This Young Monster

Reviews / Votes

'My friend Bruce Hainley had told me about a new book coming out called "This Young Monster," by Charlie Fox, but I had forgotten all about it until the publisher Fitzcarraldo Editions in London sent me this beautifully designed French-flap-style paperback original. Good God, where did this wise-beyond-his-years 25-year-old critic's voice come from? His breath of proudly putrefied air is really something to behold. Finally, a new Parker Tyler is on the scene. Yep. Mr. Fox is the real thing.'

- John Waters, New York Times 'This Young Monster is a hybrid animal in its own right, suturing biographical essays with stranger things: a "dumb fan letter" to the Beast, a meandering confession from Alice, bombed out after her many years in Wonderland. ...There's not enough of this sort of playfulness and frank enthusiasm in art criticism.'

- Olivia Laing, New Statesman 'Surreal and provocative, This Young Monster is both a poignant portrayal of life on the margins, and a joyful salute to a group of people who embraced their misfit status to lead beautifully unconventional lives.'

- Lucy Watson, Financial Times 'A Rimbaud-like moonbeam in written form.'

- Bruce Hainley, author of Under the Sign of [sic] 'Charlie Fox writes about scary and fabulous monsters, but he really writes about culture, which is the monster's best and only escape. He is a dazzling writer, unbelievably erudite, and this book is a pleasure to read. Fox's essays spin out across galaxies of knowledge. Domesticating the difficult, he invites us as his readers to become monsters as well.'

- Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick 'A performance as original and audacious as any of the characters within - it crackles off the page, roaring and clawing its way into the world, powered by a brilliant vagabond electricity.'

- Chloe Aridjis, author of Book of Clouds 'Charlie Fox is a ferociously gifted critic, whose prose, like a punk Walter Pater's, attains pure flame. Fox's sentences, never "matchy-matchy", clash with orthodoxy; I love how extravagantly he leaps between different cultural climes, and how intemperately - and with what impressive erudition! - he pledges allegiance to perversity. Take This Young Monster with you to a desert island; his bons mots will supply you with all the protein you need.'

- Wayne Koestenbaum, author of Humiliation