This Yellow Madness: Richard Gavin

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Richard Gavin

In "Dead Reckoning" # 9 [Hippocampus Press 2011] acclaimed-author Richard Gavin (Omen, Charnel Wine) will be reviewing SIN & ashes. Here's a couple of snippets from his rave review --

"The varied subjects and settings that comprise this book’s vast canvas, coupled with the sheer number of its pieces, make giving a tale-by-tale analysis all but impossible, for Pulver’s work is a gestalt, a tsunami of image and emotion. His words are unfailingly razor-keen, his tone beautiful and horrific at once."

"If you are a reader who seeks lulling escapism, this book offers no such creature comfort. Pulver tales are not the kind of stories one slips into like a warm bath. They are splashes of frigid water, which constantly jar and twist rather than flow headlong. This is what makes Sin & Ashes such a potent volume. Pulver is a writer who takes risks with each story he fashions, which in turn makes reading them exceptionally rewarding."

Thomas Ligotti says --

“Let us posit that Bukowski is the sun. Or Brautigan, Burroughs and the Beats—a solar Coney Island of the Mind where Timothy Leary’s dead and dead Cthulhu waits and sings the live long daydream believer. Then Joe Pulver’s Portraits of Ruin would be the burst of planets, Big Bang-Bang, Marquee Moons hanging on for what they got, scream of consciousness—in Outer Space no one can hear it . . . except Coffin Joe, Monster Mash Potato that big ol’ Portraits of Ruin—Mars needs it, you need it, so just open the lid and shake your fist—then say: “They kill horses, horses, horses, horses.” Thank you. Come again?”

SIMON STRANTZAS on PoR

"Fearless. Daring. Poetic prose for the unhinged. Each tale in "Portraits of Ruin" packs the sort of mental wallop that leaves the reader reeling. From the scorched deserts to the highest foreign towers, across plains of reality and beneath burning suns, this is no volume for the weak, for the conventional. It is a wake-up call from one of the genre's most visionary masters. A book for those who see differently, for those not afraid to know the truth no matter how terrible the cost. I envy anyone about to experience Pulver's horrors for the first time." - Simon Strantzas, author of Nightingale Songs

Robert M. Price says

"Pulver's genius in his ability to shape-shift stylistically
between Raymond Chandler and Thomas Ligotti--without your even noticing! Like the gospel demon, his name ought to be Legion, since he assumes a new voice and persona as every particular chapter or sequence requires. In the new book,
Pulver's polyphonic gifts mutate to a new and even more powerful pitch. There is nothing like it! It sounds, indeed reads, like a living contradiction in terms! The result is a deep dark forest of wonders, containing both monsters and molesters, both angels and devils." -- Robert M. Price