AMERICAN RUST
by Philipp Meyer
Simon and Schuster, Paperback; 384 Pages
ISBN: 9781847373960
Price:£12.99
James Tanner
A surprising amount of art, for want of a better word, is entitled ‘American…’ To name but a few: in film, we have Grafitti and Gangster; in literature, Pastoral and Psycho; in music, both Girl and Woman (not to mention Pie). It is a cliché of sorts. Why? Well, “American” is a big word with many emotionally charged meanings, both for Americans and for the rest of the world. Like all big words, it can be used cheaply. It …

Joshua Roche
The largest pearl in the world was ruined when the shell was boiled open
– Prose note to Paterson, William Carlos Williams
‘Yes, yes, the salty Pleiades,
Language under your knuckles,
But there were hundreds of us.’
Toes deep, Tom, at the bottom of the fall;
Collecting dirt deep down in Paterson.
Sedimented grain by grain,
Echoes battered in the river bed among
Citizen body parts;
The eyes of Sam Patch, an ear from the Reverend’s wife.
Culled, hunting
For Pearls of the Passaic.
She squats, ladylike under thundering;
A cool American at four hundred
Grams just kissing Tom Carson’s big toe.
This was Solomon’s …

A Found Poem
By Anna McKerrow
Opposite a block of control / Him to make him / a woman / Crowded on a table / Protest that she is not /
In fact / A-real / And next door to / a garage! / She picks up smile /Says, help / Talking / Help with the papier mache /
She says, / It’s actually a dummy / Or at least that’s what I think / She says, / Actually made of rubber / Isn’t that interesting /
Dress, monkey, she says, / That does not …

Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey
Faber and Faber; Hardback;
464 pages; 9780571253296;
Price £18.99
Annie McDermott
First of all, this is not a book about America. The book about America is what the French aristocrat Olivier, sent to investigate the prisons of the new democracy, is dictating to his secretary Parrot. Peter Carey’s book is about what happens in the meantime.
Parrot and Olivier in America tells the story of Olivier-Jean-Baptiste de Clarel de Garmont (Lord Migraine to his secretary), a short-sighted young nobleman living amidst the dangers of post-revolutionary Paris. …

Skippy Dies by Paul Murray
Hamish Hamilton; Boxed Set Paperbacks; 672 pages;
9780241141823; Price £18.99
Michael Sopp
It seems that if you open any novel written by a man in the last decade there’s a good chance its protagonist will be a prepubescent genius. It’s difficult to trace the origins of this phenomenon. In England at least it may have something to do with Mark Haddon’s best-selling The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and its autistic, prime-number-obsessed narrator, which seems to have spawned a literary virus that has since spread across …

Will Self is a prolific writer of both fiction and journalism. His most recent publication, Psycho Too, is a collection of the ‘Psychogeography’ columns he wrote for several years in The Independent, accompanied by drawings by Ralph Steadman.
Self has a daunting public persona, as his varied appearances on television and radio indicate. For this reason I was somewhat nervous on approaching his London home and made even more so at his startled, staring reaction on discovering that I don’t take sugar in my tea. However, once ensconced in his writing …