Flicker by Theodore Roszak - my new obsession
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- Опубліковано 29 тра 2024
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VIDEO SPECIFIC...
Buy Flicker from my bookshop to support the channel and indie bookstores
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US: bookshop.org/a/84048/97815565...
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Book details/Content warnings:
Title: Flicker | Author: Theodore Roszak | Publisher: Bantam Books | Pages: 672 | Publication date: 1991 | ISBN: 9781556525773 | Source: Purchased
Content Warnings: sexual assault
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I have this book on my TBR, nice! Found it due to reading "Night Film" by Marisha Pessl, which is similar. A movie mystery book, with lots of additional supplement material, like newspaper or online articles.
Loved Night Film. So unusual.
Great book
I was also going to mention Night Film1 I'd love to hear Olly's take on that one as well. I'm definitely interested in Flicker after this vid!
Flicker is one of my all-time favorites.
mine as well, read it 15 years ago, absolutely love it.
@@timkjazz 13 years ago for me, and I still recommend it to folks.
I love how your taste in books is so very ( whats the word ) diverse ? Yeah diverse. But it sheds light in books I would never ever stumbled across by myself.
In addition to the history of film making, Flicker also has major plot points around the history of film criticism and even film viewership. I enjoyed his take on the start of the "cult film" movement. I read this in the pre-internet days so I had to rely on my video store for extra research, in particular finding films starring Sylvia Sydney.
This is going back maybe 25 years+ now... but when I lived in NYC, I managed a 'remainder' bookstore in the downtown village area. One of the books my boss happened to buy endless copies of (for reselling cheaply) was 'Flicker'. He never seemed to run out of copies and he sold the copies for $1. I read the book and loved it and was pretty much always buying $1 copies for people as presents.
Oh that’s very cool!
At here I thought it was a non-fiction book. 😂 It sounds right up your alley. It’s wonderful to find a book that simply delights.
Yeah it was a very "me" book
I'm so grateful for this review! I read "Flicker" when it was first publish. At the time I was in the foreign service, and that novel kept me company during a very long trip overseas. Unfortunately, I left the novel in my hotel when I'd finished it. I'd thought about it ever since, but the title escaped me, and after several attempts to find it (back before the internet was so robust) I simply gave up. I just put it on my Amazon reading list, and can't wait to take that literary journey again!
Like others here I immediately noticed the similarities when reading "Night Film" recently, but I was also struck by its similarities to Paul Auster's "The Book of Illusions." That novel, too, involves a man searching out the works of a long forgotten Hollywood director...of course, being an Auster film, it doesn't involve horror or the macabre, but rather deals with topics like grief, intimacy, and personal renewal. Thanks again for all your great content!
As a huge film buff, this book sounds like one that would be right up my alley! Thanks for bringing my attention to it. Adding it to my TBR! :)
Gonna have to add this one to my TBR. As someone with a degree in film study, getting into the minutae of filmmaking interests me greatly
It is wonderful find a book that you love this much.
Thank you for introducing me to this book, Olly. I have now read it and I greatly enjoyed it.
Fantastic! Really glad you liked it
Next, try Tim Lucas' Throat Sprockets, if you haven't already! Similar and I thought it was a great read as well!
I have read that one - Fantastic book!
@@CriminOllyBlog Please check out Tim Lucas' The Man With Kaleidoscope Eyes, his non-fiction novel about the making of Roger Corman's The Trip, it's a book I've reread and enjoyed both times!
Melville put so much deep information on whaling in Moby Dick to give the greatest context possible because he knew the industry was dying.
Interesting, thank you!
I was like that with We Need to Talk About Kevin by lionel shriver. I literally could not put that book down
That is a great book
I have had Flicker on my shelf for decades. I need to think about finally picking it up.
Do it!
This is one of my favorite novels and I am so happy to hear that someone else became immersed within it the way I did when I read it some years ago. It’s a book I think about often and for many of the same reasons you’ve discussed in your video. For those for whom this book feels like it was written it is very easy to be effusive about it, so your review rang authentic with me. You might like a similar novel, albeit a much shorter work written in a very different style - Throat Sprockets by Tim Lucas. Valancourt books will be reissuing this much sought after novel in the near future.
Yes! Throat Sprockets is wonderful! Both books do a great job of capturing the almost supernatural wonder of cinema
I have just started reading FLICKER and boy oh boy is this right up my alley! I dont know why I missed this book when it was released-it seems I have a vague memory of it at that time, but somehow it elluded me. I would say though that it starts off slowly and didnt really pull me all the way into its embrace until about 70-100pgs in when it really begins to gallop along! Its also pretty funny in a sly way. Thaks so much Olly for your review that brought me to my new immersive read! Its been a long wait for something this chunky/juicy!
Suggested this book for my small book club. One member loved it from the start and one got totally bogged down due to all the details - I loved it and flew through it. Told my friend not to read this like a history of film making, that isn't its point, she kept reading and began to enjoy it. So if you read this and struggle with the first 50 pages or so, keep going! Thanks for the recommendation Olly.
Cool, my boyfriend has this one on his shelf. Sounds very interesting, thanks for the rec!
I think I had mentioned in a previous post that I had bought Flicker as a possibility for last year's GarbAugust. However, I never got around to it, so decided to save it for this year. Glad to hear that you enjoyed and why you did so. Since I have a keen interest in silent films and early films up to about 1950 or so, I'll probably like it as well.
Hope you like it when you get to it!
An easy book to get obsessed about, particularly if you enjoy hidden histories, conspiracy theories, and novels about the dark side of Hollywood. I read it 20 years ago and was gobsmacked. It mystified me that the book wasn't hugely popular then; it's practically forgotten today.
You've got Roszak's name wrong in the title. Interesting review and I'm glad you enjoyed it so much. I've only read his Elizabeth Frankenstein book and it drove me up the wall so I'll trust you that this one is terrific.
Thank you! Fixed!
Well, there you go. I LOVED Elizabeth Frankenstein. Ha!
For me Flicker has a bit of Eco's Foucault's Pendulum when it comes to its density and esoteric references. Love the book. So much detail. I'm with you on the ending. Would love to see it brought to screen. Funny thing is on the Facebook's Retro Horror Paperback Art a week ago someone was going back and forth with Ramsey Campbell about editions the Nameless and Roszak's Flicker came up in their convo. Campbell mentioned Peter Straub gave him a copy as he thought he would enjoy it. And, yes, he does.
Sounds fascinating! Thanks for the review.
Hmmmm, I'll look out for it and might read it. I'm torn - it sounds like something I'd like (with all the detail) but the slowness worries me.
I picked this up in hardcover when it came out and it is a book I always think about. There are so many great ideas packed into it and I think the only reason it's never been filmed is because of its view of the dark side of Hollywood. Amazing read, so glad you reviewed it!
It would be amazing to see a really faithful screen adaptation. I think it would need to be a TV series to really pack everything in
I’m gonna check this book out! Sounds very interesting. I studied film at NYU and Hunter College. His name reminds me of William Castle. I love old black and white horror movies. Great review! 🎥🎥🎥🎥📚📚📚📚
I read Flicker when it was published so my memory is hazy. I loved it and thought it was fantastic until the last act. I’m not sure if it was the Jonathan character but he seemed obtuse to me. I remember “yelling” at him for being so clueless. It knocked it down from a 5 stars to a 3.5 stars for me. Definitely worth reading but a tad disappointing.
I must say, though, that my reading buddy (RIP Lenny) felt I was over analyzing it.
This sounds right up my alley, and from the vid sounds a bit like night film or foucault’s pendulum or even William gibson’s pattern recognition. I love that kind of stuff.
Never heard of Flocker or the author. Sounds interesting. I’ll place Flicker on my reading wishlist.
Oh yes. I loved that one. In the last few years I read all of Roszak's novels. The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein is a particular favorite. Yoiu must read than one. It's the fall of human's from female nature into male science.
The whole subliminal angle of Flicker is nice.
Sounds fascinating, pity it’s not easy to get a hold of here in the Netherlands.
That’s a shame, it’s really with reading
💚🖤
I would recommend you to read Voyagers of hell if you want to try something new in thriller genre.
I'm at about 30% with reading this one and I've had to pause to knock out some more short stories to finish a reading challenge. It's annoying me madly, because I've been just relaxing luxuriously into all the minute detail and odd little byways of Flicker, just waiting for one of them to give a lazy twist eventually and eat me whole. I love books like this when they're properly done. The detail fills out the experience of the story and you can feel it all around you - It's part of the point of this kind of writing.
Oh well. 7 more short stories (well, actually, 6 shorts and a graphic novel) and I'm back to Flicker world. Reminded solidly of why I've come to the point, usually, of reading one thing at a time.
Have you read "The Cutting Room" by Louise Welsh?
Yes I’m pretty sure I have, but years and years ago
I just looked and, par for the course, my library doesn't have it.🙁
I picked this up in a bookstore and didn’t get it because I had too many books already. Never going to make that mistake again.
Great, great book, needs to be more widely read, seems like a cult book right now.
You liked it more than I did, from memory. I enjoyed it well enough, I think the central idea is kind of brilliant, but the anachronisms that it's riddled with kept irritating the hell out of me.
I read Flicker years ago and finished it with mixed thoughts. The setup was so engrossing, and the way Roszak mixed fact and fiction was masterful. There were things that were mentioned that I still have to remind myself aren't real. It could have used some cutting (did we need a description of Orson Welles's nipples?), though.
(Spoilers ahead) The big problem is the conclusion. The reveal that a death cult is behind it all is confusing. When we finally get an inside look at the cult, they're not very secretive. Everything they do is pretty out in the open. Also, their plan to indoctrinate people through sublimal messaging seems pretty weak. Also, there's the lame attempt to tie the cult in with punk. How very Boomer. (Also, Roszak was in with the hippies and the New Left back in the 60s. How many bombings and Charlie Mansons did punk inspire?)
The irony is yesterday I watched your video about authors you dnf’d and this is the first author I dnf’d myself. This book just didn’t work for me despite my interest in conspiracy theories, films and sort of alternative film history.
I was put off by the main character’s prudish opinions about sex and violence in movies, especially when he quite sexually active.
Hmm... csll me cynical but it does sound like this book has a lot of "padding"
It does, but it’s padding that kind of justifies itself
Just curious, what kind of English accent do you have?
Kind of a non-specific Southern one I’d say - I don’t think I have a strong regional accent.
@@CriminOllyBlog neat!