Dispatches from the front line of popular culture

by Tony Parsons

Tony Parsons is a regular commentator on popular culture and his views are often contentious. His television work such as "The Tattooed Jungle" and "A Clockwork Orange" achieved acclaim and also many complaints. This book draws from the best and most provocative of Parson's writing. From 1976 and the height of Punk, through to 1980s obsessions with style and onto the 1990s obsessions with sex and sex wars, this book includes articles, essays and interviews from a variety of sources, including "Elle", "The Daily Telegraph" and "The Daily Mail". From "The Tattooed Jungle" to "The Polenta Jungle", why women shouldn't drink and why David Bowie did, from The Clash to Suede, it offers Parson's views of Britain.

Genres: Music

Paperback

First published November 17, 1994

About the author

There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Tony Parsons (born 6 November 1953) is a British journalist broadcaster and author. He began his career as a music journalist on the NME, writing about punk music. Later, he wrote for The Daily Telegraph, before going on to write his current column for the Daily Mirror. Parsons was for a time a regular guest on the BBC Two arts review programme The Late Show, and still appears infrequently on the successor Newsnight Review; he also briefly hosted a series on Channel 4 called Big Mouth.

He is the author of the multi-million selling novel, Man and Boy (1999). Parsons had written a number of novels including The Kids (1976), Platinum Logic (1981) and Limelight Blues (1983), before he found mainstream success by focussing on the tribulations of thirty-something men. Parsons has since published a series of best-selling novels – One For My Baby (2001), Man and Wife (2003), The Family Way (2004), Stories We Could Tell (2006), My Favourite Wife (2007), Starting Over (2009) and Men From the Boys (2010). His novels typically deal with relationship problems, emotional dramas and the traumas of men and women in our time. He describes his writing as 'Men Lit', as opposed to the rising popularity of 'Chick Lit'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Par...

Reviews

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some of the interviews are interesting - I bought the book for the Brett Anderson one - but avoid the 'polemic' and 'love and sex' sections. Whoever commissioned Parsons to write about women needs their head examined as the pieces are excruciating. This book sat on my coffee table for months as I fought through it, which at least gave it some purpose as a device with which to kill spiders in the Autumn.

[William Alves · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ancient music journalism was so fuckin' dull

[Tim Worthington · Rating 1 out of 5]

The world's most arch and cornish book.