Publisher's Synopsis
Between the late 1970s and the early 1990s, Jonathan Bowden wrote 27 books, about which almost nothing was known until after his death. Combining cultural criticism with memoir, high journalism, and selected correspondence, these texts belong to no particular genre, the prose being allowed to roam where it may, drawing from many strands, finding unexpected links, and collecting shrewd insights along the way. More than anything, they are exercises in exploration and self-clarification, wherein one will find, as work in progress, many of the themes that would later emerge in his orations. The Jonathan Bowden Collection aims at making these obscure texts readily available for the first time, complete with annotations and indices, so that they may be studied and / or enjoyed by present and future generations interested in the dissidents at the margins of British intellectual life at the turn of our century.
Written during the Summer of 1992, Heat is in a question-and-answer format. Bowden poses and answers five questions, yet, as usual, the discussion is much broader, and covers an array of other topics, including, among others, Jack Henry Abbott and his book, In the Belly of the Beast; method acting; the David Mellor affair; Antonin Artaud's 'Theatre of Cruelty' and Georges Bataille; the films Batman Returns and Universal Soldier; John Tyndall; the irrationalism and conspiracy theories of the radical Right; Left historical revisionism; the division between political and literary extremism; Oswald Mosley's economic philosophy; and the evolution of Western imperialism since World War II.
