Welcome

D.D. Johnston is the author of Peace, Love, & Petrol Bombs: a novel about fast food, millennial optimism, and the silly things we do when we’re young. Popmatters described it as “a humorous and poignant novel about anarchism – possibly a first” and added that “this genial, engaging, yet serious search for meaning in a commodified global culture deserves wide acclaim” (John L. Murphy). It featured in The Sunday Herald’s Books of the Year for 2011, as a choice of Helen Fitzgerald, who said “Peace Love & Petrol Bombs, the debut novel by DD Johnston (AK Press, £8.99), is a non-preachy coming-of-age story set amid the complex and chaotic backdrop of anti-capitalist politics. It’s also funny as all hell. And it’s got morally ambiguous people in it. Exactly my cup of organic free-trade tea.” The Morning Star wrote that “Rarely has a recent work of fiction so naturally and unpretentiously articulated Marx’s analysis of worker alienation explicitly and implicitly in its plotlines and dialogue. (…) Peace, Love and Petrol Bombs has a very urgent relevance now and for the immediate future” (Paul Simon). Undiscovered Scotland described it as “a well told and exceptionally well written ‘coming of age’ novel that draws the reader in to a life that will be alien to many: and spits you out again at the other end feeling entertained, informed, and more than a little curious to know what happens to Wayne next”, while Culture Burn wrote that Peace, Love, and Petrol Bombs is “Hilarious and heart-wrenching.”

The book has also attracted critical reviews. While Publishers Weekly appreciated the “strength of [the] descriptive prose”, they objected to the book’s “rambling” structure and felt that “some chapters seemed more like short stories unto themselves, rather than key elements in the novel’s evolution.” However, by far the fiercest criticism has come from the fringes of the British anarchist movement, where some people have objected because the author is middle class (currently a lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Gloucestershire), and because in writing the book he has, they believe, sold out. The anarchists hate most things – especially each other.

You can find a full list of online reviews here, and you can read D.D. Johnston’s thoughts on Peace, Love, & Petrol Bombs – and whether or not you should buy it – here. Links are also available to online interviews with the author, essays by the author, and – in a nod to social media culture – pointless lists of stuff the author likes. Thanks for reading and please see below for latest news, events, and ramblings.

Morning Star Interview

Britain’s socialist daily newspaper, The Morning Star, has been kind enough to print an interview I did with their fiction reviewer, Paul Simon: ‘Johnston tackles both the issues and the people in a way that demonstrates that the road to revolutionary awareness and action is anything but guaranteed. Some of the characters use insulting, racist language. Others fail to go beyond a state of disgruntlement and skiving off. The book is the stronger for this realism, a product of the author’s front-line experiences as a burger-flipper.’ You can read the full interview here.

Gift Ideas

Newspapers and magazines are currently full of suggestions for where you can spend your cash, so, since I’m bored and it’s raining, here’s my contribution: Another Ten Favourite Novels Published During my Lifetime. There’s a nice cruelty to buying someone a novel for Christmas – especially if he or she doesn’t like reading. If in the work’s secret Santa you’ve drawn that miserable git who always eats tuna sandwiches at her desk, then I suggest you gift her Foster Wallace’s The Pale King (or – better still – William Gass’s The Tunnel) and ask her about it throughout January and February. Anyway, in no particular order:

1. The Restraint of Beasts, Magnus Mills
2. The Pale King, David Foster Wallace
3. Legend of a Suicide, David Vann
4. The Mezzanine, Nicholson Baker
5. A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan
6. Ulverton, Adam Thorpe
7. Song of our Swamp Land, Manzu Islam
8. Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee
9. Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
10. How Late it was, How Late, James Kelman

I can already see the need for a third list: I’ve not chosen anything by John Berger or W.G. Sebald or Lorrie Moore or Richard Powers, and I’ve missed out Q by Luther Blissett and The Kindly Ones by Jonathon Little and many other books of which I’m oddly fond.

(The original list is here.)

Peace, Love, & Petrol Bombs reviewed in Freedom Newspaper

Freedom newspaper, the world’s longest-running anarchist paper (it was founded in 1886 by Prince Kropotkin no less), has published a must see review of Peace, Love, & Petrol Bombs: ’If you are a university graduate middle-class libertarian communist then this book is aimed at you and you’ll definitely get something from it’(Milan Kundera, Freedom).

N30 Strike

Best wishes to everyone who’s on strike tomorrow as the British working class flexes its (somewhat atrophied) muscles in what promises to be the largest day of industrial action the country has seen during my lifetime.  As a UCU member I’ll be on strike and picketing from early (to paraphrase a football chant, ‘We can see you sneaking in’), then I’m hoping to meet the GMB march from Cheltenham General Hospital when they arrive at the Municipal Offices about 10am, and, after that, I’ll be heading with some colleagues to the march and rally in Gloucester (meet 1pm at Shire hall).  By that time, I’ll be due refreshments.

The Day of Action is supported by an unprecedented number of Trade Unions including AEP, ASPECT, AHDS, ATL, CSP, EIS, FDA, GMB, NAHT, NAPO, NIPSA, NUT, PCS, Prospect, RMT (Royal Fleet Auxiliary), SCP, SIPTU, SoR, TSSA, UCAC, UCATT, UCU, Unison, and Unite.  I don’t even know who half of them are.  For a sample of what’s going on around the country, check  here.

Peace, Love, & Petrol Bombs reviewed in The Morning Star

Paul Simon’s review of Peace, Love, & Petrol Bombs, ‘Persuasive Primer for a New Era of Class Struggle’, was printed in left-wing daily newspaper The Morning Star on Thursday 10th November:

‘Rarely has a recent work of fiction so naturally and unpretentiously articulated Marx’s analysis of worker alienation explicitly and implicitly in its plotlines and dialogue. (…) Peace, Love and Petrol Bombs has a very urgent relevance now and for the immediate future’

A PDF or the relevant page is online here.

 

Fria Tidningen Interview

So, how’s your Swedish? The Swedish newspaper Fria Tidningen has published an interview by Jonas Svensson, whom I was privileged to meet in London the other week. Online translation services throw up some funny phrases (‘why should Swedish people jump over your book?’), but here’s a nice bit: ‘The amusing anecdotes are many. Johnston is undoubtedly a narrator and lacks neither humor or self-distance.’ You can read, or at least access, the interview here.