The hideous Tony Parsons pens a paean to guns in British GQ. “The first time you hear gunfire is like losing your virginity, but without the sex,” he writes. Excitingly he finds himself caught up in a “violent coup in Southeast Asia”. Bang, bang. In a tropical place (as opposed to British streets) “there is no denying the glamour of guns”. Thinking of his big butch soldier daddy who fought at Monte Cassino he reflects: “My father always thought me a lesser man than he because I had never heard that sound [gunfire]. And he was right. I have no doubt at all that he was right. We are forever lesser men than those who have heard the guns because we have not been tested.”
I should have thought that marriage to the goddess Julie Burchill would have sufficiently tested his sentimental sense of masculinity, hewn from comic books and John Wayne movies and the midget Norman Mailer and his big-cocked sense of his own big cockedness, now just another husk of nothing. Masculinity as defined by Parsons can only be sustained at the expense of others: it draws its energy parasitically from dreamt challenges made flesh. Someone else must lose something for masculinity to feel fulfilled. At its lowest it is expressed in domestic violence. At its most handsome, it resembles George W Bush. The sense of redundancy it trails behind itself is explored in a huge literature of bitter and disappointed experience, so easily forgotten by copycat sons of copycat men who wank in front of mirrors.
Come on Tony, throw a sheet over the triptych and give your over-used cock a rest.
14 comments:
"The first time you hear gunfire is like losing your virginity, but without the sex”
In the way that both - were the sex thing even possible - are utterly pointless?
Not for me then, thanks. I'm particular about banging.
Wasn't he once a hip young gunslinger? Now he's just a gunslinger.
I see Madame has returned to her snarling, spit-flecked self after a quiet mellow period. Welcome back dearie.
My girlfriend went to bed with Parsons once. He did it three times in one night after a college reading of his "oeuvre" and messed up the sheets by pulling out at climax time each time.
You appear to be obsessed with GQ. Did you fall out with Dylan Jones?
"Come on Tony, throw a sheet over the triptych and give your over-used cock a rest" - is that a line from a song? If not it should be.
Parsons is a wonderful writer and as usual you misunderstand. In that piece he's only expressing that sense of feeling less of a man despite himself. He says guns on British streets sicken him. Parsons is a conventional man trying to make sense of himself, whereas you Madame are a polysexual perv with ishoos.
Can anyone enlighten us regarding the "disappearance" of one of Tony Parsons' wives? I seem to remember that, between Julie Burchill and Yuriko Parsons, his current wife, there was a German girl, a writer, who became Fatima Parsons - but who has mysteriously disappeared from the usual records (author's biogs, Wikipedia, etc). Can anyone throw light upon the disappearing woman?
Totally brilliant post.
Angry, frothy and beautifully on target.
Thanks!
Too short Arcati - 5000 more words in this vein, or 50,000. You have accidentally discovered your calling after years of blather and gossip.
Thank you Jody - I enjoyed your Hugh Grant book btw, if you're the same Jody Tresidder. What are you up to now?
Well, Jody, you know where to come when you want me to synergise with your marketing people, blogwise. x
"He says guns on British streets sicken him."
Whereas he thinks that gunfire is thrillingly exotic and "glamorous" if it happens in south-east Asia, to south-east Asians.
Madame: sublime.
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