion suffered from too much
specious overreaching; an attempt to somehow hyper-link his
way through the tangle of ideas/imagery/opinions that he was brave enough to try and decipher in the first place.
Obfuscation
rather than clarification was usually the result of all those

cross-references. Perhaps a separate volume would have been
more appropriate, giving the Professor a chance to stretch out
his line of reasoning.

Do not get me wrong! A VITAL ADDITION to any cinema/science-fiction/horror or popular culture student or just plain fan's library. As in his excellent Monster Show, the chapter on B Movies is worth owning this book for -- terrific insight!

Excellent quality hardcover, readable font, nice paper, some well
chosen pictures along the way.

(BUT, definitely overdue for a less expensive softcover edition!)

One last criticism, though:

The chapter on Alien Chic seques from a UFO sighting the
author recalls from his college years. I found it depressingly
typical - and illustrative of this otherwise wonderful book's
flaws - that his personal experience did not inspire a better understanding of such an important subject.
It always saddens me to find an excellent mind such as Mr. Skal's more or less shuttering itself off from reality in favor of "academic objectivity", or the pristine pursuit of
a cultural theory. The fact that his repression of
the facts associated with UFOs needs to find justification from Maven-dom, as well as movie release dates,
actually only serves to reveal his own monomania, and
therfore the book's primary thesis.

Just what the doktor ordered?

After publishing books on horror films in American culture, the career of filmmaker Tod Browning, and the history of Dracula from Bram Stoker onward, David J. Skal has chosen to explore the role of the mad scientist in literature and film during the last two centuries. His book, "Screams of Reason: Mad Science in Modern Culture," begins with Mary Shelley's conception of Dr. Frankenstein and his monster, touches on Drs. Jekyll and Moreau, and finally moves on to the twentieth century and its attendant griefs - including, but not limited to, the threat of nuclear war and the career of writer Robin Cook. Skal's main thesis - and it's a good one - is that the public's fear and distrust of scientists and technological innovation has been reflected primarily in the arena of popular entertainment. Skal writes well about the uneasy relationship most people have with science (ie, fearful and antagonistic on the one hand, but unable to live without cars, phones, and computers on the other). The best part of this book is the first half, which mostly deals with Dr. Frankenstein and his monster. From the life of Mary Shelley to the theatrical and film adaptations of her famous novel, the first half of "Screams of Reason" is fascinating and compelling reading. The second half is also interesting, but is sometimes so fragmented and tangential that Skal's main points are lost. Also, he seems unable throughout the second half to draw very many definite conclusions, allowing quotes and examples to simply stand on their own. "Screams of Reason" is most valuable as a sourcebook on Dr. Frankenstein and his ilk, and as a very enjoyable book about popular culture. A wealth of deep insights into the role of the mad scientist in films of the twentieth century will have to be provided by the reader, however.

A mad scientist's dream book! There are more lunatics, would-be world conquerers, brilliant but misguided vivisectionists, and downright frightening personalities than in the last *three* Danielle Steel novels! (Not that I read them, of course...) Any mad scientist worth his salt needs to pick up this book...even the maddest of us could use the examples within of Doctors Frankenstein, Jekyll and Moreau as epitomes to strive for...and the extensive overview of movies gives me plenty of ideas of cinema to inflict upon my latest test subject. With this book, I WILL RULE THE WORLD! BWAH-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!