New Juche : Mountainhead
‘Dennis Cooper has described New Juche as “one of the most inspiring, original and groundbreaking artists working today.”’ The first thing the back cover blurb says about this book.
I wanted to include the quote as it goes some way to letting new readers know what they’re getting into (bearing in mind it comes from Dennis Cooper). I certainly agree with the statement, and think that New Juche is without a doubt one of the best writers currently out there.
This is the third work I’ve read, after ‘Bosun’ and ‘Heat Death’, both of which I kinda fell in love with. However, let’s talk about ‘Mountainhead’…
Perhaps one of the most challenging things I’ve ever read.
It is brilliant. No doubt about that. The prose is beautiful and poetic. And it is also deeply repulsive in places. I’m not easily shocked, but I was reading passages of this.
Part travelogue, part self-exploration, NJ challenges his readers in ways I’ve not come across before. He invites us and allows us to be appalled and repulsed. However, he is never judgmental. He leaves that to us. He makes us question our own boundaries and sensibilities. Georges Bataille and the Marquis de Sade would be left clutching their pearls.
New Juche raises the bar to a whole new level of beautiful, decaying debauchery and depravity.
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