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  #61  
Old 13-03-2010, 18:01
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The pictures on the cover are well fit.
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  #62  
Old 13-03-2010, 18:02
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I actually liked the Damned Utd, though it recieved bad press due to the characterisation of Clough, the film wasn't much like the book to be honest but the Clough's still didn't want to give it press.

Though it isn't much different I have misgivings over this as it comes across more as fan fiction.
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  #63  
Old 13-03-2010, 18:38
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I think it would bother me less if it was a speculative story about the unknown part of Richey's life, about what Richey might have done after he disappeared, rather than some kind of weird interpretation of what his real life was like and what was going on in his mind during the "known" parts of it.
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  #64  
Old 13-03-2010, 20:46
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DangerousObsession View Post
I wonder how the book's going to end though....
and then he woke up and it was all a dream...

or

and then the zombies kill everyone.
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  #65  
Old 13-03-2010, 20:53
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and then the zombies kill everyone.
Would buy.
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  #66  
Old 13-03-2010, 21:59
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I agree with the statement on the back of the book's cover about how Richey's worst enemy was himself, but other than that I don't see that there's anything useful, insightful or meaningful to be mined from the already known facts surrounding his life - especially in a fictionalised setting.

Won't be buying.
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  #67  
Old 13-03-2010, 23:17
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I was one of the staunchest defenders on here of Rob Jovanovic's right to write his Richey biography (and I stand by it even though I was underwhelmed by the final product) and for me the same sort of justification applies to this book.
Dancer, respected Irish novelist Colum Mccann's fictional take on the life of Rudolf Nureyev, is the closest analogue that I can think of. If something along these lines can be said of Richard then it will have been a worthwhile exercises: "while Colum McCann's new novel Dancer adds no facts to the Nureyev legend, its semi-fictional imagining of the dancer's life sheds an intense if oblique light on the man... ike its subject, it spins with virtuoso, charismatic brilliance around a core of wilful mystery."
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  #68  
Old 01-04-2010, 19:19
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Massive cover image now available! From the author's MySpace http://www.myspace.com/bigbenmyers :

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  #69  
Old 01-04-2010, 19:32
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Good GOD that blurb on the back is utterly cringeworthy. It's not a sodding teenage drama; it's a man's real life. This makes me incredibly uncomfortable.
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  #70  
Old 01-04-2010, 19:46
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Good GOD that blurb on the back is utterly cringeworthy. It's not a sodding teenage drama; it's a man's real life. This makes me incredibly uncomfortable.
I agree. I also think it's ballsy to the max to use that subtitle. Yes, it has the words "a novel" on the cover, inside the D of Richard, but the subtitle which tends to suggest that it's factual book is much more noticeable.

Euwww. Just euwww.
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  #71  
Old 01-04-2010, 20:00
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Good GOD that blurb on the back is utterly cringeworthy. It's not a sodding teenage drama; it's a man's real life. This makes me incredibly uncomfortable.
It's embarassingly poor...
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  #72  
Old 01-04-2010, 20:20
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr Inconspicuous View Post
I was one of the staunchest defenders on here of Rob Jovanovic's right to write his Richey biography (and I stand by it even though I was underwhelmed by the final product) and for me the same sort of justification applies to this book.
Dancer, respected Irish novelist Colum Mccann's fictional take on the life of Rudolf Nureyev, is the closest analogue that I can think of. If something along these lines can be said of Richard then it will have been a worthwhile exercises: "while Colum McCann's new novel Dancer adds no facts to the Nureyev legend, its semi-fictional imagining of the dancer's life sheds an intense if oblique light on the man... ike its subject, it spins with virtuoso, charismatic brilliance around a core of wilful mystery."
Mmn but Colum McCann is genuinely a brilliant writer driven by a genuine interest and he keeps the mystery...it's hard not to view this up coming Richey book as a bit of a cash in
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  #73  
Old 01-04-2010, 21:10
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Quote:
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Mmn but Colum McCann is genuinely a brilliant writer driven by a genuine interest and he keeps the mystery...it's hard not to view this up coming Richey book as a bit of a cash in
But the fact that this guy is an unknown doesn't mean he couldn't write a great book, surely. Some people in this thread are rejecting out of hand the idea of writing a fictionalised biography of a (relatively) recently deceased/disappeared person, just as they did for Rob Jovanovic's project, and I'm just defending the idea in principle.

Although that blurb doesn't entirely convince me we've got a literary masterpiece on our hands...
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  #74  
Old 01-04-2010, 22:34
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Awful, awful, awful.

I should perhaps reserve judgement on it until reading it, but to be honest I'd rather not waste my time. (I don't have to read Katie Price's autobiography or fictional novels to know that they are lazy slimes of dog wank).

Fancy making money out of somebody else's misery in such a tacky fashion.
In fact, it's akin to the scum kind of journalism perpetrated by the likes of glossy magazines, where the "facts" are mearly based on assumptions.

And there would be no disclaimer or preface at the start of this book which could ever convince me that it's some kind of thrilling insight into the mind of one of rock's most tortured icon - of any of that bullshit.

Quite frankly, this speculative journalism at it's very worst. How the living fuck could this guy ever know what Richey (or any other person indeed) may feel/think? First person pieces which are fact, and not fiction, should be written by the person themselves.

And as far as I'm aware there's no money/proceeds being donated to any relevant charity off the back of sales of the book. (If there is I'm willing to be corrected). Say what you like about the soulessness and/or little artistic worth of charity records, but at least they have some valuable function.

Given Myers' history of writing for the rock press, and I assume his contacts, I am really surprised he has not been able to write something more academic and more insightful. While I am sure he has spent a lot of time writing the book, the idea in itself is sloppy and incredibly lazy.

Finally, it also really really REALLY fucks me off to think that this book will be making money off the back of someone else's misery, and with no real benefit either to a) literature, or b) any kind of stigma surrounding mental illness.
It also begs the question, whether any kind of regard has been given to Richey's family?

Forget all the rock star stuff for a second - imagine it was your son / daughter / mum / dad who had gone missing. And some guy who has never really known you or your family writes a first person piece about what your said loved one might have been thinking?

At least with the tabloid stories, a number of poorly written other books written about Richey and those equally cringeworthy documentaries on Richey, while horridly sensationalist, they possessed more subjectivity than this cream of utter shite.

I would never say something so silly that Myers is lazy, unprofessional and/or the kind of awful journalist that should be resigned to work at the Gulag of weekly newspapers in dead-own towns like Whitehaven. However, I will say he's a fucking cunt.

My advice would be to save your money and time and read/buy Stuart: A Life Backwards.
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  #75  
Old 01-04-2010, 23:24
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What sightings?
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