ENTER THE PLAGIARIST.....
THE PLAGIARIST will be published on May 5th by the newly established Clinicality Press (York). There will be a special edition hardcover with dust jacket available exclusively from selected outlets (including this site) at a cost of £12.50, followed later by a trade paperback which will be available via Amazon and all of the usual on-line outlets (and to order from 'real' book shops the world over). The formal promotional onslaught will begin shortly. In the meantime, below is a brief synposis of THE PLAGIARIST, followed by a short excerpt.
Synopsis
The pace of modern life is such that it's small wonder that stress and anxiety are on the increase. Ben is a postmodern everyman, struggling to find himself and his place in the world. Amongst the spam emails, the advertisements and superficial gloss of the MTV / facebook virtual world, the corporate speak and sensationalist newspaper headlines, between the cracks in the facade presented by the mass-media, there is life.
Wandering lost and seeking any port in the datastorm, Ben's life and his very identity is crumbling. Enter the enigmantic PLAGIARIST who becomes by turns his guide, his teacher, and his nemesis as Ben weaves his way through the landscape forged from the wreckage of the everyday.
THE PLAGIARIST is no ordinary novel. Picking up where Burroughs left off with his cut-up texts of the 1960s, the narrative of THE PLAGIARIST is built from the fabric of the everyday, drawing from an infinite array of sources to both reflect and attack contemporary modes of living in a consumerist society, Putting literary theory into practice, THE PLAGIARIST challenges eatablished notions of authorship and eschews conventional linear narrative for a fragmentary style that serves to bring fiction closer to the realities of perception.
Excerpt
I did not write this. I’ve done everything in my power to remove myself from the equation, involved writing machines, torn everything up, thrown it into the air and watched the pieces as they fell... there was no escape. Technology is the future of writing – has already taken over – the author is dead: long live the author. In the beginning was the word – but who owned the word? It was already broken down... now all that is left is the rubble of a hundred thousand years of communication, humanity in ruins... the silence, nothing, no-one, only the breeze blowing the echoes of words across the desert... nothing here now but the recordings.
Rust gathers on the manual typewriter, the keys locked in place by time... But what is this...?
Retreat! Retreat! There are no words... no ideas but in things. Hot on the heels of love – raw syntax. A virus devours. New flesh on the end of that long newspaper spoon. The art of THE PLAGIARIST – exit the man with nine lives dying with my boots on. Cut through the mutter line to reveal studies conducted on "aphthous fever" transmitted to humans. Is this – is there – Possible contamination – Belfast – you are fading.
We swim in a sea of facts, data which will intensify and mutate our experience of the real. Facts used like poison gas. Envy is universal, many-to-many. Its refusal to go away is that of an enemy, or a ghost.
The hoisting of the Black Flag signalled the moment we’d all been dreading, the coming of the Great White Death, the beginning of the end... Hands of scar tissue reach out toward him... the words fail and he is lost in a sea of silence. Cut to the chase: Ben is in ruins, his minds starts to wander – a gun to his head and he wonders how much time he has left – Minutes to Go – couldn’t reach flesh – hurry up please it’s time. Ben stood alone – turned to face THE PLAGIARIST in the setting sun... a vicious attack on an honest bystander. There is no explanation so shut up and listen good: You are your own master here...
He turned to face the fading sunlight and cut to the chase – looked down at the picture in his hand, the sepia tint slowly fading... smell of corrosion or that of a ghost. Not sure what’s real any more as dream, memory and the present blur into one vast manuscript in disarray. He bends down and tries to gather the pages. Someone has written the script for him and he must pick up the pieces if he is to learn who he is – reassemble the jigsaw – the last page is missing – the death of my father just an illusion. All the faces look the same to me. Tell me who are you? The beginning is also the end.
This is a bandit's life, it comes and goes.... casts a dead fish eye over the scene as the walls begin to crumble - typewriters gathering dust.... and how are things on the West coast? Society is broken down... reality reduced to nothing but a series of shifting images projected behind the eyes of the masses. Now everything must go... You are fading... everything must go.
Reviews (for full review, click the appropriate link)
THE PLAGIARIST is quite possibly the most extreme anti-novel in print... a very rewarding novel. Sometimes it is distinctly uncomfortable and unpleasant to read... But it is a book that could change your approach to reading, and a book that should make you more aware of the world around you, and hopefully less tolerant and accepting of the hell imposed on us all. - Pablo Vision
...you might expect something surreal and confusing, but THE PLAGIARIST goes far beyond the normal levels of weird.
- Neon Magazine
...like the work of William Burroughs on steroids. - Richard Mandrachio, Bookpleasures.com
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