"The Swank Bisexual Wine Bar of Modernity" contains 16 stories written by HP Tinker, by hand, in which: * Paul Gauguin considers himself moderately in love with Jacqueline Du Pre * Pierre Boulez redevelops Kandahar for homosexuals * a General re-reads The Color Purple, close to tears, between battles * pornography enjoys renewed popularity due to the extensive modeling work of Bertrand Russell * the Morrissey Exhibition arrives in Your Town * a writer uncovers great truths in the back of a Cortina * a detective ponders the ambiguous relationship between Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jnr * beautiful memories of a Nazi childhood are revisited * due to the greatest hits of Tina Turner a woman's feelings are never truly considered * an old lady falls into a canal * the Irish poet and critic Tom Paulin leaves the top button of his shirt undone to affect a more casual appearance * a minimalist lives in surprising opulence * conflict and inner turmoil are the long-term effects of taking substantial quantities of heroin in various anonymous bathroom settings * the author's death leads to the overthrow of the entire Haitian government * Jean Vigo contemplates the nature of time in a hotel lobby * life strikes me as largely unfair *
Bravely, these stories will be published by bright new underground literary hipster Social Disease very soon in this century.
Join the revolution here:
www.socialdisease.co.uk
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Born 10,000 years ago in Montana, HP Tinker is the accidental byproduct of Simon Prosser’s controversial attempt to genetically engineer a brand new radically hip Brit Lit author by cloning the narrative technique of William Burroughs with the social largesse of Kingsley Amis. Somewhere - dear God - the experiment went horribly wrong... and only after a decade-long battle with pornography addiction and hair loss did he finally escape the Belgian mental institution he once called home. Now, from his cottage in North Wales, he espouses Death and vegetarian sushi...
"Hilarious deadpan surrealism..."
(The Times)
"... fizzes with the kind of zany, surreal conjunctions that recall Barthelme and Pynchon in their prime."
(The Guardian)
"An assiduous champion of the short story, Nicholas Royle introduces works by three young English practitioners of contemporary noir. The best is HP Tinker, whose infusions of surrealism and pop-culture references have apparently already earned him comparisons to Thomas Pynchon, though his three stories here reminded me more of Paul Auster's New York Stories. His stock detectives flounder in an incomprehensible universe overloaded with information but short on meaning, and are as baffled as the reader by the improbable suicides and motiveless crimes which they come across. Unusual, arresting, smart and very funny, his stories easily repay Royle's faith in the form, though personally I look forward to him writing a novel."
(Independent on Sunday)
