It's Mawdsley - Softcover

Baker, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 143570195X ISBN 13: 9781435701953

Publisher: lulu.com, 2009

Synopsis

19-year-old thug, Craig Mawdsley, has robbed your home, smashed up your car and mugged your grandmother. Now he attempts his greatest ever assault on the general public - by writing a book. Craig hates everyone so much that even his dislike of writing cannot stop his desire to offend all those that have labelled him a chav, weasel, scumbag - and, yes, c*nt. You know his type, you see him everyday, and you try to avoid him at all costs. But you can't anymore, because within these demented pages, Craig tells how he has inexplicably risen through the social ranks to a place where he can terrorise mankind with unlimited prejudice - before the true purpose of his unusual literary project is shockingly revealed.

About this title

Review:

The central concept/main gimmick of Its Mawdsley is essentially how a book would read if written by the kind of person who would never write a book, a stream of consciousness from someone who is barely conscious. So when this ignorant, immoral, psychotic, racist, misogynist t*ss-bag puts pen to paper he is not only writing in language in which every other word is sh*t, c*nt, f*ck or w*nk - the events he writes about, sculpted in his fetid psyche, bear only the slightest passing resemblance to reality. After being (literally) bludgeoned into a vat of (literal) sh*t it was his (actual) job to (literally) stir, Mawdsley wakes up to find the skies are purple, and proceeds to travel the world in a kind of warped Pilgrims Progress of utterly implausible events, meeting Rolf Harris, Matthew Kelly, the great and good of Hollywood, Mr Tony Blair and eventually even higher figures of authority, on the way punching, kicking, raping, and killing at random, occasionally pausing from insulting the characters in the text to insult the reader directly, ie. Nice Wasn t it? You poncey speccy 4-eyed next chapter reading t*at. To criticise the plot of this book is impossible - it is intentionally absurd. To complain that the text frequently wanders off into the most extremely graphic descriptions of the most grotesque sex and violence, penises getting sliced off and shoved up a*ses, sh*tting down eye-ball sockets etc, is also fruitless. The book is clearly trying to be transgressive, as vile as possible, so as to underline both the hideousness of the character, and test the boundaries of how much hideousness the novel format can take. The question is, when an author has the get out clause of yes its supposed to be for the charges of (as in this case) bigotry, puerility, repetitiveness, eye-watering misogyny and general misanthropy, does this still make either an interesting or worthwhile read? ... Well basically, while the passages of extremity may go on too long, the initial sheer extremity and obnoxiousness on display is often pretty funny, or at least I thought so. Outside the extremes of sex and violence, the central narrative comedic theme is that the voice of Mawdsley pervades not only the narrative of the book, but every character in it, every one of whom therefore talks exactly like Mawdsley themselves. Amidst the absurdity and hideousness, the actual cadences of speech of the central character are captured very well throughout. When they are absurdly transplanted to every other character, this is a genuinely amusing conceit which works pretty well. Here for instance is President George Walker Bush addressing the Academy Award Ceremony: - Ladies and gentleman, he said again, Being the biggest, most powerful b*llend in the world has brought loads of sh*thot things into me life yeah? Its got me money, m*nge, sh*thot nose gear. But the best thing I like about this President b*llocks...is the violence yeah? Well, I found that funny. Make no mistake, if you don t, you will hate the book. For me, moments like this, Mawdsley s more elaborate direct insults to the reader, the more inventive moments where his inarticulacy assumes an anti-charming diction of its own (his mobile has the functions talk to c*nt and f*ck c*nt off ), and a few key scenes such as Matthew Kelly leading a televisual lynch mob against our hero all add up to a bawdy bachanalian surrealism which made me laugh, when the non-stop puerile proceedings on display had a real liveliness to them... Stupidly funny, nasty, straightforward, idiotic fun. --Ben Granger, Spike Magazine

It's Mawdsley is the latest in a growing number of original books produced outside of the traditional publishing machine... Raw, uncompromising, and destined for cult smash status. --Tony Whisen, Independent Book Review

Never submit again. Never write again. Never read again. --A publisher warmly receives the It's Mawdsley manuscript

About the Author:

David Baker exploded out of his mother's vagina on February, 17th 1976, when his mother's vagina happened to be in Stockport, England. He wasn't a thalidomide baby, so it was thanks to his fully functioning right hand that he was able to pick up a pen and write his excellent stories. Not being from a minority background, or ever being a heroin addict, or ever being a London gangster, (or a thalidomide baby), material was pretty thin on the ground. In a bid to find something interesting to write about, David plunged head-long into his a*se to look for inspiration. He listened to grungy music, took drugs and wrote whatever bolloc*s came into his mind, and perfected a moody stare, which is supposed to make people think that he has traversed the narrow boundary that lies between this world and the arcane pit of ZarKoth - a boundary that normal people daren't traverse. After 30 years of rummaging, he thinks he's finally found something: It's Mawdsley, a nugget of seething brown. Hopefully, through a healthy work regimen and the love of a good anti-psychotic, David can finally retrieve his head out of his ar*e and stroll blissfully into a life of football on the tele, a three-piece suite on hire-purchase, a... wait a minute, that's Trainspotting.

About this edition

• Publisher: lulu.com
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 143570195X
• ISBN 13: 9781435701953
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224