OCCAM'S BLUNT INSTRUMENT Dermot Glennon & Paul Neads
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Bad reality day? Maybe you need Occam's Blunt Instrument. Occam's Razor would have us believe that the simplest explanation is usually the best - but is it? If the face of a ghastly fiend suddenly appears in your mirror, do you book an appointment with the beauty therapist or the vicar? Ever had an out-of-body experience only to forget where you parked it? Have you ever worried about the chemicals they put into your homeopathic medicines and later been disappointed on looking up “hydrogen oxide” in a reference book? Or, perhaps, you have stared so intently into the darkness looking for ghosts that your eyes have gone funny and actually seen some... If you are tired of the mundane and decidedly unsuper natural world then this collection of short stories from Dermot Glennon (Karma Veranda [Mucusart 2003], Silver Stake slam winner) & Paul Neads (ed. Ballista & The Ugly Tree) is the prescribed tonic.
"The most insanely convoluted explanation Utterly superb! I savoured the richness and splendour of the language like a fine wine. - Marvin Cheeseman
| Foreword
History records that William de Ockham (Occam as he is now known) stated: “Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate” in what came to be known as Occam’s Razor - a hugely influential tool to the philosopher. This is normally paraphrased in translation as “The simplest explanation (i.e. the one that makes the fewest assumptions) is the one most likely to be true”. Tragically, he is not recorded as having stated that “The most insanely convoluted explanation is by far the most entertaining”, in what didn’t come to be known as Occam’s Blunt Instrument. Furthermore, if Aesop was alive today, hadn’t written his well known fables and had instead written sarcastic para-parables, this is almost certainly the collection that he would have written. The facts that he isn’t, he had, he hadn’t and this is almost certainly not the collection that he wrote, have meant that the world of creative writing has lost this treasure trove of literary gems forever… Until now. Were one to apply Occam’s Razor to the reported phenomena discussed in this book, one would ascribe all of them to the implausible, unverifiable ravings of cranks and dismiss them as pure nonsense. By applying the logic of Occam’s Blunt Instrument, Paul Neads and Dermot Glennon have instead proven them to be genuine phenomena with perfectly logical (if entirely refutable) rational explanations; the simplest thing to do when faced with New Age alternative medicines, superstitions and conspiracy theories would be to debunk them. Instead, the authors attempt the more difficult task of actually bunking them. Each of these stories follows the simple pattern: listen to clearly erroneous claims made by backwoods weirdoes and notoriety-seeking freaks, pick up the ball and run with it (i.e. fervently believe what they are saying to be true), give a scarcely credible explanation for the phenomenon and finally descend into almost vitriolic sarcasm towards the end of the tale. By this means, we hope to demonstrate that the truth is not always worth a rat’s ass.
Available by mail order, secure on-line purchase and from independent bookstores in Manchester - including New Aeon Books, Oldham St & Cornerhouse, Oxford St |
Fiction/Short Stories | Mucusart Publications | ISBN 978 0 9542816 6 3 | 148x210mm | paperback | 120pp | September 2007 | RRP £6.99
Text © Dermot Glennon & Paul Neads 2007
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