Jeff Noon / Classic or Dud?

vurt, pollen, nymphomation - all curate's eggs, containing much that I loved but rather self consciously in love with their own tricksy prose style. I retain a fondness for Vurt as the stash riders' flat is, by its location and description, undoubtedly Rusholme Gardens, an art deco block of flats on the corner of Wilmslow Road and Platt Lane, and several persons in my ken have dwelt there over the last ten years.

Cobralingus - pointless artifice. utter balderdash. not even funny. Although, yet again, not entirely without good stuff - I liked the short story based on the trumps of the Marseilles Tarot.

Automated Alice - flimsy, twee. Must try harder.

Needle in the groove I gave up on. I listened to the CD he knocked up with David Toop and I gave up on that too. And I like David Toop.

So I reckon mostly dud but with moments of classic. Early promise giving way to boring self indulgence. But that's me for you.

And he left Manchester for the Smoke which doesn't endear him to me. Splitter.

I do think his books tend to start off well and then resolve badly, but hey.

Pollen really does RoXoR though - all that stuff about the fertility pill pollution thing making everyone hyper horny and able to impregnate anything (like corpses) - sexy.

I've read Needle In The Groove, and I also liked that, but it did take me far longer to get properly into.