Book review of the week

Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

Dave Eggers (Hamish Hamilton, ₤14.99)

It takes the recent death of novelist Barry Cole – a genuine Age of Aquarius mad-lad who hung out with BS Johnson and was brought in to clear up after the great man committed suicide – to remind us that there was once such a thing as a genuine literary avant-garde. There is still one now, of course, only it long ago lost any kind of connection with the mainstream and rarely gets reported in the newspapers, which means we have to make do with the likes of Mr Dave Eggers here.

The left-field credentials of Mr E’s lamentably-titled new one rest on the fact that it is composed entirely. . .

Continued on p27 of the 8-21 August issue of Private Eye, in all good bookshops now and a snip at $10.