BOOK AND PODCAST REVIEWS - FICTION

Gamiani, or Two Nights of Excess (1833) Alfred de Musset Seduction (1908 but re-published in 2003) Anonymous   Tropic of Cancer (1934) Henry Miller Erotic Comics: A Graphic History (2008) Alice Kominsky-Crumb   Shameful Duties (Probably 1970s but re-published in 2017)  Susan Saraband   Gamiani is a somewhat Sadean quasi-Gothic erotic novel of the 1830s which has been attributed, although not certainly, to Alfred De Musset and which even reached the hands of Edith Wharton no less. However, you would not know any of this from my Edition, a second-hand copy of its inclusion in the Erotic Prints Society's 'Scarlet Library' which has no introduction, notes or bibiliography. What that Edition does have is excellent erotic illustrations by Vania Zouravliov. That is why I am happy to refer to it here while suggesting you find an edition with more background information. As for the story, it is a tale of extreme and destructive erotic passion with the standard issue refer

Heliogabalus, or the Crowned Anarchist (1934) Antonin Artaud   Blue of Noon (1935) Georges Bataille   Literature and Evil (1957) Georges Bataille   Bataille, philosopher and 'intellectual', and Artaud, a 'major figure of the French avant-garde' were almost exact contemporaries. I may have more to write about the former in due course but I am afraid that in this review I am somewhat inclined to take my axe to them.  Artaud's dramatic text Heliogabalus is certainly a curiosity - one part flummery, one part insanity and one part genius. It is an account of sorts of the decadent teenage androgynous Emperor Heliogabalus. Blue of Noon is a minor work that I suspect Bataille did not want published and Literature and Evil is a collection of essays on the margins of French intellectual life in the 1950s. Not that the average reader (in which category I include myself) will have an earthly idea what Heliogabalus is all about (given the limits of a modern education) unt

The Eternal Champion (1962-1970)    Elric of Melnibone (1962-1972) Behold the Man (1969) Gloriana (1978) The War Hound and the World's Pain (Von Bek, #1) (1981) The War Amongst the Angels (Second Ether, #3) (1996) T he Vengeance Of Rome (Between the Wars, #4) (1999)     Michael Moorcock is one of the most prolific, influential and often hard-to-categorise fantasy writers in our literary history. As you might expect, his oeuvre can be variable in quality. However, these six examples (of which there could be many others) will give a flavour of his fertile and often anarchic talent. Although he abandoned Britain in the 1990s, there is often still something quintessentially English (in literary terms) about his world view while allowing a free flow of cosmopolitan influences from American fantasy writing and European culture. It is hard to tell when and where Moorcocks's Eternal Champion archetype emerges. That is wholly fitting given the nature of his multiverse. There