Product Description
In a dark comedy structured like a great London department store, Arnold, the last of the Haden Brothers, owners of the world's greatest emporium, receives an explosive proposition from an attractive female employee that may result in drastic storewide reductions. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Everything and More by Geoff Nicholson
One of my favorite books and one which had me thirsting to read more writings by Geoff Nicholson.A book for people who like quirkiness and have a sense of humor. I don't give many books as gifts but this one I have given to several of my friends.I am not sure they enjoyed it as much as I did but something different from the norm.I find he writes well and weaves an interesting tale. Still Life with Volkswagens,the Food Chain, Footsucker, Hunters and Gatherers were other books of his that I enjoyed.His more recent ones, not as much.

More and More
Its been a while since I've read it, but I just had to review it because it was so unlike just about anything I've ever read.It was so original - such a breath of fresh air!Everything kind of transpired like a bizarredream, and it was quite suspenseful.You couldn't help but like andsometimes pity the main character.It was interesting how he actuallylived in the shopping centre, yet distanced himself from the obsession withconsuming.I love a book with intriguing characters, and this one hadplenty of them.It was basically cool.

Back in print in the U.S....and worth the wait!
One of Nicholson's best books (second only--maybe--to Bleeding London), Everything and More is also one of his most accessible. If you've readHunters and Gatherers, The Food Chain, or any of his other novels, you knowthat he's a pretty tough author to categorize. His books--while focusing oneccentric, offbeat characters and situations you rarely (if you're lucky)encounter in real life--manage to convey a universal sense of what it meansto be obsessed with...well, anything. If you haven't read any of GeoffNicholson's books before, this is a great place to start. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Collecting laughs
This is a comedy novel about collectors, with an oh-so-perfect title. It begins with a long list of things that collect, in all manifestations of the word, then proceeds to introduce us to a weird cross-section of British society. There is the car wash man with a craving for knowledge who decides to collect the entire contents of "The Books of Power," a strange encyclopedia set, into his memory. His boss, the prototypical used car salesman, with the pitch perfected, and a collection of knickers from his one-night stands (funny, how knickers is so much more tame than the American version "panties," no?). The wealthy auto collector and his wife who collects sexual experiences. And, finally, the narrator, who is writing a book on collectors, and so finds himself ironically in the position of collecting collectors.

The plot is an intricate construction that links all of the above together. I found it almost exactly opposite of a mystery novel, in that you have to unravel the events to get to the point, whereas Nicholson works to weave his characters together to show you the mystery. The book has echoes a couple of other works that I had read in the past, but these are not conscious on Nicholson's part, I believe, but simply the baggage I brought with me. It is similar to Stephen Fry's The Hippopotamus, which should not be that surprising, as Fry's novel was also a British comedy about writers. It had some of the feel of A.S. Byatt's Possession, in that Nicholson continued to explore the theme of collecting much farther than I thought possible, and possession is an aspect of collecting.

It is a short book--only about 200 pages in the American edition--and Nicholson's prose style is breezy and vibrant, easily sped through. The only thing I could find to complain with was the strange narrative shifts early on when I had trouble placing the narrator in the sections told in what I had thought was third person, but later ended up being first person anecdotal. I've got Nicholson's earlier novel, The Food Chain, and I'm looking forward to spending three hours with it sometime soon.

Starts strong, then fizzles
I loved "Everything & More" and "Bleeding London," and while this book started with Nicholson's trademark razor-wire wit, I thought the last quarter or so of the book suffered from awkward, forced and unbelievable resolutions. I also found some of the social observations, which were so keen in the other Nicholson books I'd read, to be unconvincing and even, in some cases, irrelevant to the main story. I will say, though, that his metaphors are great, and I love the irony of a book of collected anecdotes railing against the collecting of anecdotes (among other things). I say skip this one and go right to "Everything & More."

Intriguing, funny and well-crafted novel hits the spot
This is a story about a writer who is collecting stories about people who collect things.Things such as cars, beer cans, lovers, sounds, knickers,information,even a man who collects Martini Recipes: " I madea series of variations on the Martini theme for this guy.I becamefamiliar with the Naked Martini, the Trinity, the de Luxe, the Gibson, thePerfect, the Gordon, the Somerset and the Queen. We could have had theInternational but I was clean out of absinthe. I was initiated into themysteries of the vermouth rinse and the vermouth spray, and told of barmenwho merely SHOW the vermouthto the gin. I was lectured on thesignificance of bitters, the twist of lemon peel and the cocktailonion."(p66 Paperback Edition).In the event, the barmen, our hero,gets irritated with the arrogance of the customer, urinates in one martiniwhich the customer mistakes for yellow Charteuse and promptly hurls thedrink into our hero's face who relaliates by throwing the jug full of thespecial mixture over the customer.A melee ensues. Apart from the sheerjoy of the characters and their situations, it does make one reflect on theobsession which is the novel's themes:Imelda Marcos and her shoes, PolPot and his skulls, Elizabeth Taylor and her husbands, me and my ?You andyour...? A very enjoyable read.

My favorite Nicholson novel so far
Having read 'Footsucker' and 'Volkwagens'; this is my favorite Nicholson novel so far. (The others were good too.)A great cast of eccentrics showcase the search for the nature of collectors and their collections.

This one should be filmed
According to the jacket blurb, Nicholson has sold film rights to more than one of his novels.This is the one I'd like to see.The intricacies of the story and the criss-crossing of paths the narrator and the other characters make in this wild trip demand to be seen.I've also read Footsucker (not as erotic as the two reviewers are making it out to be), but this novel has more weight and satirical insight. Thank God, for writers who know how to poke fun at the rest of the world, who have no mercy for the ignorant and the vain, who relish giving it to the arrogant and the condescending and who still have room for a bit of compassion for the lonely, the misunderstood and the off-center misfits of this often insane world we live in.I only wish Nicholson were writing more often.It seems that he's sitting back and reaping the rewards of his satire.Good for him! ... Read more

Product Description
Though you might not encounter the subject in Artforum or stumble across it at Sotheby's, the thriving business of erotica is a mixture of sophistication and seduction, an underground world of eccentric artists and serious collectors.

In Sex Collectors, Geoff Nicholson hunts down an assortment of these obsessives around the world. From the Florida grandma with five million dollars' worth of sexual collectibles to Third Eye Blind's manager, who owns more than eighty thousand men's magazines, Nicholson celebrates these collectors and the occasionally beautiful, frequently bizarre, and always fascinating objects they have amassed.

He accompanies Linda Lovelace, the star of Deep Throat, as she is taken on a tour of a collection devoted to her. Days spent in the Kinsey archives reveal the cultural artifacts resulting from the sexual awakening of public America, as well as boxes with labels such as "Phallus with Agricultural Tools" and "Scarf Trick when Folded." Nicholson journeys to Germany to visit with the legendary Karl-Ludwig Leonhardt, sex collector extraordinaire of first edition volumes such as Flagellation pour couples pervertis and Tender Bottoms, erotic Picassos, and notes handwritten by the Marquis de Sade.

Throughout his exploration of some of the wildest collections in the world, Nicholson's discussion of collecting as an expression of self and psychology goes hand in hand with his gleeful discovery of the seventh giant phallus used in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, Hitler's creepily erotic personalized bookplate, and a woman who has a plaster cast of Jimi Hendrix's penis. Sex Collectors is a winning story of one man's attempt to collect collectors, to reveal the neuroses that drive some people to collect, and to have good, dirty, high-minded fun while doing it. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A Picture Would Have Been Worth....
Geoff Nicholson's book is capably written but given its promising title and subject matter, it suffers from a lack of pictures.

Collecting the Collectors
It is not surprising to come across a person who collects things: stamps, coins, books.No one considers such collecting remotely abnormal, even though a person might get so focused on collecting as to be unable to talk with interest about anything else.Then there are the people who collect erotic items, and that makes alarm bells go off.Of course, the erotica collectors are not as likely to bore us with their collections as, say, Barbie collectors are.For one thing, erotica is interesting to almost everyone who will admit it.For another thing, such collections are usually covert, and for yet another, even though the collectors might be obsessive, they don't get tedious with their stories about their treasures, since they are usually not a topic of conversation.Geoff Nicholson has seen lots of such collections, and gotten the collectors to talk, and reports back in _Sex Collectors: The Secret World of Consumers, Connoisseurs, Curators, Creators, Dealers, Bibliographers, and Accumulators of "Erotica"_ (Simon and Schuster).It's a funny, genial guide to odd (but not sociopathic) people and strange pursuits; Nicholson has seen plenty of eye-popping material, and while he candidly admits that there are some things he has seen that he wishes he could excise from his memory, he does not include such stuff in his descriptions.The book reflects his experience in researching it: "I've seen a great many things that were sexy and fun and beautiful and fascinating, and I wouldn't have missed them for the world."His enthusiastic book is much more about collecting than it is about erotica or sex.In fact, he dismisses the argument about differentiating between what is pornography and what is art by saying that it doesn't make a difference for the purpose of the book; what matters is that someone is collecting it.

Who is doing the collecting?Generally, people with a lot of money, for originals are not cheap and the collections are often extensive.Take Naomi Wilzig, of whom the _National Examiner_ headlined, "GRANNY Proves You're Never Too Old for PORNO!"She enjoys showing the enormous collection in her home, but is having a museum built so that we can all see it someday.Another great collector was Alfred Kinsey, although he is better known, of course, for his interviews and his reports on the sexuality of Americans."Kinsey believed in data," Nicholson writes, and was trained as a biologist; he collected hundreds of thousands of gall wasps, his specialty, and when he moved into investigating sex, he collected anything having to do with it.Nowadays, "People donate to the Kinsey having reached the stage of their lives when they want to get rid of their collections."Also, police departments donate sex-related materials taken from offenders.
If there are collectors, there must be dealers, although "each considers the other a necessary evil".Some of them enjoy wonderful items going through their hands and being passed on (at profit) with no impulse to own any of them; others buy and sell to make a living, but also to improve their own collections.

There are tales of many other collectors and collections here.Cynthia Plaster Caster has spent decades making plaster casts of famous people's penises, and has branched out into breasts.There's the small collection of lotus shoes, the kind that were worn by Chinese women whose feet had been bound.There's a collection of 80,000 girlie magazines.There is a large group of people who collect erotic book plates, and commission them.Nicholson eventually helps us realize that we are all sex collectors; we may not look for something to put on our shelves, but we do, if health and opportunity allow, amass sexual experiences.He also comes to the conclusion that he is a bit of collector himself, not necessarily of the type of item the more generous of the collectors profiled here sent him away with, but a collector of sex collectors, an activity that has involved such familiar endeavors as finding interesting examples, doing negotiations, lucking out on good finds, and other things that collectors here do.His is a unique collection, and it is generously shared in a breezy, amusing book. ... Read more

Product Description
One of the most transgressive of American photographers, Richard Kern makes brazen portraits of enticing nude women. But if his photographs easily cross over into the world of pornography, they are distinguished from prosaic porn by their beauty and, more importantly, their treatment of voyeurism as a theme. As Kern once said, "The best part of anything is watching," and through his photographs, he not only seduces the viewer into looking but forces a subsequent recognition of his or her own voyeurism. This publication presents a new series of black and whitephotographs.

Essays by Geoff Nicholson and Sabina Spada.

Paperback, 180 pages, 150 b&w images. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Kern
Wow...if you like Kern don't hesitate! He is special! I Like Richard Kern a lot!

cyber-pornography
"Richard Kern rapes the nude brain of a chemical=anthropoid and generates the cyber-pornography for a drug fetus." - Kenji Siratori, author Blood Electric

Black, White, and Noir
This volume could also be called 'The Best of Richard Kern' as it presents a review of his work ranging from 1976 to 2001. Covering a wide range, we find bondage shots and girls with guns, as well as girls in the bedroom, bathroom and other scenarios, presenting an overview of Kern's interests and low-key fetish work.

Perhaps the strongest pictures are the close-up portrait shots, where the models reciprocate your gaze, as though daring you to enter their slightly dark and edgy world. In one shot, a small lizard crawls over a model's face, in the stark monochrome looking almost like a tribal tattoo. Most striking is the picture from 1993, simply titled 'Monica with Candle'. The model tilts her head backward and a lighted candle protrudes upright from her mouth. A very arresting picture the first time you see it (why that was not used on the cover is a mystery. Too provocative maybe?) Certainly a deeply erotic image.

Like all the best books of photography, this one starts well and gets better the more you look into it. A good one to keep on the bookshelf and delve into from time to time, and well worth buying.

Noir?Perhaps in that it is all black and white. . .
Richard Kern here has presented a fine collection of photographs. Though his style, at least in this presentation, seems to be mostly snap shots of ameture models; there are some nice shots none the less.

The Light of Kern
As a young man I have been searching for the perfect woman and theres no such thing.But Kern captures both a meaningful persona and porcelain like femininate in his photography.And this book delivers all expected from Kern and more, its better than New York Girls and thats hard to do.This book deseves to be on even the Queen of Englands coffe table but I for one will keep it hidden away as a unsering boy may hide his chocolete easter eggs from his anoying sister. (ABLOL) ... Read more

Product Description
Word count: 2506. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (7)

open it up... now you are the voyeur!
kern triumphs at this, when you are turning the pages, you are silently hidden on a corner outside the house of a girl you liked so much you started to follow. you are reeling your camera, waiting... SNAP, she is yours.

Very Well Done
This Is A Tastefully Done Look Into Voyeurism Without Any Creepy Thrown In. These Are Images Often Thougt About, But Not Captured By Photography. Bravo !

Kern
Do you belive in magic? Richard Kern is an genres! He is very special in erotic photo. He is very alone in the way of work. He is unique!

an erotic photography classic
This is a book that anyone interested in photography will enjoy -- the images are playful, inventive and genuinely erotic, wittily toying with our expectations and luring us in with every page.It's also one of the most beautifully produced photo books I've seen in recent years.A real hit.

Not a Voyeur
There's a little bit of the voyeur in all of us.It seems like Richard Kern is in a good position to take advantage of this and provide an excellent collection of photographs.Unfortunately, this book is a bit of a disappointment.

Part of the disappointment comes from the simple fact that a professional photographer can't be a true voyeur; or, at least, he can't publish those photographs in a book.Geoff Nicholson hints at this a bit it his opening essay.However, Mr. Nicholson also sets up expectations in his essay about furtively trying to take photographs on the street that are not realized in the photos that follow.

That is not to say that there aren't some good photographs in this book.Early photos in a sequence, particularly the photos taken outdoors of a single subject are often quite compelling.They truly seem to capture a person unawares; however, as the sequences go on, and the models get into states of further undress, the pictures are obviously staged, which destroys the voyeuristic quality.

In some ways, Mr Kern is trying to capture something next to impossible to capture well.Still, he manages, occasionally, to capture more than I expected.If his focus would be on what he achieved in the earlier part of the photo sequences here, I think he would have been more successful. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Artforum International, published by Artforum International Magazine, Inc. on October 1, 2008. The length of the article is 1026 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Steering zeal.(Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do - and What It Says About Us)(Book review)
Author: Geoff Nicholson
Publication: Artforum International (Magazine/Journal)
Date: October 1, 2008
Publisher: Artforum International Magazine, Inc.
Volume: 47Issue: 2Page: S53(1)

Article Type: Book review

Distributed by Gale, a part of Cengage Learning ... Read more

Product Description
It would be hard to overestimate the importance of Andy Warhol in twentieth-century art. His work addresses and embodies most of the major themes and dilemmas artists have confronted in this period. These might be described as the role of pop culture and the mass media, the significance of the reproducible image, the nature of fame and celebrity, sex and gender representations and not least irony. ... Read more