The 2009 film’s innovative Fusion Camera System 3D was enchanting in a notably ‘psychedelic’ way, but does the sequel build on this trend…? — In December 2022 a long-awaited moment finally arrived: the cinema release of the first of four projected sequels to the ground-breaking 3D blockbuster Avatar, after a thirteen-year gestation period. Within the psychedelic community Avatar was noted for a having a distinct trippy quality, albeit an ambient one, which made it…

Lessons is Ian McEwan’s best novel since Atonement, a true late major work, perhaps a late masterpiece. He handles an armada of complex interlocking threads with breathtaking aplomb, from broad historical strokes through to microscopic dissections of human emotions and perceptions. Take an early scene in which a detective visits…

In the 2020s, when streaming has turned the TV serial into a seamless whole, digestible like a novel, it prompts us to pinpoint yet another way in which The Singing Detective, from 1986, was so far ahead of its time. It is being rescreened on BBC Four from 30th November…

Yes, we’ve all indulged when we should have been viewing something better — those families and couples with their feet up on the furniture, munching unhealthy snacks, watching TV and making banal comments, hardly at the Brian Sewell level of critical acumen. But this kind of trashy entertainment is addictive…

What follows is an extended review of Barry Miles’s biography: William S. Burroughs: A Life (American title: Call Me Burroughs: A Life), which was published in February 2014 to mark the centenary of Burroughs’s birth. The review…

When I was a child in the 1960s I read extensively – from classic set authors such as Shakespeare and Dickens to the adventure and escapist…

A Literary Context For Contemporary Entheogenic Visionary Experience — What do you do if you’ve undergone a profound, like-changing mystical revelation and you want to articulate it in a way that’s workable, comprehensible and will make people take you seriously and not simply dismiss you as a headcase? Unless you already have an appropriate platform in place, it’s not…

Guns, the occult, literary experiments, heroin, ayahuasca, the Beatles, alien abduction…what wasn't he into? — 1) Burroughs’ grandfather, William Burroughs I, was another madcap genius who, in the 1880s, invented the first ever automated adding machine. Its development had many teething problems – with the first prototypes, different pressures on the handle produced different results – and in such an enterprise there can be no…

The Paradox at the Heart of Repetitive Checking — I have a friend whom I shall call Brian who suffers from obsessive-checking syndrome. He will stare at a water tap or an electrical switch for minutes on end and then break away, only to return and repeat the exercise. He will slam his front door and then press it…