A new collection of 6 short stories.

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This volume consists of 13 tales.

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The Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) is one of the most controversial characters to have ever drawn breath on this planet. Nor is the author at all blind to de Sade's perversity or tendency towards the malign. Nonetheless, in this analysis, the obscenity is stripped from the Marquis' works and they are viewed in a new way. How so? Well, this has to do with re-visualising them or treating them as paintings by Hieronymous Bosch, for example. In this register a genius maudit is used to sign-post a way towards the Divine. For, in all forms of occultism or higher mysticism, a concentration on death, the viscid, and the diabolical prepares one for a serious consideration of divinity. The works of J. G. Ballard and a surreal novel by Albert Jarry, Messalina at the start of the twentieth century, prepares the ground here. It is an exercise in the art of exorcism, if you will. Quod, as Samuel Beckett once told Girodias, a literati and pornographer, much of the Marquis' work is mindless obscenity but some of his books contain passages that have never been essayed before.

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This volume consists of fourteen tales, non-fictions, prose poems, tablets and plays for film.

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This book is an exercise in Gnosticism or a black magic story. It effectively recalls, by the by, those occult fictions of Dennis Wheatley such as They Used Dark Forces, To the Devil a Daughter!, The Haunting of Toby Jugg or The Ka of Gifford Hillary. The work certainly features a retinue of characters drawn from the Horror genre. These were a Scarecrow (Beady Eyed Tremblake), a Vamp or lemur (Strawberry Wobbler), a Mummy (Boo Wilson), a Skeleton-man (Dramabu/Chap Rusk), a Split-face or two head (Human Toast and Dog-Eared Spittoon), a pair of Siamese Twins (Goober Peas), two Witches or hags (Queen Rat and Bob-cat Jenkin); as well as numerous Zombies, runts, mountebanks, clowns, alternative circus performers and riff-raff. All of this Grotesque Theatre, to use Thomas Ligotti's imagery, crystallises in the Mephistophelian or devilish figure of Cranium Biter (Dye). Meanwhile, the narrative rushes on apace - as Ezra Pound once said of Wyndham Lewis' satire The Apes of God. This involves a whodunnit or Cluedo about the destruction of Toys. And our lead ragamuffin, Beady Eyed, faces dilemmas which make use of a grid created by Krafft-Ebing and Lombroso. Finally, the faggots are placed around our gaggle of Guy Fawkes'... as on November the 5th or Elias Canetti's Nobel prize-winning effort Auto-da-fe. This last section, inter alia, adumbrates a purgation by fire and revises its judgement as it does so. We are then left with the ending of Murnau's Faust (1926), taken from Goethe, which posits one ultimate sacrifice on behalf of the civilisation. Might this re-work (as a thunderclap) the pessimism of Rassinier's The Incorrigible Victors by inverting it? Never mind the morbidity of H.P. Lovecraft or Robert Burton a burning of the chaff subsists. It leaves the era of Pisces behind and concentrates on a new astrological age, even a future a la Aries.

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Early pop art and graphic novel work (1967-1974).

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A volume containing 3 previously published works by Jonathan Bowden, including Apocalypse TV, Lilith Before Eve and Goodbye, Homunculus!

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This volume consists of four astounding stories or reveries. The first of their number, Goodbye, Homunculus (!), involves a twin track medley in a musical vein. It configures a story of astrological capture, fatalism, the Predestined and Lon Chaney Jnr's exercise in Werewolf to man. (Likewise, its rival gift or aporia involves Frankenstein's monster being torn apart but not by Derrida's Prisms. Didn't Friedrich Nietzsche perfect his thesis in Beyond Good and Evil, anyway?) Our second creepy tale, Iron Breath, deals with robotics, dysgenics and post-humanism in an era where cyberneticists have computer chips implanted into their arms. The third redoubt, Armageddon's Village, looks at a scheming heiress' desire to remove her crippled husband. It is an examination of euthanasia, regression and the 'politics' of disability. Furthermore, the last piece in the jigsaw, Noughts are Crosses, criticises materialism or a hunger for antiques and object d'art. Might an obsessive collector come to grief at the hands of a malignant statue? It configures the Animism of either Buffet's, Moore's or tribal art's plasticity.

All in all, these amazing yarns provide a critique of dualism or Manichean lore. They are designed to compute a pagan rather than a Christian ethos whereby morality is seen to be hierarchical rather than a matter of Kierkegaard's Either/Or.

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This book contains four plays for either the theatre, radio, television or film adaptation. These works are a direct rejoinder to Brechtian or marxist playwrights like Jim Allen, Howard Brenton, Edward Bond, David Edgar, Trevor Griffiths and Arnold Wesker. The first drama, Lilith Before Eve, examines Punch & Judy in a new way or in accordance with a violent dynamic. It proves capable of an Evolian explication, but actually ends with a chthonian or matriarchal bent (a la Charles Maurras) in his defence of Antigone. Our second work, Glock's Abattoir, shows the necessity for courage and puts a limit on 'crying wolf' too often. It also explores folk art after the fashion of Grand Guignol, marionettes, freak shows, strong men ripping apart directories, figurines, wax works, boxers, wrestling, vaudeville, glove puppets, mannequins and ventriloquism. Likewise, the third piece under these foot-lights, We are Wrath's Children!, supports the family within a revenger's codex that's worthy of John Webster never mind Peter Brook's direction of Olivier in Titus Andronicus. Our final thespian offering, Evolution X, is a dystopian effort which is anti-totalitarian or metaphysically conservative. Re-examining L.P. Hartley's thesis Facial Justice or even Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Jonathan Bowden attacks state socialism or dirigisme. In particular, his analysis bears down upon a man alone.

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A volume containing 4 previously published works by Jonathan Bowden, including Kratos, The Fanatical Pursuit of Purity, Al-Qa'eda Moth and A Ballet of Wasps.

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This volume consists of four short stories and a play. The first, A Ballet of Wasps, deals with a woodsman who offends a vampire with tales of derring-do. Our second story, Golgotha's Centurion, focuses on the chiaroscuro and ochre tints in Giotto and Cimabue. It also makes use of the same template as Mel Gibson in his Passion of the Christ, but this time to illustrate Lex talionis. The third piece, Wilderness' Ape, delves into the world of zombies or the living dead. Sixty Foot Dolls our fourth javelin considers the vexed topics of 'ageism', eugenesis, regression theory and evolution. The last romance, Stinging Beetles, is a theatrical exercise in daemonic possession which brings together flash backs, dream sequences and other filmic techniques. Its finale again enforces the point of the whole book namely, that heroic values and aristocratic mores need to take over once again.

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Early pop art and graphic novel work (1968-1974).

Available to buy via direct mail-order for £38.00 inc P&P.; Please send a personal cheque (payable to 'Jonathan Bowden Arts') to the following address:

The Spinning Top Club
BM Refine
London
WC1N 3XX

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Review by Alex Kurtagic

Al-Qa'eda Moth is a western which finds itself divided into a three-pronged attack upon the senses. The first section deals with a nineteenth century narrative that typifies the films of John Wayne. The second strand involves a twentieth century version of the same story line. The third progression on our chess board, however, intellectualises this process and provides a template for dreaming. Using William Gayley Simpson's Which Way Western Man? as a briefing or sounding board --- Harlequin Thoomey, Toblerone Harpie, Old Man Smithers, Blackbird Leys Dingo et al speculate on western culture and its future. Can such a debate contribute to what Maurice Bardeche called the defence of the Occident? Our interweaving stories then combine in order to hint at a new Titan's creation.

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The Fanatical Pursuit of Purity is a Gesamtkunstwerk or attempt at a total art-work in the Wagnerian tradition. It prefigures a puppet-stage or toy-theatre within which the lead character or marionette, Phosphorous Cool, has his circumference. (This makes use of a micrological axis chronicled by George Speaight, the cultural historian of Punch & Judy.) Into this world other dolls - Mastodon Helix, Heathcote Dervish and Warlock Splendour Thomas - nimbly trip and spin. All of this finds itself punctuated by a third dimension or alternative space. It proves to be the unconscious or dream-space inhabited by these exercises in a macabre pantomime. This rival or extending narrative brings back our wooden figurines as part of an alternative Victoriana. It deals with Stephen Knight's analysis of Jack the Ripper and a variant on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein - even James Whale's film starring Boris Karloff. Like the German film director Hans Jurgen Syberberg, Mr Bowden believes in the creation of a separate world as art's real purpose. It goes without saying that the result is 'politically incorrect!'.

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KRATOS deals with the subject of psychopathia and is the author's treatment of this theme. It involves dream sequences, monologue, phantasy and the elaboration of a wolfish purpose. Could it turn out to be a rendering of Lombroso's theories about crime? The second tale, ORIGAMI BLUEBEARD, concerns love across the generations which freezes into gelignite. One youthful adventurer pursues the heiress to a rag fortune. This Pax Geriatricus is an anti-feminist piece that explores the inner workings of the pit. GRIMALDI'S LEO has to be an altogether lighter work which evaluates the doctrine of 'animal liberation' from the perspective of a travelling circus. Its destiny will always be that of a luciferian clown. NAPALM BLONDE, the final tale in our quartet, must be considered as an attempted return to Greek tragedy. A vamp, Scaramouch Ruby, flirts dangerously with her husband's manager. Both are unaware of the vengeance which could be enacted against them by her protector, a disfigured wrestler called Runter Bog.

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Review by Troy Southgate

An extensive collection of artwork dating from 1980 to 2007.

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Review by Alex Kurtagic

This work is a contribution to meta-politics or the theoretical elaboration of political positions. It involves a Platonic dialogue between two voices - one Christian and the other Pagan - over a range of contemporary issues. Modelled on Plato's Republic, it attempts to achieve a resolution or dialectical power-play between Thrasymachus and Socrates' more effete companions. Our two collaborators or Dramatis Personae (Frederick and Thomas) are illiberal and 'politically incorrect' in tone. This was irrespective of whether they were debating 'political correctness', the madness or delusions of crowds (a la Gustav le Bon), the ethics of conspiracy or revisionism, or the origins of Turner Prize art in Duchamp and Dadaism. Thomas, of course, happens to be a short-hand for St. Thomas Aquinas; whereas Frederick hints at an implicit rivalry with the German thinker Friedrich Nietzsche.

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Review by Troy Southgate