From Despair To Where

"It’s tempting to recall the words of Richey’s hero, that other lost boy-wonder Arthur Rimbaud, from A Season In Hell, “My daytime is finished; I am leaving Europe. The sea air will scorch my lungs; lost climates will turn my skin to leather. To swim, to tread the plains, to hunt, above all to smoke; to drink strong drinks, as strong as molten ore, – as did those dear ancestors around their fires. I shall return with limbs of iron, with dark skin, and wild eyes…” And imagine that he followed suit, gave up on the West and headed off to obscurity and adventure in some distant corner of the world, wishful thinking though it sounds. The world is rarely that benevolent. Instead then consider the quote from Hamlet that both opens and defines the book, a book which is a testament to it’s subject and it’s writer, “He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.”

Reviewing Ben Myer's Richard over on 3:AM.