Customer Reviews

Fetish Blonde

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

If there is such a thing as pushing the limits of literature, this book does that. At the same time, it holds tightly to very believable characters, as weird as some of them are. This is a story of profound mystery, not your run-of-the-mill mystery, but mystery of the human soul. That seems to be this author's playing field (all of his books focus on the mystery of the human soul in one form another). Certainly not for everybody, but if want to be bounced around in a carnival-fun-house-freak-show of the mind, step right up! I think people are afraid of this book. The title is misleading. It is not about sexual FETISH per se, though it is lavish in its sexual frenzy; erotic, sadomasochistic, even vampirism (real and imagined), pushing the limits way beyond obsession in a weird search for fulfillment that is always just out of reach. The "fetish" is the power of magic, if you will, contained in someone or something. This existentialist, scary tale reflects if not magnifys the deeper, dark side of the human condition that comes from failure, frustration and depair. A fast read into a world not many of us dare to enter.

OK, I'm convinced: John Gilmore is a great writer. He writes like Jakcson Pollock paints. Everything dazzles and it all connects and bothers...you. He's a DISTURBING writer. No placating or reader-friendly pats on the back. From the very first sentence in this book, the reader is bounced through a smaller-scale Hieronymus Bosch nightmare, from twisted sex to dwarf-tossing, to sick, desperate desires from Beverly Hills to the sewers of Pairs. A strong stomach helps. So when is David Lynch making this into a movie?

What a read! A fast-paced, wild novel; dark and dangerous. John Gilmore is an outstanding writer. This is an unforgettable novel, weird and peculiar. William S. Burroughs gave it a thumbs up plug and he's right. Sexual obsession, strange characters lurking about, a true existential hero bent on self-destruct. The sewers of Paris. This is not a long book. It is short and packed and guaranteed to take you places you haven't been before.

John Gilmore's novel is like a dark, noir, twisted mystery obsessed-love story set in the seediest Paris I have ever read about. There are ugly dwarfs (being tossed yet, like footballs!), sinister transvestites, would-be movie stars and glorified extras; each seeking to outdo the other in the most outrageous behavior you can imagine. A weird, sick love story between a middle-aged movie writer (full of self-loathing),and a rollerblading teeny-bopper movie extra who is into some TRULY kinky antics. Here is a digestible William Burroughs, a kind of Flannery O'Connor on rollerblades. David Lynch where are you? I'm sure many will hate this novel but there's no denying literary genuis when it smacks you straight in the face as Gilmore's does.

I have just had the exciting experience of reading an advance copy of John Gilmore's latest book, FETISH BLONDE. This intense novel is a wild, fast-moving, absolutely crazy, psychological nightmare story of a Hollywood movie writer, Jake Morgan, shooting a vampire movie in Paris (in the Paris sewers and in the catacombs of skeletons). By night, Jake drinks and snorts cocaine with a bizarre entourage, including a transvestite drug dealer, a hunchback poet, a female African amazon, and Eston, a neo-Nazi photographer who is secretly assembling his own book of porno-like portraits of the local street urchins. All are caught up with Juju, a blonde, dizzingly scretative, fetishistic rollerblader who is also an extra in the movie.

Fetish Blonde is a short novel of labyrinthine plot expressed in terms of subterranean violence and depravity, a trip into a Paris night world where people's worst nightmares can--and do--come horribly true.

MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL says "John Gilmore is one of the best nonfiction writers of our time, the type of writer that grabs the reader alternately by the throat and by the heart." Right on! Yes, sir, to that!

SIGHT AND SOUND says Gilmore's style is "somewhere between Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukowski..." Right again.

WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS said Gilmore's Fetish Blonde is "A psycho-sexual crash. A personal crash of one poaching past the limit... You're going to a Valentine's Day party with a .40 caliber Smith & Wesson. What's here, what's crawling out is held in madness and frenzy." I couldn't agree more; strangulation, self-cutting, blood-licking... John Gilmore has stepped from that realm of dark nonfiction he's so firmly occupied these past few years, and here slashes at convention in a white heat of vivid, right NOW cutting edge literature. Explosively erotic without being pornographic, but will no doubt shake up the more squeamish readers as does Marilyn Manson shake up the squeamish ear. Here's William S. Burroughs and Diane Arbus and David Lynch rolled into one! Wow! Highly, highly recommended.

FETISH BLONDE IS ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF ITS KIND I HAVE EVER READ> IT HAS A GREAT PLOT AND FINE CHARACTERIZATIONS> THE ATMOSPHERE OF PARIS IS BEUATIFULLY EVOKED AND THE SUSPENSE IS KEPT UP THROUGHOUT< BUILDING TO A GREAT CLIMAX>THIS IS ONE BOOK I CAN MOST HIGHLY RECOMMEND>

Maybe Kenneth Anger's writing would also devolve critically if he turned the poison pen on himself. Regardless of the degree to which fantasy is mingled with fact in this by turns self aggrandizing/debasing memoir (in which at the very least JG seems to have inflated his success as a film professional to a spectacular degree: online sources reduce his supposedly catholic, King Midas career down to a handful of appearances as "self" in cheap, cheesy hollywood gossip oriented "documentaries"). Overall one is left with that depressing post-coital feeling so often the aftermath of the efforts of hipster writers and artists (galleria de la luz, anyone?) who might have actually had some interesting material - the stuff of their lives - to work with had they been born queer as a 3 dollar bill (sexually or otherwise) but who are instead reduced to grasping desperately for 'weirdness' not having been so blessed, unfortunately. (Note, this observation has absolutely nothing to do with author's handy dismissal of "featured extras" populating the scenery as strictly subhuman life forms denoted variously as fags and fairies (some lexicon!). Oh and there's tranny in a cliche supporting role (that tranny who has the goods on people, a stock character of trashy movies and fiction), who gets dissed for not having a proper vagina (demonstrating, <sigh>, JG's total ignorance on the subject of chicks with you-know-whats)! This is one author who should avoid using his imagination. Whatever "Severed", "LA Despair" and some of his other books may not have going for them, they are at least entertaining and evince a sense of humor. This book ain't and doesn't. If you enjoy feeling embarrassed for an author, knock yourself out.