Customer Reviews

The Texts of Festival

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Cheesy but fun read from PinkWinder Mick Farren. Post apocalypse world that features fallout cultural debris from 1972 post woodstock lemmings. Example: the "sacred texts" is a scratched copy of the woodstock soundtrack album, played religiously by some jaded jean genie-cum-high priest over the loudspeakers to the people at the town of Festival, which is some sort of semi functional Deadhead show lot. Meanwhile, the appropriately named Iggy and his band of marauders are ready to inflict raw power and take the town while jacked up on crystal meth. Everyone talks in some sort of redneck acid superfly dialect. All this could be turned into a Gilbert Shelton cartoon pumped through Heavy Metal magazine. Found my copy at a roadside junktique in rural Mississippi, which is where I imagine Farren fantasized that this crap would take place. Find your own copy and have fun. I read it in two hours, liked it, and forgot about it.

Author Farren proposes that the remnants of a post atomic war society are reduced to the point where the few remaining towns are semi-feudal enclaves struggling to holding off the barbarians. The book employed many themes familiar to readers of Western novels: gunfights, gamblers, horses, cowboys etc. Two elements held over from pre holocaust times add an interesting twist and make the novel somewhat interesting: the use of "crystal" probably heroin and the phonograph recordings of certain male rock vocalist being used as semi-religious text. The artists are referred to as prophets just in case we don't get the author's intent. This last item adds nice atmospheres to the novel but the author does not develop it fully - I feel that the concept is bogus since 99% of pop music is not subject to any other interpretation other than entertainment. Sounds silly but some cultural horses-asses claim to have received "messages "while they were "under to influence" listing to rock recordings.

The story is a downer from page one. Hero's get wiped out, evil triumphs over "good" chaos over order. If it were a movie I wager the sound track at least would by great.

If the topic of this title strokes your interest see author Farrens book Jim Morrison's Adventures in the Afterlife. (Honest title)

The only US edition of this title - Avon paperback 27011 published 1975 - give a good overview of the book theme with this cover notation "Far in the Future a Decaying Freaked Out Civilization Battles for Survival Against Tribal Arcarny!"