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Last Days of Pompeii: Volume 1, Augurs
Manchester. An hourly paid lecturer in a university art school writes fiction and poetry. He steals tea bags, screws, and other useful items to get by. As he struggles with fatigue, depression, and the quality of his writing output, he experiences nightmares about his past in a small town. He begins to write these down.
A big moment blisters up in which he sees the brutal cycles of life and the catastrophic future in the present.
Last Days of Pompeii skewers contemporary English life with a satire and a serious warning about our state of complacency.
A big moment blisters up in which he sees the brutal cycles of life and the catastrophic future in the present.
Last Days of Pompeii skewers contemporary English life with a satire and a serious warning about our state of complacency.
111 pages, Paperback
Published March 13, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 21, 2022
Opening with a dry, staccato delivery of raw post-it-like-notes of observations by a casually employed lecturer. Delivering a bare comedy of acutely observed realism. In which banal careerism crushes ideals of ideal/rational knowledge, reducing academic work to system maintenance by headless chickens.
Politics and ethics are gamified or reduced to interpersonal pyscho-dramas.
Empire is maintained on the backs of the precariously employed proletarian intellectuals. Petty sabotage apparently the only resistance.
Then on page 38 a chicken farm story erupts to be interwoven into the 'ethnographic' reportage - the real world of blood and guts everywhere outside the mental institutions of academia. Things are not right here either, and end in a hideous yet hilarious fashion.
The farm story acts as a counterpoint to the grotesque intellectual perversions of academia.
No simplistic analysis is allowed. Although the dual story is infused with class tensions the sickness is all pervasive.
This book will particularly amuse and get a response from those who have worked in universities, but it has greater ambitions. We await the second and third parts.
Politics and ethics are gamified or reduced to interpersonal pyscho-dramas.
Empire is maintained on the backs of the precariously employed proletarian intellectuals. Petty sabotage apparently the only resistance.
"He had lost his faith because here they taught existential depth like they were showing them how to sew on buttons.” p.28
Then on page 38 a chicken farm story erupts to be interwoven into the 'ethnographic' reportage - the real world of blood and guts everywhere outside the mental institutions of academia. Things are not right here either, and end in a hideous yet hilarious fashion.
The farm story acts as a counterpoint to the grotesque intellectual perversions of academia.
No simplistic analysis is allowed. Although the dual story is infused with class tensions the sickness is all pervasive.
This book will particularly amuse and get a response from those who have worked in universities, but it has greater ambitions. We await the second and third parts.
May 4, 2022
Novella-length look at UK-style academic labor, privatization, suicidal farmers, and the delusions of "anarchists" and "socialists" with a degree of power or security in the humanities. But I need to reread it to be sure.
If you see this review, please try The Sick List by the publisher of this work. I believe that Pompeii is the first that Allen has published.
https://kudera.blogspot.com/2022/05/o...
If you see this review, please try The Sick List by the publisher of this work. I believe that Pompeii is the first that Allen has published.
https://kudera.blogspot.com/2022/05/o...
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews