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FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF: POCKET MOVIE GUIDE One of John Hughes's most charmingly offbeat films, Ferris Bueller's Day Off is certainly among the most overtly humorous of his canon of teen movies. It is also one of his best-remembered, its profile challenged only by the acclaimed The Breakfast Club which was released the year beforehand. Contrasting perfectly with the more serious, issue-based tone of Pretty in Pink which immediately preceded it in the same year, Hughes's wittily incisive dialogue was never as razor-sharp as when delivered by the smart-mouthed high school slacker Ferris Bueller. Today Hughes is just as well known for the scripts he created for hugely popular family films throughout the 1990s, including Chris Columbus's blockbuster Home Alone (1990), Brian Levant's Beethoven (1992) and Nick Castle's Dennis the Menace (1993), written under his pen-name of Edmond Dantès. But even these accomplishments couldn't compare to the artistic diversity of his output throughout the eighties. Although it is easy to remember Hughes for his meteorically successful teen movies right the way through the including The Breakfast Club (1985) and Ferris Bueller's Day (1986), he was every bit as adroit in his handling of suburban satires such as Mr Mom (1983) and Uncle Buck (1989), his wry observations of the great American holiday in National Lampoon's Vacation (1983) and The Great Outdoors (1988), the trials of an exasperated everyman commuter in Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), and the expectation of anxious new parents in She's Having a Baby (1988). Throughout the course of Hughes's career, there has rarely been a lack of variety in his choice of subject matter. REVIEW OF THE AUTHOR'S BOOK JOHN HUGHES AND EIGHTIES CINEMA ON AMAZON If like me, you were fortunate enough to live through and grow up during the 80's and early 90's, you'll remember just how rich comedy was back then. This book on it's own puts most comedies of the modern era to shame as it is a homage to one of the most talented minds in the game. I am of course speaking of none other than the late great John Hughes. This is a great book for getting into the details of how a master of his art came about and created such cinematic gems. Hughes will be sorely missed which is why books like this keep his spirit and work alive! I'd say this book is for people who are nostalgic 20-somethings or cinema buffs, but all-round a good book for just about anyone who would like to know what made one of the funniest minds of Hollywood tick.

COSMO WOMAN This is one of the few full-length explorations of the 'women's magazine' market. Focussing on Cosmopolitan magazine, Oliver Whitehorne considers every aspect of the women's magazine, from themes and issues to images and style. The feminism in women's magazines is discussed in detail, and is related to second wave feminism and third wave or 'postmodern' feminism. As well as Cosmopolitan, the author also studies many other magazines in the women's magazine market, and related magazines, such as lifestyle magazines and men's magazines. The author looks at the use of advertizing and consumerism in women's magazines and other lifestyle and consumer magazines, drawing on many examples of ads which are deconstructed in detail. EXTRACT FROM CHAPTER TWO, "THE COSMO WOMAN" Let's start with the typical front page of Cosmopolitan. As with most other women's magazines, Cosmopolitan features a woman, a model, smiling. It's not a movie star, or someone with a name (the model, we see inside, is called 'Rohini'. Models/ supermodels are known by their first names: Naomi, Claudia, Kate). The imagery of the woman is 'positive', 'exuberant', 'young', 'tanned', 'smart', 'in control', 'self-confident'. The photographs on the covers of women's magazines speak of healthy living, clean-washed clothes, where white is truly sparkling white. Teeth are perfect. There are no wrinkles or unsightly flabby bits of skin. The models' skin is blemishless. Jewellery is perfect and there are no 'bad hair' days for cover stars. This woman is nameless but she is also 'Cosmo woman', centrepiece of the image chosen to sell this month's issue of the magazine. The model is selected to portray the mood and aims of the magazine, and to leap out of the other magazines on the racks. She is, of course, also the mirror of the audience, but a stylized, idealized mirror. The cover of Cosmo shows the would-be buyer and audience what they could be like. It is a piece of advertizing, the magazine cover. It invites the browser into the world of the magazine. It has to make a direct and instantaneous appeal to the potential buyer. Booksellers know that the most important aspect of a book's sales potential is its cover. Magazines have developed cover design to a refined artform, and each magazine has its house style, its code of subtle laws that consumers read in a very sophisticated manner. There may not be much to read on the cover, but it takes a while to really explain and understand the significance of every aspect of a cover. Like a movie poster or a burger bar menu, a magazine cover is a highly stylized product (physical details of the magazine cover include type size, shape and colour; size and texture of paper; the sell-lines; the lay-out; it's also crucial where the magazine is displayed - high or low, or next to particular magazines).

AMERICAN EROTICA A new collection of erotic short stories set in contemporary America, ranging from the humorous and romantic to the intensely sexual. American Erotica: Erotic Stories features creamy tales of total desire - of men with women, women with women, men with men, and plenty of groups too. Some of the stories are out-and-out fantasy and wildness - such as a day trip into the Californian countryside to find the clitoris in ¿A Complete Guide To the Clitoris, Including Map¿, and an alternative universe where men have gigantic cocks (in a story called - what else? - ¿Big Cocks¿). Some of the stories are domestic and everyday, about couples splitting up and getting back together and doing the wild thing. Husbands and wives, older women and young men, lesbians, gays - and of course ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends. Making love in swimming pools, in bathrooms, in tents, on trains, in cars, on vacation in Hawaii, in theaters and a Guns ¿N Roses concert in Philly - these people are getting freaky all over America. Illustrated with erotic nude photographs. EXTRACT FROM 'SUNSET STRIP' 'Hey,' she said and smiled. I'm instantly hyped up to the max, and as aroused as any man can possibly be. That body... those hot, hot eyes, eyes that could slice you up with lasers. 'Wanna walk?' We walked. I had a million questions I wanted to ask her, but you don't interrogate a Goddess. So we talked about the usual shit. About back home, and school, and music, and films, and fuck knows what else. So I put my arm around her, and she - get this - she puts her arm around me. West Hollywood suddenly turned day-glo pink with flights of angels and cherubs fluttering overhead and the sidewalk became marshmallow soft and the buildings were all white and fluffy and the cars turned into cascades of feathers and... She kissed me. She kissed me. Just like that. She kissed me. That hot mouth... a soft, soft tongue... wet lips... playful kisses, like water lapping at the edge of a clear, cool pool in a forest glade with a silver unicorn trotting by in dappled sunlight through golden oak trees... I glanced around. Strange, but we were still on Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, in the noisy, bright, crazy, ugly modern world. But when I moved down to brush my lips against hers, and closed my eyes, we were floating on yellow clouds in a turquoise sky with bluebirds twittering around our heads and the sound of laughter and the tinkle of water and the warm breeze from the sea... Lovers, they say, can make a whole world. A whole world. So when Sarah kissed me, and I kissed Sarah, that happened: shock waves like from an atomic bomb spread outwards from us, engulfing L.A. in blastwaves of desire. Outwards into the Pacific Ocean, and up to 'Frisco, and down to Mexico, and across the desert thundered those shock waves of pure love.

JEAN-LUC GODARD There¿s no one else quite like Jean-Luc Godard. You could take a few frames from one of his films and know they were by the maestro and nobody else. Where the flood of movies globally now runs into many thousands, Godard¿s works stand out as original, acerbic, romantic, ironic, humorous and explorative. EXTRACT FROM CHAPTER 2: ¿GODARD BIOGRAPHY¿ With À Bout du Souffle, Godard produced one of the first, great French New Wave movies, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, and written by, among others, François Truffaut. À Bout du Souffle, with its cool Parisian milieu, its filmic and film noir allusions, handheld camera, direct sound, startling editing and stylish, self-conscious performances from Belmondo and Seberg, established Godard as one of the major voices of postwar cinema, a reputation which Godard built on in subsequent early films such as Le Petit Soldat (1960), Une Femme Est Une Femme (1961), Vivre Sa Vie (1962), Le Mépris (1963), Bande à Part (1964), and Une Femme Mariée (1964). In these films of the early to mid-1960s, Godard established a radical, polemical series of films as film-essays which confronted issues such as late consumer capitalism, prostitution, labour, politics, ideology, gender, marriage, music, popular culture, Hollywood and not forgetting cinema itself. In the mid-1960s, Godard¿s films became increasingly political - the sci-fi film Alphaville (1965), Pierrot le Fou (1965), Made in U.S.A (1966), Masculine/ Féminin (1966), 2 ou 3 Choses Que Je Sais (1966) ¿ until, by 1967-68, the Marxist and Maoist influences permeated Godard¿s films: Weekend (1967), La Chinoise (1967), La Gai Savoir (1968), and One Plus One (Sympathy For the Devil, 1968). His concern was ¿not to make political films, but to make films politically¿ (my emphasis). In the 1970s, Godard moved into video and television territory, and worked with Anne-Marie Miéville on many projects: Ici Et Ailleurs (1974), Numéro Deux (1975), Comment Ça Va (1976), Six Fois Deux/ Sur Et Sous La Communication (1976), and France/ Tour/ Détour/ Deux/ Enfants (1977-78). In the late 1970s, Godard made a ¿return¿ to feature filmmaking, with the ¿sublime trilogy¿, Sauve Qui Peut (a.k.a. Every Man For Himself and Slow Motion, 1979), Passion (1982), and Prénom: Carmen (1983). Easily his most controversial film, Je Vous Salue Marie (Hail Mary), appeared in 1985; it was followed by Détective (1985), made to help finance the completion of Hail Mary, King Lear (1987), which starred Peter Sellars, Burgess Meredith, Molly Ringwald, Norman Mailer and Woody Allen, Nouvelle Vague (1990), Hélas Pour Moi (1993), For Ever Mozart (1997), Éloge de l¿Amour (In Praise of Love, 2000) and Notre Musique (2005). Fully illustrated. Bibliography and notes.

DISCOVERING THE GODDESS A personal account of the new movement of the Goddess by one of the most highly repested authors on religion and paganism in Britain, Geoffrey Ashe. EXTRACT FROM THE BOOK: At Portland State University, Oregon, I give a summer course as a visiting professor, on Goddess myth and history and its implications. When I launched it in 1990 it was, to the best of my knowledge, the only course of its kind at any such institution. Possibly it still is. Looking back over the involvement that has led me to it, I realize that this has been very long and rather curious, and that it sheds light on one or two little-publicized factors in the Goddess movement. Since the movement seems to have to stay, I think the story worth telling. I have never told it in print before. It begins in the 1940s when I was an incipient writer, hardly beyond the stage of doing the odd book-review. My first original piece with any substance was an article on Robert Graves¿s historical novels, which enthralled me, especially I, Claudius and Claudius the God. My article was published in Tribune, then a serious weekly of which Orwell had lately been literary editor. The BBC made use of it. I sent a copy to Graves in Majorca. He replied with an extraordinary letter, running back and forth and up and down on one flimsy sheet of paper. The article, he said, was the first study of his novels that anybody had written. Among several abrupt questions and unconnected remarks, he mentioned an impending new book of his, based, he told me, on a complicated Welsh riddle. I could make nothing of his account of this. When it appeared, it turned out to be The White Goddess. It was ahead of its time. As is well known, Graves¿s usual publishers turned it down. But the book came into its own in the Goddess revival, which it helped to inspire.

VINCENT VAN GOGH Few artists command such fervent devotion amongst art lovers and such high prices in the salerooms of the art world. Love him or hate him, Vincent van Gogh is one of a handful of artists who is now a cultural event. Stuart Morris's study concentrates on the paintings first, and employs van Gogh's eloquent letters as an aesthetic reference point. Much of the book is concerned with metacriticism - the way van Gogh has been critically received over the years. Vincent van Gogh is one of the most celebrated of painters. It's a bit of a mystery. The mystery (or irony) is that his paintings have commanded the highest prices in the auction rooms of the contemporary art world (88 million dollars, 53 million dollars, and so on), yet he only managed to sell one painting during his lifetime, and he lived in poverty (with financial support from his brother Theo). Why is Vincent van Gogh so popular? His legend has developed relatively rapidly. His art is loved by the critics and public. The crazy prices paid for single oil paintings are the manifestations of the fervour that van Gogh seems to generate. He is one of the handful of painters who cause great excitement every time exhibitions of his work are put on. One thinks also of Claude Monet, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonaroti and Pablo Picasso. These are artists that the public go mad for, so that when they are exhibited, there are huge queues trailing around the block. The 1990 centenary celebrations of 'poor Vincent' showed how much he is exalted. There were films about him, discussions and conferences, TV documentaries, magazine articles, reviews, letters, and much merchandize was sold, to the great glee of the manufacturers: posters, tea towels, calendars, mugs, souvenirs of all kinds. What would the dishevelled, obsessive man who painted those small canvases in the years up to 1890 in Southern France make of the amazing fuss that now surrounds his work? What would van Gogh think of just one of his paintings being bought for 88 million dollars? It is a huge sum even in today's expensive world. You could build a hospital or two with the money. Imagine it! Did Vincent know that when he painted those blue irises on that small, standard-size canvas, that it would one day be 'worth' millions of dollars? I shall count myself very happy if I can manage to work enough to earn my living, for it worries me a lot when I think that I have done so many pictures and drawings without ever selling one. Like the workers he depicted in numerous images, Vincent van Gogh himself worked very hard to improve his art. With a dogged determination van Gogh copied the Old Masters, as well as Japanese prints. His determined self-education and self-improvement paid off, resulting in more than 800 paintings in about 8 years. The years of van Gogh's art are relatively few - nearly all of the important works were made in the decade 1880-90. Hence his paintings are credited in art history books with the month and sometimes the day as well as the year of production. For most artists, 1889 would suffice. For van Gogh, the credit is October 1889. Producing 800 paintings in 8 years is an average of a hundred per year, or one every three and a half days. More likely, van Gogh would have worked on a number at the same time, or within a short space of time.

THE CRESCENT MOON BOOK OF NATURE POETRY An anthology of great nature poems, including the Elizabethan pastorals of Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, Sir Walter Raleigh and Michael Drayton, and classics of nature mysticism by Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland, James Thomson, William Blake and William Wordsworth, among others. Famous anthology pieces nestle amongst lesser known poems, including some neglected women poets, and American poets such as Amy Lowell and Emily Dickinson. The British nature poetry tradition builds on the Greek tradition of bucolic themes. The early poems of the nature poetry tradition in Britain include ¿Sumer is y-cumen in¿, that famous hymn to the rebirth of Spring and warmth. The strength of the mediaeval rhythms continues undiminished. It is (partially) the solidity of the poetic rhythm of ¿Sumer is y-cumen in¿ that makes the poem so successful. The rhymes, too, do not jar, as so they often do in British poetry from the Victorian era onwards. The rhymes of Langland, Chaucer and mediaeval English poets weld their verses together. In Chaucer¿s famous poem included here the rhyme scheme is as complex as any in troubadour or French Symbolist poetry, but Chaucer sticks to strong, basic end-words: ¿blake¿, ¿make¿, ¿wake¿ and ¿shake¿. Just as beautiful as ¿Sumer is y-comen in¿, though less well-known, are the many anonymous poems of nature, of the mediaeval era, of which ¿Lenten is come with love to towne¿ is such a delicious example. In nature poetry, whether of the mediaeval epoch or of contemporary poets, notions such as Spring, childhood and paradise fuse. Terms such as idyll, Arcadia, Eden and golden age are different names for a fount of feeling, to do with love/ nature/ childhood/ purity, and which lies at the heart of nature poetry. One finds archetypal imagery in the nature poetry included here. There is the wood or forest, for example, such a key part of William Shakespeare¿s plays. In Sir Philip Sidney¿s poem from The Countess of Pembroke¿s Arcadia, the woods are ¿the delight of solitariness¿. In Sir Thomas Wyatt¿s ¿I must go walk the woods so wild¿, the forest becomes a place of wilderness and banishment (again a common theme in Shakespeare). In Sir Walter Raleigh¿s ¿The Nymph¿s Reply to the Sheepheard¿, we find the archetypal (indeed, stereotypical) imagery of the shepherd abroad in the countryside meeting the nymph. By the time of Henry Vaughan¿s poetry, God and Christianity has infused nature poetry, so that nature becomes subordinated to (and a part of) God¿s divine plan. But the love of nature continues unabated in the Romantic poets, in Shelley, Browning, and the Wordsworths, up to and beyond Thomas Hardy.

THE SACRED CINEMA OF ANDREI TARKOVSKYBy Jeremy RobinsonA major new study of Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986), director of seven feature films, including Mirror, Andrei Rublev, Solaris and The Sacrifice. This book explores every aspect of Andrei Tarkovsky's output in the most detailed fashion - including scripts, budget, production, shooting, editing, camera, sound, music, acting, themes, symbols, motifs, and spirituality. Tarkovsky's films are analyzed in depth, with scene-by-scene discussions. This is an important addition to film studies, the most painstaking study of Andrei Tarkovsky's work available. Andrei Tarkovsky is one of the most fascinating of filmmakers. He is supremely romantic, an old-fashioned, traditional artist - at home in the company Leonardo da Vinci, Pieter Brueghel, Aleksandr Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoievsky and Byzantine icon painters. Tarkovsky is a magician, no question, but argues for demystification (even while films celebrate mystery). His films are full of magical events, dreams, memory sequences, multiple viewpoints, multiple time zones and bizarre occurrences. As genre films, Andrei Tarkovsky's movies are some of the most accomplished in cinema. As science fiction films, Stalker and Solaris have no superiors, and very few peers. Only the greatest sci-fi films can match them: Metropolis, King Kong, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Tarkovsky happily and methodically rewrote the rules of the sci-fi genre: Stalker and Solaris are definitely not routine genre outings. They don't have the monsters, the aliens, the visual effects, the battles, the laser guns, the stunts and action set-pieces of regular science fiction movies. No one could deny that Andrei Rublev is one of the greatest historical films to explore the Middle Ages, up there with The Seventh Seal, El Cid, The Navigator and Pier Paolo Pasolini's 'Life' trilogy. If you judge Andrei Rublev in terms of historical accuracy, epic spectacle, serious themes, or cinematic poetry, it comes out at the top. Finally, in the religious film genre, The Sacrifice and Nostalghia are among the finest in cinema, the equals of the best of Ingmar Bergman, Luis Bunuel, Robert Bresson and Carl-Theodor Dreyer. Contains 150 illustrations, of Andrei Tarkovsky's films, Tarkovsky at work, his contemporaries, and his favourite painters. This edition has 23 new pages of illustrations. Bibliography, filmographies and notes. Illustrated. 696pp. www.crmoon.comREVIEW:Robinson's book on the sacred cinema of Tarkovsky is one of the best on the subject. Professor Prakash Kona, English and Foreign Languages University

NUCLEAR WAR IN THE U.K. An exploration of how the United Kingdom would fare in a nuclear war. There are chapters on: nuclear politics ¿ nukespeak and 'nuclear theology' ¿ atomic bomb tests and 'accidents' ¿ American bases in the U.K. ¿ the superpowers' military programmes and strategies ¿ the cost of nuclear war ¿ British civil defence ¿ the Gulf War, 'infowar' and 'smart' technology ¿ nuclear attack scenarios ¿ and anti-war and peace initiatives. Jeremy Robinson's books include Blade Runner and the Films of Philip K. Dick, Rimbaud, Lawrence Durrell and Hayao Miyazaki. EXTRACT FROM CHAPTER TWO: ¿HELL ON EARTH¿ A NUCLEAR WAR ¿WORST CASE¿ SCENARIO Here¿s how you might die in a nuclear strike. Maximum capability is about one strategic warhead hitting a target every twenty seconds. Let¿s take a one megaton air-burst scenario. At ground zero, all buildings would be destroyed. Winds of 1,000 mph. There may be an ¿echö of the blast wave (the ¿Mach¿ effect), resulting in double the over-pressure. The fireball will rise at feet/ second, expanding to 6,000 feet diameter after ten seconds. The radioactive cloud would be 3 miles high in 30 seconds. All combustible stuff would ignite, some up to 8 miles away. Air heat rises to 10,000,000° C. Heat travels outwards at 186,000 miles per second. Flesh would melt. People would die in the suffocation from the firestorm. At 1.5 miles from ground zero over-pressure is 30 times than normal atmospheric pressure. From two to five miles away, most buildings would be flattened, within 15 or so seconds. Winds of 130 mph. Clothing would ignite. Radiation sickness is inevitable. At three miles away yoüll feel a flash of light (christened the pika-don at Hiroshima); then intense heat which chars to the bone (full-thickness burns); fifteen seconds later the windows would be blown in by the blast wave; and yoüd be thrown about by the wind. First degree burns as far as 20 miles from detonation. The EMP (electromagnetic pulse) will disrupt computers, telephones, radios, radars and power supplies. Most people would be permanently blinded by the brilliant light. There are about 200 radioactive elements in fall-out. Fall-out is second-stage radiation, contaminating water, the food chain, everything. Everywhere would be a ¿Z Zone¿, a fall-out zone. Nice to know, too, that radiation is undetectable by the five senses. You may have a mortal dose and not know it. Yoüll know soon, though. Yoüre in for a party, with radiation comin¿ at ya in four types: alpha, beta, gamma and neutron. Gamma rays can penetrate several inches of concrete. Uranium and plutonium isotopes are nice, affecting bones, the respiratory tract, the liver, kidneys and lymphnodes: radiation lasts up to thousands of years. Ionizing radiation¿ll give you nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, fever, delirium, exhaustion, haemorrhages, hair loss, ulcers, anaemia and leukemia.

ALISON WILDING Alison Wilding is one of the best sculptors around. She deserves a much wider recognition that she receives at present. Wilding was born in Blackburn, Lancashire, in 1948. She went through the typical British art school education ¿ Ravensbourne College of Art (1967-70) and the Royal College of Art (1970-73). Her one-woman shows have included Kelttle¿s Yard Gallery, Cambridge (1982), the Serpentine Gallery, London (1985), Hirschl & Adler, New York (1989), Bare at Newlyn Art Gallery (1993), and a major show (Immersion and Exposure) at both the Tate Gallery, Liverpool and the Henry Moore Trust studio in Halifax (1991). She has shown new work most years since the early 1980s at her galleries. There¿s something in Alison Wilding¿s sculpture which fascinates art lovers. It¿s difficult to say exactly what this quality of Wilding¿s sculpture is. Something ¿magical¿, perhaps, or ¿mysterious¿, or ¿erotic¿. These are the sorts of terms art critics employ when they are at a loss for words. Artists such as Mark Rothko famously get this treatment (Rothkös canvases are called ¿transcendent¿, ¿sublime¿, ¿spiritual¿). John McEwen writes of Alison Wilding: She is pleased when her work conveys a sense of the magical, and certainly it has a powerful sense of mystery. Mysteriousness does not lend itself to description, analysis or explanation; as she herself put it to me in conversation, her pieces do not demand to be talked about. ¿That suggests that they do not demand to be written about either¿, I said. ¿They don¿t mind¿, she said. Penelope Curtis writes of Wilding: ¿Even the smallest of her often small sculptures has tremendous and commanding presence; there is a sense of levitation in her works.¿ Fully illustrated with many examples of Wilding¿s work, and that of her contemporaries.

ZERO SUMMER: A NOVEL In Britain of the near-future, a nuclear war is imminent. As society falls to pieces, two people meet and fall intensely in love. This is a powerful erotic and poetic novel, written in a heightened, lyrical style which combines romance with action, beauty and death. EXTRACT FROM CHAPTER ONE It was on a Summer's evening that we met. Everything was full of light - the long, sloping light of Mid-West America. But in England. Into this golden light you walked. The seafront was deserted. Soft breezes blew in from the ocean. I had been living for days in the opulence of this water, this rich spice of water, heat, seagulls and wide-open spaces. Water washed our feet as we spoke on the sand. The sun was still hot. You were wearing a cotton Summer dress, white with green spots. I couldn't keep my eyes off you. The day had begun with rain, I remember. Now the sky was turning lilac. In the heat of the day the beaches had been full of tourists and sun-bathers. Now it was teatime and Great Britain shuffled indoors, to eat, to flop down, to watch TV. I was being my usual romantic self, wandering along the shore, enjoying the melancholy emptiness of the sunlit promenade. And you were there.

WESSEX REVISITED: THOMAS HARDY AND JOHN COWPER POWYS Both Thomas Hardy and John Cowper Powys created a poetic Wessex landscape. Hardy's Wessex has entered popular folklore and myth, and is used in the promotion of holidays, walks, tours, museums, hotels, even town councils. John Cowper Powys's Wessex, explored in A Glastonbury Romance, Wolf Solent, Maiden Castle and Weymouth Sands, among other novels, is less well-known: a place of secret corners, mossy walls, ancient earthworks, Somerset wetlands and ferny hollows. Both writers are discussed thematically for their sense of nature, mythology, philosophy, painting, sensualism, labour, folklore and the family. D.H. Lawrence is referenced throughout as a bridge between Hardy and Powys. Finally Jeremy Robinson considers the film versions of Hardy's novels. This is a valuable addition to the criticism of Hardy and Powys. John Cowper Powys is difficult to categorize. We place him (usually) in amongst D.H. Lawrence, Mervyn Peake, Robert Graves, William Blake and Thomas Hardy. At first glance, Powys seems to be working in the British nature poetry tradition of William Wordsworth and Edward Thomas. His immediate predecessors are Hardy and Lawrence. In Hardy;s fiction (and Emily Bronte's), one finds that fierce enmeshment of nature mysticism and character. But Powys's novels wholly lack Hardy's narrative drive and feeling for drama and development. From Hardy, however, Powys learnt how to interrelate landscape and psychology in an authentic manner. Whereas Hardy is concerned with the furtherance of the dramatic story, above all, Powys is more interested in the ecstatic states of beingness. In this Powys has much in common with Lawrence. These writers use the details found in nature as vehicles for their characters' feelings. Lawrence uses these musings to open up his text to wider issues of human emotions or politics. In Powys's work, the movement in meditation is inward, downward and backward - into the worlds of history, mythology, and the claustrophobia of the self.

POSTMODERN POWYS In this study of British novelist John Cowper Powys, Joe Boulter concentrates on the novels Owen Glendower, Porius and Wolf Solent. EXTRACT FROM THE INTRODUCTION In these essays I do not argue that John Cowper Powys is a postmodernist novelist. Nor do I provide an interpretation of Powys using the techniques of postmodernist literary criticism. What I do is use some of the analogies between Powys¿s themes and techniques and the themes and techniques of postmodernist theorists as the basis for interpretations of some of Powys¿s novels. In other words, I do not interpret Powys as a postmodernist, or in a postmodernist way, I interpret him in the context of postmodernist theory. I use this method of interpretation for two reasons. Firstly, as Fredric Jameson notes, postmodernism is the current cultural dominant. If Powys is to be relevant today, he must be relevant in the context of postmodernist theory. Secondly, Powys and many postmodernist theorists have a common perspective. They are all, in a loose sense, pluralists. I explore this analogy in the first essay, ¿What is the Saturnian Quest?¿ This common philosophical perspective leads to a shared interest in other issues, some of which I look at in essays on ¿the other¿, ¿performance¿ and ¿parody¿. I hope that my interpretative approach will clarify how Powys¿s novels work and suggest ways in which they can be relevant today, as well as offering a fresh look at some of the problems with pluralism.

AMOROUS LIFE One of the most fascinating explorations of the work of British novelist John Cowper Powys by H.W. Fawkner, one of the foremost commentators of this neglected, completely extraordinary author. EXTRACT Weymouth Sands is a wonderful novel. In a sense it is the foremost work to come from the pen of John Cowper Powys. There is a sense of aesthetic consummation saving the novel from the sprawling excessivenesses of some of its chief creative rivals. A Glastonbury Romance has the same indomitable energy, and even the same type of internal happiness; but it does not have an equal sense of measure, poise, and economy. At the same time, Weymouth Sands is not a curtailing of Powys¿s genius - in the way that Great Expectations sacrifices Dickens¿s marvellous capacity for nonsensical digression demonstrated as early as Pickwick Papers. The lack of bulk and the loss of enormity do not prevent Weymouth Sands from asserting itself as mass. Weymouth is not less solid than Glastonbury. The advancing and retreating sea-tides are not conceived on a scale that is more limited than the one utilized as canvas for the grand brushstrokes of history in Owen Glendower. In becoming John Cowper¿s most aesthetically perfect work, Weymouth Sands has made no sacrifices whatsoever. Here that which is most aesthetic is by the same token that which is most Powysian, most eccentric. For some strange reason, the eccentricity of Weymouth Sands is compatible with the principles of traditional aesthetic form - something which we can say of few other works from the hand of this artist. John Cowper¿s best fiction and best philosophy is built on the idea - indeed reality - of deliciousness. Deliciousness as such vanishes from the writer¿s horizon as he progressively slips from the height of his powers into old age. In this sliding, Powys drifts away not only from the astonishing precision of his material hold on the richness of his own life-receptivity but also from the idea of the work of art as a quintessentially Powysian construct. In John Cowper Powys¿s best works, the idea of the presence of deliciousness is indistinguishable from the idea of the presence of amorous life. By amorous life I basically mean what the narrator means in Weymouth Sands when describes the ideal-erotic affectivity of women like Gipsy May, Marret, and Peg Frampton as ¿a latent passion to offer up their amorous life as mystics offer up their souls¿. In this assertion, ¿amorous life¿ and ¿soul¿ are understood as being on a par, as somehow being each other¿s possible substitutes. In other words, the ¿soul¿ passes imperceptibly into ¿amorous life¿ for a mystic who no longer lives in the ancient world of dogma but in the world as we know it today. In a sense, in fact, ¿amorous life¿ is a refinement of ¿soul.¿