Book review: Road Series, Hugo Race (2016)

This is a memoir by a musician of the post-punk era and you can feel him reaching out with his instincts and his mind for models that might guide him on his way. There are references to certain types of writing from time to time but the book lacks a centre where the man himself existed in time.

I didn’t finish this book, it didn’t warrant the time required for that. It contains descriptions of concerts, meetings with people in share houses, and conversations in the backs of taxis, but what is missing is any sense of coherence that might have tied the disparate elements together into a whole.

Race has an impressionistic sensibility that serves to render in a sort of jerky, stroboscopic technicolour the frantic pace of a drug-inspired lifestyle full of stage appearances and girlfriends, but there’s no solid thread to hang onto, or anything like a plot to tie it all together. This was a disappointing book that reminded me of the risks inherent in the kind of blasé nihilism that young people adopt as a pose when confronting the world. Often, what lies behind the mask they put on to deal with things is nothing but an emptiness. Hating everything they see, they might yet have nothing useful to offer in its place.