Today is what would have been J.G. Ballard’s 85th birthday. To celebrate, we have quite the Ballardian line-up on the site. Here, though, is a very special piece written by none other than David Cronenberg…
Our second Cover Reveal of July features another book with an enthusiastic recommendation from horrormeister Stephen King – Consumed, the debut novel from cult film director David Cronenberg.
“Can I just say, before we go, that if I were a white man, I would love to look like you” – This was the point very early on in my career in marketing that I was pretty convinced that I would lose my job the next day. One probably shouldn’t say such things in what was meant to be a very serious interview with director turned fiction author David Cronenberg. My first marketing campaign was for Consumed, one that I elbowed my way into having been a fan of Cronenberg since I watched The Fly when I was way too young (and as a result had recurring nightmares for years about Jeff Goldblum’s jaw falling off in my hand). Read more…
A very happy New Year to you and all you know, from 4th Estate. 2014 was a fantastic year for books, wasn’t it? Or, to borrow the phrase from Andy Miller, it truly was The Year of Reading Dangerously. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie taught us that We Should All be Feminists, while Lena Dunham told us how she came to be one in Not That Kind of Girl. David Cronenberg put us off our dinner with the fantastic techno-thriller Consumed, but Anna Jones set us back on track with her astonishing debut recipe book A Modern Way to Eat. The phenomenal Sali Hughes taught us all we needed to know about beauty (and all we didn’t know we should) in Pretty Honest: The Straight-Talking Beauty Companion, a guide we should all start referring to daily in the new year. Read more…
By Jeff VanderMeer.
Like many readers, I’m extremely curious to read iconic film director David Cronenberg’s first novel, Consumed. How will that imagination be expressed solely through the written word? How might his expertise in movies create unique approaches to literary technique? Especially considering how broad and deep that film oeuvre has become.
In honour of Lena Dunham’s admirable frankness about her own sex life, 4th Estate brings you some of our very favourite, very alternative sex scenes:
David Cronenberg is finally unleashing into the world Consumed, a dark, visceral piece of fiction sure to shock, unsettle and remind you why he’s the king of the body horror genre.
Consumed is exactly what fans of Cronenberg’s films would expect from his first novel: hypnotic, darkly comic, with vividly drawn characters moving through a landscape that at first seems alien, only to become frighteningly familiar. Read more…
