Search results for ""author john herdman""

Living as if an outsider, but functionally ingratiate to normal social circles, Duncan has his morality rocked by bearing witness to a violent act. Where can one land on judgement of abject behaviour when inflicted upon a person, perhaps more abject than the act itself? Pressure to testify pushes Duncan into various forms of escapism and a consequential number of captivating encounters, all whilst trapped in a brooding vacuum of self-reflection. Herdman's writerly magic is an underappreciated facet of Scotland's continually great literary output.

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An Edinburgh advocate undergoes an interior experience of humiliation and terror, totally losing his way in a surreal Scottish Highland adventure. Donald Humbie, leaving behind his career and his wife in Edinburgh, heads north to familiar places for a short break. Unfortunately, the familiar places have become unfamiliar and increasingly hostile. Each setting, each character, each event is an unsettling side-step away from normality in a dark, surreal landscape that has Donald fleeing manically around the country. Fearing that his wife has been abducted, he seeks out MacNucator, a private detective, to find her. Meanwhile the Sinister Cabaret, led by the strange and unfathomable Mr Motion, pursues him relentlessly. John Herdman’s characters inhabit a dark universe illuminated by his profoundly laconic wit. In the Sinister Cabaret he continues the exploration of extreme states of mind and ambiguous interior worlds with the Gothic imagination, which has led critics to compare him with James Hogg and R L Stevenson.

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Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in June 2016, and seldom in recent years has it been more richly deserved. That a song writer's lyrics should be regarded as literature was an idea at which many were surprised. Others have felt that to isolate the lyrics of a song from its musical context is unreal. Ultimately that is true: a song is an indefeasible whole, an inseparable marriage of words and music which achieves its overall emotional effect by that symbiosis and not otherwise. Yet it can also be said that the two components can be separately considered as two elements in the artist's creative utterance, and discussed as such. The evidence of Dylan's manuscripts supports the view that in writing his lyrics his way of going about things is not always widely different from that of a poet. Bob Dylan commented on the Nobel Prize in Literature which was awarded to him "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition": "When I first received this Nobel Prize for Literature, I got to wondering exactly how my songs related to literature. I wanted to reflect on it and see where the connection was." Voice Without Restraint, refers to and is from the song "I dreamed I saw St Augustine" on John Wesley Harding, and is a phrase chosen to evoke the full-blooded commitment to his artistic utterance which is the hallmark of Bob Dylan's voice - in all senses.

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With nascent love abandoned and the recurring presence of the creeping 'wrinkled-nosed' laundry man of a traumatic childhood, the stagnating life of Pagan must be revived by the discovery of a somewhat questionable raison d'etre the assassination of an aristocrat. The spleenful nature of Herdman's titular protagonist and a selection of odd experiences perfectly sets up a strife deep within himself: can and how can Pagan commit to his partially bookfound life-calling, tangled into his pilgrimage? In these partnered publications, Pagan's Pilgrimage and A Truth Lover, John Herdman expertly demonstrates his capacity to evoke complicatedly moralising characters with haunting effect. In both works, the protagonists toil and struggle with the brutal world that birthed them, leading to quivering encounters - equal parts absurd and ephemeral.

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A finespun tale of doubles and confused identities. Ghost-writer Leonard Balmain finds himself drawn into an unwanted complicity with the dark revelations unfolding within that of his subject ― the mysterious Torquil Tod. When Tod's tale turns into murder and sexual betrayal, Leonard realises he knows too much and is in danger of ending up on the very pages of Tod's turbulent history. Black magic, sacrificial murder and cannibalism collide in an uneasy voyage towards, and from beyond, the grave.

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John Herdman's masterpiece of the modern Scottish Gothic appears in print from Leamington Books' imprint Gothic World Literature Editions, with a new introduction from the author. Black humour and even blacker lives collide in a tale of love and murder on an old Borders family estate. In a grotesque story told from two contrasting angles we meet the arrogant genius, Frank, and his hated brother Hubert. Raw and immoral, Imelda is a puzzle, mocking the reader in its quest for answers. Murder and madness this way lie―but who if anyone is to be believed in unpicking the deadly secrets behind the birth of cousin Imelda's child? An assured masterpiece from Scotland's greatest living chronicler of the dark side, Imelda, first published in 1993 became an instant classic of Scottish letters.

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