Arch Llewellyn

Either Then or Never, Jun 12 2003

"Nunquam" forwards the action of "Tunc," with Felix still struggling to free himself from the Firm, this time by building an android of the dead Iolanthe for Julian. Like this synopsis, "Nunquam" doesn't make a whole lot of sense without the first novel already under your belt. I found this story duller than "Tunc"--the settings are less fantanstical and the plot even more perfunctory--but it makes the ideas Durrell wanted to get across in the series much clearer.

The all-controlling Firm is revealed as a symbol of our cultural, even genetic, programming: Felix's atempts to get free of it by running or fighting back are futile. Freedom comes, if at all, by understanding the inner… Read more

'The Firm' on Freud and Steroids, Jun 12 2003

Our hero: a genius inventor living in Athens with a prostitute destined to murder her brother and become an international film star. His nemesis: Julian, suave & shadowy head of a huge multinational firm out for global domination ... and our hero's soul! His lover: Benedicta, Merlin Industries' fabulously wealthy heiress. Raised in a Turkish seraglio, she spends her days falconing in the hills above Istanbul ...

Improbable? You bet! Half the fun of this book is the B-movie TechniColor melodrama that Durrell lays on with trowel in hand and tongue almost certainly in cheek. What saves this from being a Grisham-style potboiler (fun in its own way) is the suspicion that Durrell… Read more

The Shafted Strike Back, May 31 2003

Remember that capsule they sent into space with examples of earth art to show any aliens out there what it means to be human? I wonder what they'd think if they found this dazzling book on board. Magee's put the English through a cyclotron of contemporary American voicings and come out the other side with a souped-up language that feels big enough and fast enough to just about cover Where We Are Now. The title "MS" moves in a lot of directions--manuscript, multiple sclerosis, the gender-savvy "miz"--and the poems touch on all of these and then some, often in the same stanza. I especially like the way Magee takes quirks of the language like homonyms and puns and uses them to explore a crazy… Read more