Galley Beggar Press - Simon Crump

Fuck Me. You Got One Right

jordison — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 08:56:18 +0000

Price:

£1.00

A new story from Simon Crump. Sorry about the swearing*.

*We aren't sorry really! We love the swearing. It makes this story even funnier. And darker. And - well, you'll see when you read it...

Author:

Simon Crump

Pages:

Published:

August 2016

Neverland

jordison — Wed, 19 Nov 2014 13:34:28 +0000

Price:

£4.00

This is the ebook edition of a recent - but very classic book.

It took three years to put together Neverland, a novel about "Michael Jackson and his loud mouth friend Uri”. Three years during which, Simon Crump said, Michael Jackson was "with me at home, at work and in my car. He shared my meals and even some of my dreams." Crump finished the book around 9pm BST on 25 June. The real Michael Jackson was dead less than four hours later.

This knowledge gives this haunting, uncanny book even stranger resonance. It's meaning changed before its metaphorical ink had dried. But even without tht spooky coincidence, this would be a short story cycle of extraordinary power.

Briefly, we follow a thoroughly unreliable narrator Lamar (a former member of the Memphis mafia who has now been employed by Michael Jackson) as he loses his wife, drinks drugged coffee and sleeps for years at a time, gets shot and dies – an event that only seems to incapacitate him in so far as he can no longer smoke his favourite brand of mini-cigars. His employer, meanwhile, takes part in the last great gold rush of 1898, tries to buy a unicorn from Ebay, starts fights in shopping malls with Uri Geller, forces Lisa Marie Presley to play with his lego and attacks a horse.

It's funny. So funny. Countless fast one-liners, fine and inventive swearing and several slow-building, repetitive jokes that detonate wonderfully whenever they appear. It's also quite profound. It doesn't make that much sense in a conventional, linear-rational way, but it does all add up...

Seriously.

This digital ebook edition comes with an Afterword by the author and an introduction by the great John Self.

Author:

Simon Crump

Pages:

227

Published:

November 2014

My Elvis Blackout

jordison — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Price:

£4.00

Join the King of Rock and Roll as he wreaks crazy havoc with the Memphis Mafia, murders huge numbers of groupies, destroys televisions, sabotages Led Zeppelin gigs with great big bags of pigs' blood and somehow also breaks your heart. The best book you have never read - but really must.

This ebook edition comes with a brand new introduction by Jon McGregor and a postscript by the author. It also contains the complete text of one of the best books written in the past twenty years. First published in 2000, but shamefully overlooked ever since, My Elvis Blackout is a work of genius. Of particularly twisted and unsettling genius, but genius all the same. A book so strange, sick and strange again that you'll often wonder what on earth you’re reading. But as you wonder, you'll also marvel.

In these 37 short stories, the King of Rock and Roll - "hero and model to teenagers the world over" - joins a choir in order to torture and murder Christians, labours under the delusion that he's a major rock-star (when really he's just an inmate in an asylum who's afraid of potatoes), and kills both Barbara Cartland and Chris De Burgh. And then he does some bad things too.

Needless to say, it's very funny - but My Elvis Blackout is more than just a laugh riot. This acerbic take on the cult of Elvis' personality tells plenty of uncomfortable truths about our relationship with celebrity, while Simon Crump writes with astonishing force and power about mortality, human cruelty and the horrors that man inflicts upon his fellow man. It's daft. But it's also profound.

And don't think that this is disrespectful to the King, either. Elvis remains a strangely sympathetic (albeit psychotic) character throughout. It's one of the best tributes to his unique genius you can hope to read. Just don't buy it if you're a Chris De Burgh fan…

Praise for my Elvis Blackout

This is one of the most abnormal books of all time, and also one of the best … No home is complete without this magnificent book. -- Dan Rhodes

Like an episode of South Park, where just as you get into the story something goes splat, Crump’s contorted imagination is alarmingly enjoyable. -- The Guardian

If I was born with a name like Simon Crump, I would spend the rest of my life trying to get all that anger and resentment out of me by being very rude about other people. It doesn't bother me in the slightest. Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me. Or something like that. No, I wouldn't even give this a passing thought. When you are a famous person, you are there; you are up for grabs for people to have a go at. I know there are comedians who make fun of me. But, you know, I look at my beautiful family, I look at the house I live in and I look at my fans all over the world, and I look at my career and I think, well it's all based on jealousy and envy and really I don't give a toss. -- Chris De Burgh

Author:

Simon Crump

Pages:

160 (estimated)

Published:

December 2012