A few weeks ago, a package arrived from Fitzcarraldo Editions, one of Europe's leading independent publishing houses. Inside was This Young Monster by Charlie Fox. Charlie Fox, for the uninitiated, is an annoyingly young London-based author who writes for magazines like The Wire, ArtReview and Sight and Sound. This Young Monster is his first full-length work, and it is, to be blunt, an unequivocal masterpiece of cultural criticism.The book assesses how the concept of the monster irradiates our thinking about queerness, disability, children and adolescents, Fox looks at everything from the films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder to the photos of Larry Clark via Leigh Bowery's attempt to turn life into a never ending performance piece, always asking the reader to think about their own relationship to monsters, and monsterism. I tore through it in a single sitting, and you'll be likely to do the same thing.In the following piece, Fox examines how electronic music, as refracted through the prism of his book's central concerns, has impacted upon him and his sense of being in the world.Read the rest over on thump.
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