“Declan Burke is his own genre. The Lammisters dazzles, beguiles and transcends. Virtuoso from start to finish.” – Eoin McNamee “This bourbon-smooth riot of jazz-age excess, high satire and Wodehouse flamboyance is a pitch-perfect bullseye of comic brilliance.” – Irish Independent Books of the Year 2019 “This rapid-fire novel deserves a place on any bookshelf that grants asylum to PG Wodehouse, Flann O’Brien or Kyril Bonfiglioli.” – Eoin Colfer, Guardian Best Books of the Year 2019 “The funniest book of the year.” – Sunday Independent “Declan Burke is one funny bastard. The Lammisters ... conducts a forensic analysis on the anatomy of a story.” – Liz Nugent “Burke’s exuberant prose takes centre stage … He plays with language like a jazz soloist stretching the boundaries of musical theory.” – Totally Dublin “A mega-meta smorgasbord of inventive language ... linguistic verve not just on every page but every line.Irish Times “Above all, The Lammisters gives the impression of a writer enjoying himself. And so, dear reader, should you.” – Sunday Times “A triumph of absurdity, which burlesques the literary canon from Shakespeare, Pope and Austen to Flann O’Brien … The Lammisters is very clever indeed.” – The Guardian

Thursday, July 24, 2008

He’ll Be Having A Go At The Lilies Next

It’s not often we find cause to be envious of The Artist Formerly Known As Bateman (right). Handsome, successful and well-adjusted, we have no need of his talent, fame and chiselled, windswept features. But every once in a while even TAFKAB does something that takes our breath away. This week: TAFKAB tells the BBC to do one. Quoth the Belfast Telegraph:
Award-winning author Colin Bateman has launched an expletive-fuelled tirade against politically-correct BBC chiefs for carrying out a “witch-hunt” against him.
  In a bizarre episode, which could be straight off the pages of one of the Ulsterman’s own comic novels, the Beeb blasted Bateman for being offensive to albinos.
  Now Bangor-born Bateman — the creator of the hit Belfast telly detective show Murphy’s Law — has responded by telling them to, “Get a f****** life!”
  TAFKAB’s crime, apparently, is that Mo, one of the characters from his YA series, has albinism, and that other characters in the novel remark upon her unusual pigmentation.
  As gritty realism goes, it’s not quite The Wire. It does, however, reflect the real world.
  Now, Mo isn’t some token background character. She’s the hero. She does hero stuff. She’s a powerful role model. She doesn’t use her albinism as some kind of super-power, but neither does she allow her condition to prevent her from doing all the kinds of things people who don’t have albinism do, and then some.
  So why the witch-hunt?
  A quiet day at the news desk? Lazy journalism? Political correctness run amok? All three combined?
  And where does it all end? At what point do we censor Shakespeare for his depiction of Jews in The Merchant of Venice? Or get all tabloid on his ass for depicting Richard III with a hump? Or suggesting that it’s even remotely cool for a 14-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl to elope, and then commit suicide?
  Or, as the venerable TAFKAB says: “If a bank robber is an Apache, I want to be able to say he’s an Apache without getting a tomahawk in the brain from the f****** political correctness police.”
  Amen, brother.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Being politically correct is more important than anything else these days. Or so it seems.

adrian mckinty said...

Hey, easy with your Apache comments mate, we dont rob banks these days, other people rob our banks. I say 'we' because I bought a dream catcher from the casino gift shop in Arizona and I think that makes me an honorary member or something.