Retro-Retro - Softcover

Prior, Amy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1852426446 ISBN 13: 9781852426446

Publisher: Serpent's Tail, 2000

Synopsis

Retro Retro brings together some of the best new literary talent from Britain and the US, to pick and mix from the retro treasure chest. Marilyn Monroe goes browsing in a used bookstore in '50s New York. A Chinese fan of Hollywood musicals gets a Grace Kelly make over. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ride again on a cold winter's night in the '70s. An exotic romance flourishes in a thrift store in '80s bohemian Baltimore. Looking at the present through a rear-view mirror, Retro Retro offers readers a ticket to a new kind of time travel, through haunted houses and museums of strange hair, featuring ethnic slumming and dodgy '70s rock bands. Who says you can never go back?

About this title

Review:

?Fantastic? The Times ?This book is road fiction in motion, and boy, can it move!? Level ?The writing is first class? BBM

From the Author:

'Retro Retro' reviews
"Prior captures the missing link in our love of looking back at popular culture - that of fictional commentary. In this 16-story collection she draws together an eclectic range of talent which illustrates the imaginative worlds opened by artefacts of the recent past, whether kitsch snowglobes, Abba or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. **** " The Scotsman

"An entertaining collection examining popular culture’s fascination with nostalgia." The Sunday Tribune

"The start of the new millenium is the perfect time to explore our obsession with the past. As well as the obligatory look at Fifties Americana (hello Marilyn Monroe, hello drugstore) from Joyce Carol Oates, there are smart takes on the British colonial hangover from Bidisha and our love of ex-communist Europe from Emily Perkins. Add tales of seventies rock bands from Cris Mazza, Nazi war spoils and kitsch thrift shops from the likes of Pagan Kennedy and Tobias Hill, and the maxim ‘history is bunk’ has never sounded so much like, well, bunk." The Face

"When faced with a totally new situation, we tend always to attach ourselves to the flavour of the most recent past. We look at the present through a rear view mirror": Prior quotes McLuhan in her anthology. McLuhan went on to point out how this response was helpless, even involuntary. The role of art, of fiction like Susan Corrigan’s acutely casual meta-retro tale of teen-life in a ‘50s style soda fountain circa early ‘80s Minneapolis and Emily Hammond’s affectionate portrait of early ‘70s art school wasters, is to train you in the complexities of perpetual nostalgia." i-D

"A mixed bag of nostalgia well worth dipping into" Daily Mirror

"‘Retro Retro’ offers a quirky journey into our recent pasts" Big Issue

"Like those themed compilation albums (but far more nourishing), ‘Retro Retro’ is a collection of various writers addressing one theme: nostalgia. Part surreal projection, part sigh for lost youth or values it plays nary a bum note, mixing rose-coloured flashback with meta-nostalgia (one time’s preoccupation with a time even further back). Familiar names mingle with less so, but all are confident individual voices." What’s On in Birmingham

About this edition

• Publisher: Serpent's Tail
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1852426446
• ISBN 13: 9781852426446
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256