Critical Mick

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Madness and Insanity
by Anthony Squiers
Irish Eye Publishing, 2009

The Son Also Riots

Note to self: Pick one of these opening hooks when finishing the goddamned review

1. If you drink enough, do you acquire pornstar abilities and spectacular psychic powers? Grad student David Keller is an American in Europe and he's on a quest to find out. Women of England, beware! This could get ugly.

     2. Enlightenment, Grasshopper? Naw, fuck that. David Keller seeks to understand "madness and insanity"- why is life a series of anarchic adventures? His life, anyway. And the life of his mate who coined the M & I phrase, shortly before snorting a bag of cocaine on the top of a double decker bus. Hmmmmm. Some mysteries won't ever be solved.

3. If, while strolling through Amsterdam, Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises and Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha were petitioned for spare change by young David Squiers' Madness and Insanity, what would they do? Answer: they'd leave it twitching in the gutter without a second thought. The wankers.

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Lit Boffins say: the test of character is whether or not they'd be interesting to share a drink with. [insert goddamned examples ripped offa some lit boffin] David Keller, protaganist of Anthony Squiers' Madness and Insanity would steal your beers, stiff you with the bill, and trick you into tripping on LSD instead. He'd laugh like a nut, shattering the bottles off a passing bus. Sure, he is on a journey to discover mankind's anarchic nature, but David Keller does it in a selfish, thieving shit way instead of being a friendly rebel. Even if described by a master wordsmith, it would be a task for readers to sustain care and interest.

When drugs are consumed, letters start to slamdance all over the page. In a book about madness and insanity, it is impossible to get those characters to behave. So it's no surprise the typos start even before the novel ("Printed in the United States of American") and pop up like unruly middle fingers on every page. Quote the Dude "I guess that I sort of saw Finland, tucked away up there in the far reaches of Northern Europe as maybe The Emerald City or something like that. Except, instead of being inhabited by a bunch of singing midgets, it was full of beautiful, sophisticated, intelligent women that I wanted to shag. To be fair, Helli's just being hot was enough for me to go after her but hot and Finnish... I was hooked." (page 52) "I leaned back until my shoulder blades hit the grass, bringing Dayla with me. She stayed above me propped on her elbow and looked down at me while she and Carl and Camera Girl sang. I looked past Dayla's gaze, straight up at the Tower and watched the searchlight slowly canvassing the sky from its soaring reaches. I could hear the violin's song lofting through the city from somewhere in the distance. I listened to its melodic beckoning and felt the music drifting me up on a cloud of euphoria. The lights of the Eiffel Tower glistened and shimmered like I had tears in my eyes. The Tower has a nature and character that far exceeds its aesthetic limitations. It is somehow, despite its bulkiness and audacity, a beautiful, inspiring monument." (page 160) Hey, I was once an American exchange student, as well! But I spent that year of college in Dublin, not Manchester. Good thing, too: Why I'd Have Punched David Keller in the Head For constantly stealing shit And smashing stuff that guys like me have to clean up Lying and taking the piss out of nerds like me who have bad fashion sense For thinking he was some kind of superior intellectual when actually he was just fried For using diminishers and unnecessary phrases And constantly sponging money off his mega-rich parents Selfish jerk doesn't complete his own story arc- how the hell does he really change over the course of this year? He scores more chicks than I ever could Getting away with it all

Types of Chicks Snogged Finnish Norwegien Chinese English American Drugs Consumed Gin Sleeping Pills Cheap Whisky Warm Beer Wine Vodka Hash Cocaine LSD Ecstasy Mushrooms Ouzo Mystery drug from the kind of "vile" with an eye dropper on top Arrests Dodged Grand Total: 151

If You Can't Say Anything Nice, then Don't Blah De Blah Blah

Umm

Aava

Keller learns from a beautiful girlfriend the concept of Aava, which is Finnish for "wide openness" or the feeling experienced when staring at the enormity of the ocean. This girlfriend ultimately proves to be crap in bed so Keller ditches her. He hangs on to this notion, though: aava.

Is aava a deep philosophocal insight of universal importance and soaring magnitude? I sprung the word on a Scandanavian mate at work. It didn't impress him, and he's Finnish. Maybe I pronounced it wrong. Maybe I just don't get it.

reading about someone else's acid trips makes no more fun.

Critical Mick says: Anthony Squiers can do better than this. Like a night that is sloppy drunk, Madness and Insanity has its moments. I am looking forward to seeing what he writes now that he has gotten the madness and insanity out of his system.

than reading about someone else's dreams

Yo! This review and all content on the DFA Guide site are copyright 2009 Mick Halpin. All links to other sites and documents are copyright to whatever source wrote something cool enough for Mick to give it a referral. Try to claim them as your own work and bad karma will catch up with you, baby. Believe it.

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This Page Was Last Updated On 25 January, 2010.