I tell yer: assuming someone’s identity? It ain’t all gravy.<\/p>\n
Apologies for lately bloglack, but last weekend I made a grisly discovery: turns out that, before (heh!) his life-plans were suddenly and fundamentally changed by yours truly [see ‘THE ENTHOVEN IS DEAD’, right], unbeknownst to me the Enthoven happened to be having a problem with, of all things, one of his \/fangs\/. Imagine my surprise on Saturday morning, when I found myself in a cab at six am on my way to a hospital for an appointment to have one of ‘is WISDOM TEETH REMOVED.<\/p>\n
Got to say, you humans have got some grand surgical facilities on your planet. The staff at Homerton Hospital, Hackney, were a model of efficiency and solicitousness. So great was their efficiency, however, that by the time I thought to protest at what was going on I’d already been sedated and anaesthetized: I awoke on a trolley, with only a row of neat sutures to mark the spot where latterly had been one of the back-fangs I’d grown to mimic the Enthoven’s wonky jawline. I don’t know what they did with the tooth. I was worried fer a while: separated from the rest of me, it was only a matter of time before it stopped looking like a tooth and returned to its natural, undifferentiated, blancmange-like state. But, figuring more enquiries would only incriminate me, I quit the scene as soon as the nurse allowed me – and the last few days I’ve been stuck waiting for the stitches to grow out, the bruises to fade, the swelling to subside and (yeah) yer impressively powerful human \/drugs\/ to wear off.<\/p>\n
On the plus side, bein’ under the weather gave me a chance to catch up on some quality human READING, this time in the shape of the quite gobsmackingly good THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU, by H. G. WELLS.<\/p>\n
That Wells was a visionary, and one of the most far-sighted and innovative writers of imaginative literature the human race has ever produced… well, everyone says that, and it’s a bit of a cliche. What’s worth knowing about his stuff (and a lot of critics seem to underplay this) is that lots of his books are just REALLY GOOD FUN – and folks, THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU is a fine example. For a novel written more than a hundred and ten years ago it goes at a cracking pace: by just five pages in the characters are stranded at sea, starving and drawing lots over who’s going to be cannibalized – and, amazingly, the book never really lets up from there. It’s like a fever-dream of vivisection and mutants and horror, all filtered through a contagious atmosphere of shimmering jungle heat. The ideas are great, sure, but the real triumph, it seems to me, is in how sure-footedly punchy and unpretentious the writing is: it’s wild and mad and deliriously evocative, but in its understated way it’s also REAL, it’s fierce, and it’s all over-and-out in just a hair under two hundred pages, without ever having lost its initial intensity. It’s the second time I’ve read this now and – like malaria – I fully expect to face bouts of reading it again and again every so often for the rest of my life. All I can say is, lucky me. And if you haven’t read THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU yet, lucky \/you\/.<\/p>\n