Bryan Gartside
Bryan, aged 66, who writes under the pen name Bryan Roy, said: “I currently have a number of books awaiting publication which reflects the fact that I have been writing for some time. I wrote my first short novel Purple as a cathartic exercise coupled with nostalgia for days gone by and a misspent youth. It received some positive reviews but sadly no publishing deals so I self-published. After a monthlong trip to Australia I came home and wrote Peroxide, a take on Lord Byron’s Don Juan - my favourite work so far.
“As for Dreamland the motive and idea behind it was to examine mind-control and the breakdown of the American dream. The characters are cartoon-like and to some degree stereotypical, but that’d just me bending and breaking all the rules. I adore stereotypes and am not concerned about their use in a novel. The discerning reader may recognise certain characters and characteristics and therefore identify with them in some respects. Look out in the text
IN just a few sentences, Dr John Scally can discuss travel novels and 15th century trade links and still have time to mention Steve Jobs, Muriel Spark and Abraham Lincoln. It’s a body of knowledge that gives a taste of the world-class collections he’s been guarding and growing at the National Library of Scotland (NLS) for the past seven years as a transformation programme has made it bigger and more accessible than ever. The Edinburgh institution is the largest library in Scotland and a major European research site. Since 2015 it has beaten international rivals to acquire antique treasures, opened its Moving Image Archive in Glasgow’s historic Kelvin Hall and undertaken an ambitious digital shift that’s helped readers all over the country and the world get their eyes on popular and significant works.
(Image by StockSnap from Pixabay)
[Note: This old “Spengler” essay disappeared from the old Asia Times servers. For no other reason than annoyance over a New Yorker feature on Virginia Wolff, I repost it here].
One Sunday morning years ago I was walking across Mexico City’s
zócalo, the grand square abutting the cathedral and the presidential palace. Street vendors swarm there until the cops roust them. A middle-aged man in a grey windbreaker had opened a box of blue-covered paperback edition of the Mexican Constitution, the kind that’s given free to schools and trade unions. “Buy the Mexican Constitution!” he cried. “Sorry,” I told him. “I don’t like fiction.”