The Cocaine Chronicles
Edited by Phillips & Tervalon
Akashic Books

This is worth picking up from somebody’s toilet floor if just for the Jerry Stahl piece where he details the delights of blowing cocaine up his ageing dealer’s rectum to score a free gramme. Everything else is bad decisions, yelling, self-obsession, streams of unconsciousness and things that end in tears. The funniest thing is how the pictures of all the authors all look like exactly the same person. The haunted, serious expression, lines on the face, the “I’ve been through hell and back” gaze. Much like the drug itself, no surprises here whatsoever.

CRACK CAKONE



Muzzlers, Guzzlers And Good Yeggs
Joe Coleman
Fantagraphics Books

I was about to write off Joe Coleman as outdated and overrated but his stuff really works in this narrative form. Those big paintings he does for the posters of films about serial killers are kind of annoying because they’re so literal, but this collection of short stories (about murderers and depravity) is really good. Tonnes better than lots of other pap which passes itself off as ‘graphic novels’ with stories about nothing except a mute bunny rabbit who walking through suburbia until he falls off the cliff and dies or something like that. A lot of those things are like an episode of Road Runner without any action.

DUKE KENSINGTON



Peter Sotos
Proxy
Creation

Dark Star: The Satanic Rites Of Gilles De Rais
Georges Bataille & Others
Creation

Sorry if this is the third mention of Peter Sotos in the literary column in as many months but since he left Whitehouse, he’s shot out more books than he jerks off in a day (about five/six). This is a collection of all the books that Creation put out and it’s all pretty heavy going stuff unless you’re of his “bent”. Buried within you’ll find a few nuggets of genius but really if you want the best stuff, get Total Abuse or Selfish, Little. Meanwhile, this book about fellow sadist Gilles De Rais has a couple of interesting anecdotes but mostly it’s a load of pretentious wank written by people who weren’t even born in the same century.

JUGGY SUTCLIFFE