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The Nightclerk
Panther, London, 1968
dedication: dedicated to the one
The blurb on the back:
Oh, what games they play…!
I assume that this is something of a cult novel in certain quarters – it certainly reads like one. Indeed it reads like that was its very intention, its raison d’etre, its inner core and deepest of deep meaning and mystery as it drags and drapes its shades, its shapes, its scabrous shanks across the pages, flaunting itself at you the reader with its wilful flaunting of grammar and syntax, regaling you the observer with its half-told tales of darkness and depravity, its hints of horror and occult ritual, dazzling you the spectator of spectacles such as you have seldom seen even in the slippery slivers of your sleep-time, and pressing its flesh close, close up on your flesh… …and so on ...and so forth. It’s all a bit much, to be honest. But then I’m not much of a judge of the arty fringes of Sixties literature in the US – Burroughs left me cold, the Beats bored me and I never got much pleasure from Last Exit To Brooklyn. This fragmented account of a very fat man who works the night-desk at a downtown LA hotel did not, therefore, stand much of a chance with me, but hell, I tried. It was only when I discovered that Mimi the French Maid, whose training I had been promised by the blurb, was actually male that I gave up. It’s a personal thing, but I’m really not interested in sub TVs. But you probably shouldn’t be listening to me on the subject: check it out for yourself if you’re into this sort of thing. Mr Schneck wrote for the legendary Ramparts magazine and this was his first novel. I don’t know if there were any others.
ARTISTIC MERIT: 2/5
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