Sane in Asylum Walls

Nicholson, Geoff: Bedlam Burning - A Novel, London Victor Gollancz 2000
ISBN: 0-575-07111-7 Fine in Fine Dust Jacket Dust Jacket Design By Gray318

13th novel. One of our zaniest and most original comic novelists - Sunday Times. A comic satirist of biting precision - Kirkus Reviews. English literature's premier purveyor of black humor - Time Out. "In 'Bedlam Burning', Geoff Nicholson turns his satirical gaze to the ivy covered walls of academia and the rubber rooms of an insane asylum. It all starts at Cambridge University, in the rooms of Dr. John Bentley, a don famous for his book burning parties-"a little, active symbolic literary criticism"-where guests are invited to incinerate books. It is at one such party that Gregory Collins, brilliant but unprepossessing, meets Mike Smith, a handsome classmate. When Collins's first novel, The Wax Man, is accepted for publication, he convinces Smith to take his place on the book jacket. As a result, it is Smith rather than Collins who receives the offer to be writer-in-residence at the asylum run by Dr. James Kincaid, whose obscure therapeutic philosophy centers on the soothing powers of literature. When Smith compiles a book of the inmates' writings, and it becomes a literary success, this comedy of errors threatens to become a tragedy." - dust jacket flap. " Donald Westlake meets Ken Kesey in this 13th novel by British author Nicholson (Bleeding London), about an author impersonation at a lunatic asylum. First novelist Gregory Collins seeks out Michael Smith, whom he met at a Cambridge University party in 1974, to pose for his author photo in the hopes that Smith's good looks will help sell his book. Smith, who is stuck in a dead-end job and a stagnant relationship, agrees and then watches as events unfold bewilderingly. Trouble starts when Smith is invited to serve as a writer-in-residence at the Kincaid Clinic, an institute for mental patients. Dr. Kincaid's therapeutic method is based on the belief that the patients are suffering from visual overload and that once they are relieved of this burden they will be free to unleash their thoughts in writing, which will cure them of their psychoses. As a result, the clinic has no television, no pictures in the newspapers, no books in the library, and no labels on the food cans. Once Smith enters the clinic, he finds himself drawn into a surreal world where it is difficult to tell the sane from the insane." - Kirkus Reviews. vi, 298pp. Light brown faux cloth, dark brown ink embossed spine lettering, white endpapers. Dust jacket price 16.99. SIGNED BY AUTHOR to half-title page. Book and Dust jacket are in As New, unread condition. Signed by Author First Edition Fine Hard Cover 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall

[SW: LITERATURE]

Details