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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Robert Stone

  
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
17:06 / 02.04.04
Anyone else a Robert Stone fan? I'm totally over the moon that he's got a new book out... the fact that I'm thirty pages from the end now depresses me somewhat.

I first got into this guy by reading a William Gibson interview, wehere he said he basically nicked the narrative voice for Neuromancer from Dog Soldiers. I, of course, went out and got me a copy of Dog Soldiers, and, verily, it rocked, becoming one of my favourite books of all time.

The thing I love about Stone is that he writes thrillers that think they're just contemporary novels. Or the other way round; I'm not sure. And that all the important shit happens behind the scenes... you're just left with his characters bobbing in its wake.

And they're all different, yet all recognisably Stone- Outerbridge Reach is (as far as I can tell) a fictionalised account of the last days of round-the-world sailor Donald Crowhurst... Dog Soldiers is one of the greatest post-Nam books I've read, and also one of the greatest books about drugs I've ever read... even his first novel (and, imho, his weakest), A Hall of Mirrors, throws up more questions than it answers. (Alcoholic, apolitical DJ gets a plum gig doing spots for a far-right political party...)

This is a guy who (apparently) based the last quarter of Dog Soldiers on his experiences at one of Kesey's legendary "Acid Tests"...

what's not to like?
 
 
Alex's Grandma
03:35 / 03.04.04
Stoat,

Dog Soldiers - Was this to do with R Stone's old mates, Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac as reimagined as vietnam vets doing a heroin deal out of South East Asia ? If so, I'm there.

Anyway, on the subject of hard-edged, cynical, hippy American novelists, ( I'm guessing Stone fits the bill, ) have you read any TC Boyle ? If not, I guess anything's good, apart from possibly the one about Kellogs Cornflakes and enemas etc, Anthony Hopkins buck-toothed in the movie, howling on about his morning ablutions. I suppose I'm at heart I'm a prude, but the toilet in literature seems to be somewhere you go to do coke, or have sex, or do anything other than develop a philosophy based on fibre. Y'know, or being Nick Hornby.

Anyway, Drop City, by TC Boyle - If you're short of anything innaresting to read on the tube, you could do a bit worse.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
07:06 / 03.04.04
Was this to do with R Stone's old mates, Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac as reimagined as vietnam vets doing a heroin deal out of South East Asia ?

It'd never occurred to me that that's who the characters could be based on... but it makes a lot of sense now I think about it!
 
  
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