A Modern Don Juan: Cantos for These Times by Divers Hands - Softcover

Andy Croft; Nigel Thompson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1910170046 ISBN 13: 9781910170045

Publisher: Five Leaves Publications, 2014

Synopsis

'I hope it is no crime / To laugh at all things', wrote Byron in Don Juan; 'for I wish to know / What, after all, are all things but a show?' Two hundred years after Byron turned his back on the hypocrisy and cant of his native England, fifteen contemporary poets pay homage to Byron s greatest satirical creation by writing a new Don Juan for our own age of cant. A Modern Don Juan follows the sexual adventures of Byron's picaresque anti-hero in the twenty-first century. Mixing Low Comedy and High Seriousness, the book follows night-club DJ Donald Johnson as he stumbles from one romantic disaster to the next. Along the way, the authors pass comment on the customs and common-sense of the contemporary world. Donny seeks his fortune in Cameron's Britain, Berlusconi's Italy and Sydney's clubland. He is a London restaurant critic, a Brussels Eurocrat and a reality TV celeb. If you are quick you can catch him in Greece, Budapest, Central America, a prison cell even in Outer Space. He is indeed new Don Juan for the twenty-first century.

About this title

Review:

Everyone here has put in a lot of hard work, and most of it pays off, some of it handsomely. Croft's rhymes in particular are laugh out loud funny ("Minerva's Owl"/"Simon Cowell") ... And here's the clever thing: even though the poets are using the same scheme, you get more than a glimpse of how their individual voices wound; of what goes on in their heads. This was always Byron's great trick: to teach you something when all you think you are doing is having a good time. --Nicholas Lezard, Guardian

About the Author:

The contributors are Ben Borek, Andy Croft, Claudia Daventry, Ian Duhig, Rachel Hadas, WN Herbert, George Jowett, John Lucas, Amit Majmudar, Sinead Morrissey, Alicia Stallings, George Szirtes, Nigel Thompson, Tim Thorne and Mike Wilson.

About this edition

• Publisher: Five Leaves Publications
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1910170046
• ISBN 13: 9781910170045
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 360