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All Hail the New Puritans
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| List Price: | £6.99 |
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Product Description
All Hail, the New Puritans is the collection of new stories from the most exciting young novelists today. Inspired by the Dogme 95 group of film makers, the New Puritans are attempting to rediscover fiction as a discipline rather than a category.
All Hail The New Puritans is the controversial anthology of new British writing.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #322971 in Books
- Published on: 2001-07-02
- Binding: Paperback
- 224 pages
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.co.uk Review
All Hail the New Puritans begins with a ten-point manifesto. Part pastiche of modernist manifestos, part bullet-point mission statement, this manifesto claims to eschew inter alia voice, flashbacks, poetic licence and rhetoric in favour of plain, authentic, transparent testimonial prose.
Fortunately, the practice of the New Puritans is much more interesting and sophisticated than their theory. All set in the present, the stories dissect many aspects of contemporary life with verve, wit and sympathy. While ostensibly offering us faithful representations of the present, many of the stories have considerable satirical bite.
The entertainment/information economy and its possibilities and pitfalls are chronicled in Blincoe's "Short Guide to Game Theory"--a tale of schoolboy rivalry transposed into the conflict between a board-game developer and the aspirant designer of a game called SWING, the object of which is to create and market a pop group; the protagonist and narrator in Matthew Branton's "Monkey See" works as a techie tracing internet porn, who tries to spice up his sex-life with his much-loved wife by joining a swingers group. Tony White's "Poet" explores the possibilities (emotional, economic and formal) of using Excel to write sonnets in a moving meditation on being a writer in a digital age. --Neville Hoad
The Times
'This is an important collection. Whether you agree with the New Puritan Manifesto or not, if you care about writing you must read this book . . . The New Puritans have mounted a formidable revolution.'
Daily Telegraph
'It is exciting to find so many good stories in one collection . . . Thorne and Blincoe have challenged the writer to do something original and that is exactly what the New Puritans have done.'
Customer Reviews
refreshing and entertaining stories - some even brilliant
i'm not interested in (re)viewing this book in a context of contemporary british fiction but recently i've burrowed through a dozen or so short story collections in search of a refreshing read and this one struck me as the most intelligent, witty and fun of them all. obviously, "your mileage may vary" but still i dread to imagine what the pompous critics of this book actually consider a good read.
the "dogme-like" manifesto is a fun idea, and i even tracked down other works by these authors (and found most of their lengthier novels disappointing). so - confirmed is my faith in the short story format and i'd like to recommend this collection even to those who don't necessarily rate these authors' other work.
Fiction for the Future
I bought this book mainly because I like Matt Thorne's novels, and wasn't sure about the hype and the strange rules. But the stories deliver, and are all really good. A cool collection.
Good stories; strange rules
I think I have to begin by review by arguing with the last review. [The]remarks are typical of many of the criticisms fired at this anthology - which all stem from literary snobbery... After all, ordinary readers like me and my friends love these stories. They are relevant to us and to our lives. These stories do have depth and complexity - just because they're not 'clever clever' and don't have Julian-Barnes-style references to Flaubert to show off how well-read the readers are, this doesn't mean to say they don't have depth. They are not cliche either - not just about relationships between twentysomethings - but wierd and wonderful subjects, like Matt Thorne's brilliantly erotic and bizarre story.
On the other hand - I don't think the New Puritans needed to be 'New Puritans.' They could have just put together a collection of short stories for charity, like Nick Hornby's fantastic 'Speaking with the Angel' or the slightly trashy 'Girls Night In'. I found the rules silly and pretentious; I can't help feeling they were just a publicity stunt, which has got everyone talking and arguing...Or me writing this review. Still, in age where the success of books depends as much on hype as quality, who can blame then?
