The Medusa Fora

Received my copy here in Canada through Amazon...must be available in the US.

No, it's still not available new. I'll just order a used copy online.

For anyone else going to the book reading in Liverpool tomorrow, I've just read on Twitter and Facebook that tomorrow nights event at Leaf has been moved to Costa Coffee inside the Bold Street branch of Waterstones.

Guest wrote:No, it's still not available new. I'll just order a used copy online.

Odd, my copy (Amazon.ca) came yesterday. I thought *WE* were supposed to be the backwater...

Looking forward to seeing James tonight at the Leaf Tea in Liverpool. Happy Days

RICHB wrote:Looking forward to seeing James tonight at the Leaf Tea in Liverpool. Happy Days

And I am looking forward to seeing James in Liberty Hall tomorrow night. James, if you're reading this, it's me birthday tomorrow too - will yeh sign me buke?!

Oh and for anyone interested, there was a mention of James in yesterday's Irish Times - 'Under the Influence': http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/fea ... 65995.html

JAMES FEARNLEY

I spent the summer of 1981 up on the roof of my block of flats in Camden, with the help of the Oxford English Dictionary, reading the entirety of Joyce’s Ulysses. I traced the words of the “Anna Livia Plurabelle” section in Finnegans Wake with my finger, along to Joyce’s 1929 recording, which I had been ecstatic to find at Swiss Cottage Library. Later that year, finishing Richard Ellmann’s biography, I went to Paris, to visit as many addresses as I knew Joyce to have occupied. The group I play accordion for, for heaven’s sake, took their name from an outburst by Buck Mulligan in Ulysses: “Pogue mahone! Acushla machree! It’s destroyed we are from this day!” Imagine my excitement, in preparation to come to the Fair City to take part in the Dublin Writers’ Festival, at being able to name Joyce as the writer who most inspired my own writing.

Except, it turns out to be Gerard Manley Hopkins. Like Joyce, Hopkins searched for revelations, which Joyce called “epiphanies”, Hopkins “inscapes” – both terms which strive to show that ordinary experience can shock with a sudden vision of truth, the expression of which cannot be expected from conventional verse or prose. It’s Hopkins’s daring which is inspirational, born 40 years before Joyce and writing in obscurity. He died in 1889, when Joyce was seven years old.

* James Fearnley will discuss his book Here Comes Everybody: The Story of the Pogues on Friday at 8pm at Liberty Hall

Great night tonight at the James Fearnley book read in Liverpool. It was actually held at Costa Coffee in the Bold Street branch of Waterstones.

Jake and I arrived early and the doors were locked. We stood there for a second, then who did we spot crossing the street but James himself. James tried to call the person running the event on his mobile but with no luck so we knocked on the door. The staff were kind enough to let Jake and I come in too rather than making us wait outside in the rain, which was kind of them. Not as good a turnout as I'd have expected, which is probably why they changed the venue, but really enjoyed it all the same. I got the book signed and took a few photos. James pinched my pen off me and I had to wait until he'd finished signing to get it back off him, what am I like? Felt a bit embarrassed being the only one wearing a Pogues t shirt.

https://twitter.com/#!/poguesfan4ever/m ... F215176145
https://twitter.com/#!/poguesfan4ever/m ... F215175702

Meh, If James was there I would have been proud to wear a pogues shirt.

Heather wrote:Great night tonight at the James Fearnley book read in Liverpool. It was actually held at Costa Coffee in the Bold Street branch of Waterstones.

Jake and I arrived early and the doors were locked. We stood there for a second, then who did we spot crossing the street but James himself. James tried to call the person running the event on his mobile but with no luck so we knocked on the door. The staff were kind enough to let Jake and I come in too rather than making us wait outside in the rain, which was kind of them. Not as good a turnout as I'd have expected, which is probably why they changed the venue, but really enjoyed it all the same. I got the book signed and took a few photos. James pinched my pen off me and I had to wait until he'd finished signing to get it back off him, what am I like? Felt a bit embarrassed being the only one wearing a Pogues t shirt.

https://twitter.com/#!/poguesfan4ever/m ... F215176145
https://twitter.com/#!/poguesfan4ever/m ... F215175702

Heather I think the rest of us were thinking 'Damn I should have worn my Pogues T Shirt' ha ha. Quality night.

I finished the book while on vacation last week and really enjoyed it. However, I felt it kind of deserved an epilogue or something at the end. I can understand why James ended it where he did, but it seems there is more to the story after that point that I would like to understand a little better.

I shouted that up in the book reading (ie the idea of a sequal). My question was with the way the guys appear to tour at the moment (ie a lot more comfortable, arrive at the venue shortly before the concert and then back to the comfort of the hotel et etc, long breaks between tours etc etc) would there be enough to write a second book about. He basically said it was a possibility however he would need something to hang the story around. This books story is hung around Shane being sacked/leaving. What would the next one be hung around. I wont tell you what he said ha ha

kmurray105 wrote:I finished the book while on vacation last week and really enjoyed it. However, I felt it kind of deserved an epilogue or something at the end. I can understand why James ended it where he did, but it seems there is more to the story after that point that I would like to understand a little better.

Just finished it last night. The ending was powerfully abrupt. I agree an epilogue would have been nice (for "the casual reader", i guess.... i read Carole Clerk's book, so i know what happened next. As, I suspect, do most of you!)

Low D wrote:

kmurray105 wrote:I finished the book while on vacation last week and really enjoyed it. However, I felt it kind of deserved an epilogue or something at the end. I can understand why James ended it where he did, but it seems there is more to the story after that point that I would like to understand a little better.

Just finished it last night. The ending was powerfully abrupt. I agree an epilogue would have been nice (for "the casual reader", i guess.... i read Carole Clerk's book, so i know what happened next. As, I suspect, do most of you!)

I know what happened next, but on the other hand not really. I don't want to give anything away to those that have not read James' book yet, but as you said it was an abrupt ending and we know it was not really the end. There were trials, tribulations, and triumphs of a sort at least after that. James' perspective on what happened after would be very interesting.

Review by Alexis Petridis in today's Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/ju ... NTCMP=SRCH

Some odd descriptions (or possibly character assassinations) here: "The Pogues were overburdened with fascinating characters, who would have been the star turn in a memoir of any other band: tormented gay guitarist Philip Chevron; MacGowan's roguish sidekick Spider Stacey; teenage bassist Caitlin O'Riordan. But as a central figure, MacGowan is simultaneously vivid and utterly elusive."

And he comes to the conclusion:

"Fearnley was a frustrated novelist when the Pogues formed, which rather shows. He has a great eye for detail, but he also has a touch of the epiphenomenal imbroglios: "we listened to the muffled crepitations coming from inside"; eyebrows "plicate" foreheads.

The Pogues were certainly of a literary bent, but equally, they wore their learning lightly. All the plicating and muffled crepitations do jar a little with a band who featured in their line-up a man who kept time by repeatedly hitting himself over the head with a metal beer tray. In another sense, however, Fearnley's book fits perfectly with the Pogues: for all their earthiness, they were a band concerned with myths, from the Irish legends MacGowan's lyrics relocated to the back streets and pubs of north London to the persistent rock'n'roll fable of the damned, beautiful loser."