In many ways this book didn't connect to me, because it has a powerful British perspective that fails to relate other readers to the material. Nonetheless, it is a well-written and much-needed analysis of the impact of media on the "global village."
The problem of mis-representations and of misappropriation of the right to represent other cultures comes through clearly with effective research to support the claims. It is particularly effective now, after the collapse of the World Trade Center Towers in the US which I watched on TV in Cairo, Egypt. The local news channel carried the CNN footage with local announcers explaining the events in Arabic.
The monopoly of US news media is all the more obvious as I read this book with its discussions about the Gulf War being an extension of Orientalism -- where Saddam Hussein is demonized for his "inherent irrationality" and the "armies of Reason" must then suppress "the crazed monstrous Unreason."
"The media then allowed a kind of para-social, thrilled involvement in the obliteration of the monstrous Other."
This demonisation of the Other was taking place now with the CNN representation of Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban. The Taliban in particular are the target of the national news media and their primary crime seems to be in their choice of lifestyle. They have become for the US, the new "crazed, monstrous Unreason."
Morley's book is both particularly timely now, in the wake of the WTC attack and a bit outdated. His text does not address the Internet which is the real new media. He discusses only the One-Way conversation between the West (as producers of the world's news media and Hollywood cinema) and the Rest as the consumers of the Western media. After the WTC attack, some three-quarters of the US population went online to discuss the attack. In these chat rooms, they encountered people from other nations. What David Morley says of the news media is true, it is a one-way conversation. But it is not true of the chat rooms. In these rooms, people from all over the world contested the American view of Arabs or Muslims as the 'one true evil' on the planet and other similarly misguided stereotypes. In some conversations, Arab Muslims themselves contested views of their own cultures.
David Morley's text, published just six years ago, may already be out of date in respect to the media dialog. In today's new medias, anyone who can construct a Web site, anyone who can log on to a chat room may be able to contribute to the world's dialog. The question is now a Foucauldian one: Who speaks? Who listens? and who is silenced?

There isn't much in the way of research or theory here that will surprise people who are familiar with Stuart Hall. But the short essays and interviews in this book provide some interesting perspectives on the development of the "Birmingham school," and also on Hall's biography, including his ambivalent relationship to race, feminism and Jamaica. Useful material for people who have been reading Hall and have got to the point of wondering where he is coming from.

I read this book some time ago and very much enjoyed the first chapter. After that it went a bit flat, though I did manage to finish it. For readers interested in the world Morely explores here, I'd recommend Liza Dalby's "Geisha," or perhaps Ian Buruma's "Behind the Mask." Probably best of all is "Memoirs of a Geisha," which is set in the 'water trade' and quite an astonishing book.

I'm afraid this is a bit of a howler, but after reading this book, which I thought fine, I searched J.D. Morley's name on the web and discovered that he's the one who wrote the Memoirs of a Geisha review in the Sunday NYTimes several years ago that I still remember! It was a real howler. He didn't seem to understand that the translator's note at the beginning of the novel was PART of the novel, and in various ways completely missed the point of the book in a way that few people have. Now that I've read Pix from the Water Trade, I suspect it was a matter of jealousy, which is really kind of sad. So what do I think of this book? Adequate; not bad, really. But the author will probably be remembered best for his ungenerous and in fact rather boneheaded review of a much better book that will survive the ages.

As an introduction to Japan this novel is superlative. It reads as a collection of memoirs on the Japanese lifestyle bound by a loose but well-sketched narrative. It covers the life of an English cultural visitor to Japan in the early 1970s, detailing the elements of Japanese culture, attitude and character that particularly affect him during his stay. The narrative parts of it are quite entertaining but it is the insghts that this book provides that make this a valuable text for understanding the Japanese.

An intruiging book that shows you what the Vikings did for a life, what they built in their time, what they made and also who they fought and taught other siblings how to fight. I reccomend the book for an enjoyable reading time.

After muddling through the first 170 pages of this book, I had to give up. This book is written in the style of a schizophrenic stream-of-consciousness. Although the idea of a story based on the Persephone/Hades myth has potential, the overly descriptive and disjointed writing style make this novel more difficult to decipher than a college entrance exam. There are too many characters who are just kind of thrown into the pot, and none is either very interesting or apparently relevant. Although some images and settings are intriguing, character development and plot are sacrificed for excessive detail and crude sexual innuendo. There are three fools here: the author, the publisher and me.

The only other review on this book gave a rather harsh evaluation of this novel. I must admit that the book was pretty trying and slow-going at first (mainly due to the author's rollicking wordiness which is sometimes nonsensical, and a lot of obscure descriptive passages) but it picks up momentum and interest after a while. It's those kinds of books that slowly grows on you, and that keeps you persistently reading despite its idiosyncracies at times. I find this book hugely entertaining, and its plot and characters immensely funny. The author has a wonderful knack of stylistic timing, puncturing otherwise difficult and dense passages with a dose of high-voltage humor! I think serious literary students and teachers would find this book challenging - Bakthin's carnival theories would fit in snugly with this book. But an average reader would too, after of course, the initial 100 or so pages of establishing and deciphering the codes to reading and understanding this book. It's not a book one often chance upon, but its a book once read, would be forever savoured.