Customer Reviews

William McGonagall Meets George Gershwin: A Scottish Fantasy

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I adore just about anything Spike, and really enjoyed the film he made playing this character - but man, this book is tough going. I found it a good cure for my insomnia, as I could never manage more than a few pages without falling asleep... it was almost impossible to drag my eyes across the page, and this is coming from someone who gets a kick out of Finnegans Wake, and when suitably drunk can do all the Goon Show voices.

Perhaps having a real editor would've helped string these ramblings together... a low point in the milligna body of work.

Stream of consciousness goonery, utterly unedited, not even the vaguest attempt at a plot. In the introduction Milligan describes it as,
"... the first freeform comic fantasy in which the subconscious mind is the author."
 
He describes the process of writing, introducing his co-author as,
"...friend, pianist and fellow manic depressive. We decided that whenever either of us was on a down we would write `something' in book form. The result was this book."
 
As a result it's totally hit and miss - and the pleasure is also largely dependent on the mood of the reader: I found some parts hilarious and others merely confused, but I suspect if I read it again I'd have the same reactions to different parts of the text. Definitely only to be read, as it was written, in small portions (I don't think Spike would be at all offended to find I chose to read it in the smallest room in the house).