When I met Trocchi nearly on his death bed he mentioned this work to me. As he'd given time to reading my own manuscript I devoured his works but didn't find this essay until some months ago. It was his atttempt to visualise in form an alternative structure. As a leading figure in the underground movement of the 60's he established the anti university and the Invisible Inserrection of a Million Minds desribes the cirriculum of this university. It would work on the principle of being more in tune with the 'here and now' than the political structure; thus the system will collapse, not through revolution, but it will be outflanked by those whose grasp of the situation, through a new definition of time, will naturally and peacefully lead us to a more humane society. Here the disciplines of Art will become fused and creativity be non segregated and freedom elasticated .In a way this work was a manifesto of 'The Situationists', a group whose members discussed at length alternative structures at varying sites throughout london. Trocchi's experience of New York and his junkie friendship with Burrough's, Ginsberg, Heine and others made him a fulcrum of British psychedelia and his influence extends beyond the grave. It could be argued he was cleverly feeding his habit on an impressionable youth, but his writings will surely be long discussed as prejudice against the sixties movement subsides. When I left Trocchi's flat after meeting him he gave me a copy of 'Young Adam' and 'Man At Leisure'. As he opened the door he turned suddenly and took them back: "I'll just sign them. When I'm dead they'll be worth more money and you'll sell them for a fix." He winked. I said goodbye never to see him again although that invisible inserrection has never left my millionth of a mind. How about a reprint of his best work, a translation of the early life of the Dutch Beat Artist Jan Cramer and entitled: 'I, Jan Cramer!'

Trocchi published precious little in his brilliant career, and this slim volume is the only work of poems; a collection from various years of work. Their is little I can say that will do this great, and little known(even by Trocchi fans)work justice, except that if you love Trocchi's prose you will be more than thrilled with what happens betwixt the covers here ! His wit, and visionary sensabilities abound, and his staggering creativity with the structures of his expression are expolded even further(not unlike e.e. Cummings at times)via this medium. Patti Smith is a huge fan of this obscure volume, and William Burroughs wrote the introduction for the old British volume that I had(bought it in the East Village NYC late 90's for under $10), and have since lost(ugh and arghh!).
If you are reading this and are in any way connected to the publishing world, do us all a favor: contact the Trocchi estate(c/o- Ms. Sally Child)and get this long overdue wonder back in print. If you are as poor as I and can't afford the outrageous used/collectible prices on this...you can reasearch Trocchi and you'll find that there is a collection of his works(papers, drafts etc.) at some University(I can't recall but think it's in St. Louis)and they have, and will photocopy it for you. They agreed to for me, and I haven't ever followed through.

While Trocchi's take on alienation has more than a few parallels to Camus' "The Stranger", the landscape and characters provoke a more visceral reaction. Amazing that most people only know Trocchi's pornographic material - this version has been edited to reflect his original story.

"Young Adam" was a suggested read by my reading partner. How he discovered Alexander Trocchi is beyond me. But I found his writing style, as well as his own outlook of the the world incredibly interesting.

Trocchi's works were said to have been exiled out of Scottish literature, along with Trocchi physically. His writings stretched to the outer limits of moral acceptability. Holding anti-establishment attitudes, a lack of "work ethics", and sexual promiscuity, Trocchi simply tells it as it is through his own philosophy, which allows the reader to concentrate on the story and examine the characters as they unfold. A strong narrative voice guides you through the events of this simple, yet thought provoking storyline.

The story is told by Joe, a barge worker, who shares quarters with Leslie, his wife Ella, and their son, which Joe often refers to as "the kid". The body of a dead woman is found floating in the river, and taken aboard the barge. As the story unfolds, the connection between the dead woman, the circumstances of her death, and two innocent men, caught between a rock and a hard place, nervously emerge and come together. Lingering in the back of your mind, the question of fate or freedom for either of these men.

The question this story evoked in my mind was simply, "What would I do if I were in this man's position?" You will "walk a mile" in Joe's shoes in "Young Adam" But it still leaves this question unanswered.

Read "Young Adam" and see if you can discover a solution to this moral dilemma. I tip my hat to you Alexander Trocchi, ya done good!!!

...that I purchased this book because a movie adaptation starring Ewan Mcgregor is currently in the works... I had never even heard of Alexander Trocchi before reading this (his first novel, originally published in 1954). The story is relatively simple; it is told from the viewpoint of Joe, the hired hand on a barge that traverses the Clyde river between Glasgow and Edinburgh. One morning (on page 2), he pulls the body of a woman out of the river, and that event sets the story in motion. This is really a character driven narrative and I found it very easy to relate to Joe and his environment, even though I am 50 years and about 6000 miles removed from it. As the story progresses, and more and more about Joe's past is gradually revealed, the book becomes quite engrossing. Trocchi has a way of taking incredibly mundane experiences and describing them using the most beautiful, flowing prose...I can't understand why more people aren't familiar with this author's work as he's easily in the same league as Bukowski and Burroughs... Overall, I highly recommend this book and I can't wait to read more of Trocchi's work!

Scott deftly presents the vagabond Scottish Beat, exposing both his extraordinary gifts and appalling idiosyncrasies. Trocchi's lifestyle likely killed his creativity well before his wife, career, friendships and existence succumbed to his often monstrous excesses.

Andrew Murray Scott digs up a lot of great history on Alexander Trocchi's family history and his young formative years. Scott deftly captures the bizzare brilliance that was Alexander Trocchi's literary ability and also paints a sharp picture of Trocchi's personal shortcomings and strange lifestyle. I'd recommend this book for someone who wants to get to known a talented, yet little-known author.

Thongs is not a typical piece of erotica, if one even exists. :) It tells the story of a young Irish girl, growing up in the dirty streets and despised by her parents. An underlying mystical aura about her, you begin to understand that she is "bound" for something very special and unusual where sexuality is concerned. The story does a great job of humanizing the heroine through her many degrading acts, running a gamut of sexual possibilities without surrendering her most prized virginity to the men she encounters. An arousing and well written piece of erotica that might just make you cry as well. As an erotic writer myself, I found it an inspiring read.

-Mistress Twilight Blue

An extremely carnal read; where passivity is an act of power, and where exercising power is shown to be ultimately an act of surrender. The ambiguity of this terrain, while filled with stereotypes of gender roles (rich English masochists, Glasgow tough men, carnal Priestesses, etc), gives the book an androgyny of feeling. The violations and pleasures cut so thoroughly through the participants' conscious roles and desires, the reader of whatever persuasion and gender is left as penetrated as the characters. Cold yet sweat drenched.

This is definitely a great offering from Alexander Trocchi. It stands out from other works of his like Helen and Desire since it wasn't rushed. He creates a situation I'm sure every guy has dreamed about in one way or another... and that character of the cook! Repulsive yet somehow strangely alluring at the same time... Many times I found myself wanting to be in his place. He comes up with some bizarre situations at the beginning, but then you don't see those through the rest of the book (relatively speaking). This was one of the books shortcomings. The ending was a bit Deus ex Machina for my tastes... and it seemed to end a bit short. It was a quick read and can probably be finished in one or two sittings by a fast reader

Saul Folsrom was only a child when he met Anna. She was a Jewish-Russian émigré, and she became his governess when he was ten. It was with Anna that he first felt the exciting stirrings of his sexuality, and the vision of her white thighs became the image that haunted him as he became a man. He would do anything for Anna, anything she requested, so deep was his devotion to her - then he was sent away to school. When he finally returned he was still dedicated to her pleasure, but even as he found her he found other women who commanded his attention... women who he could give everything for, even his very life.

In WHITE THIGHS Trocchi once more delivers a character to whom sexual pleasure is characterized by devotion. Though some clues are given to help anchor the reader in place, they are still very general, giving the book an essential timelessness. The characters are only barely sympathetic, but they ring true nonetheless. Saul's driving need to worship a woman leads him to commit crimes, seduce and destroy women, and ultimately brings about his own death in this beautiful account of control and submission.

This novel contains material that some readers may find offensive. This includes underage sex, seduction of a child by an older woman, rape, abuse of women, whippings, branding, degradation and general sexual slavery. There is also a brief instance of necrophilia. The sexual scenes were, overall, very well presented. We see Saul's religious-like fervor for the women who rule his life and can appreciate the depth of Trocchi's characterization.

WHITE THIGHS is a very moving story, and those who seek erotica with a sexual edge and a thoughtful plot need look no further.

The sporadic bursts of description are luscious, but what hits me is his lucid analysis of America's growth-stunted approach to drugs and addicts. A truth teller.

It was one of the definative founders of the Beat Generation who defined the term as: "Someone who can upon arrival score dope on a streetcorner in any foreign city without knowing the language in a relatively short amount of time", such was the exemplar: Alexander Trocchi, a bonafide "Cosmonaut of the interior" who has remained underground amongst the public altho Cain's Book is a veritable Book of Genesis in the unrepentant world of the proponents of heroin (the-hero-in-side-of-us-all)...I believe the book can only be fully fathomed by one of its own, and that any attempt at critical analysis (in any concentrated area besides linguistics and historical antecedents) will fall flat on its face from an overdose of misinterpretation as cultural relativity here relies upon narcotic initiation & adepthood. "INVIOABLE" is the greatest interpretation of narcotica ever devised with Trocchi as its herald. To laymen no doubt it would seem a glorification, not unjustified but perhaps dangerous, yet Trocchi shows us his heart as well as his arms; His sincerity is the measure of his success as much as his prose is imbued with all the charisma of a literary outlaw making the book a garden of eden for lovers of highly-stylized literature to prance through uninhibited by serpents and blood-apples. The book cannot be compared with W.S. Burrough's "Junky" which in his words is straightforward hard-boiled detective journalism not aimed at literary greatness; "Interzone" is the closest comparable work if your looking for such a summation, but Trocchi here exceeds WSB in everyway, not that there was ever any competition involved in Cain's Book's history, except in its ability to slay all that would be "Able" to match it in scope of intensity and truth. Literary references abound, Kafka's "Burrow" being a most memorable analogy for drug addiction's isolation. The book blends a disturbing surrealism with at preferable times stark naked realism. More than a literary picnic it's a veritable "naked feast" for those hungry for underworldly experience at a somewhat hypocritical safe distance; but no blame exists in such a world as Trocchi's, where pain is noblely accepted and suffering's accordingly annihilated by the supremacy of narcotics; a most merciful God so long as its followers remain loyally and necessarily criminally devoted to obtaining their metamorphic substenance; and likewise the strictest satanus if they fail to do so, in a way, worship this slave-God... Famous among the famous, a "writer's writer", Beat generation legend, composer of metaphysical pornography, a hero amongst the Situationalists, a universal phenonemon with "wanted" posters slung all across Europas and Americas, Alex Trocchi's Cain's Book will be the one book he will be remembered for, even though his "Insurrection of a Million Minds" is a landmark collection of autobiographical social philosophy, his "Yound Adam" an acknowledged erotic classic, and his cosmic sex-thrillers from Olympia Press the stuff of legend in the genre; Cain's Book will forever champion the-HERO-IN-side-of-us-all, even when the war on drugs is killing us, Trocchi will remain, INVIOABLE.

As a matter of serious concern regards this rare jewel in the lotus THIS BOOK BEARS NO COMPARISON WITH W.S.BURROUGH"S "JUNKY" which in WSB's words is merely an attempt at hard-boiled detective work by an addict; not (!) a serious literary work aiming at anything besides getting down on paper the quite dull exoteric truth about what is perhaps the hardest job in a world of unmanagable professional addictions being that narcotic hell of withdrawal and the constant 24 hour a day big business of NARCOTICS, best summed up as "the high-cost of low-life living" WSB was lucky enough to be able to partially support his ape-size habit via an inheritance...ALL of WSB's other works(besides "Queer") ruthlessly explore and expose the world run rampant by CONTROL, with NARCOTIC ADDICTION as metaphor for all planetary existence...which is more along the tracks of Cosmonaut ALEXANDER TROCCHI intentions (and success), who I predict will one day like WSB become a more public legend, which his miraculous and exemplary life and works are worthy of...his metaphysical pornographic erotica is the stuff of such legends already (see White Thighs, Young Adam, Thongs) the blood of which is rushing to the center of literary underground stardom making hard the various body parts of so many seekers after the darker side of beat exploration...'The Beat Generation" was once summed up by themselves as "The ability of standing on a streetcorner in any foriegn city in the world and being able to score in a relatively short amount of time"...Alex Trocchi was such a man and it is in this sense along with the people he knew that he bears relation to beat objectives (the objectives of critics, not the worldwide artisians themselves) Trocchi was a world phenonemon, carousing the globe always artistic and ever active...he is a supreme example of one whose life WAS their art, and if there is any blame laid against him for being a junky for the greater part of his existence then I merely refer those people to the couple hundred thousand or so heroin addicts of the terrestial globe and ask them to account for what art they have produced to match in quality (not quantity) what Trocchi has done with just Cain's Book alone (with "ABLE" beaten to a pulp fiction novel decaying in some distant outhouse being put to use in its ultimate function) I've re-read the novel several times and found myself under its influence, literally tasting the cyanide-like flavor explode in my mouth as when he describes how junkies love to watch others get high by the almost nauseous wave when the eyes slit and the jaw drops to the floor and they say "hit" (given of course they have theirs marked out by two little x's already positioned in pupils the size of a matchtips)...the books descriptions of heroin's gripping obsessive way of life in no way sum up this masterpiece of novel narcotica literature; rare feats of prose are planted like explosives all over the text and the sense of people and place is overwhelming in it's strict realist description of very sober prose revealing more than just poetics, but Trocchi's philosophy itself inside the narrative...I think Trocchi's greatest gift is his utter SINCERITY---which is the first judgement to be made of so intimate a subject as a man's sufferings in the Dostoevskian underground arena Trocchi inhabited the planet over...It is in a very great and noble tradition Trocchi participates in, literary references abounding throughout; the foremost in my mind being the comparison with Kafka's "Burrow", the relation of such a secret underground way of life dictated by fear, in this case fear of running out of dope primarily, along with all human fear, including the "lack for nothing" of existential hells...As regards Trocchi's false qualifications concerning fame, suffice it to say he was chums with Beckett, Burroughs,Ginsberg,everybody associated with the Olympia Press===champion pioneer publishers of Naked Lunch, Tropic of Cancer, on and on goes the list like some supreme stripper teasing the pant(ies)s off the literary establishment---just read the quotes on back of the book and you will get an idea of how influential Cain's Book has been in the life and works of all variety of literary genius, the famous among the famous, and rightly-so, as one cannot champion such rare integrity in a master enough. Once you've gotten your literary fix with this one find an edition of "Invisible Insurrection of a Million Minds" for more, as well as "Alexander Trocchi: The Makings Of A Monster" which is a biography of his exemplary existence. Like Burroughs, Artaud, Crowley, Baudelaire, Witkacy, Alex Trocchi's writing on drugs in reference to his autobiographically lived life and subsequent works, are famous not just amongst artists but are devoured by addicts as well, and in some cases, both. Such was the man that he is still getting total strangers HIGH worldwide.

The plot is extremely rich, and the skill of the author is very high in Helen and Desire. But do becareful not to get the Book of the Month Club edition of this book, as it was heavily censored and missed many passages compared to the other editions.

Written by Trocchi in 1 week, the story of Helen Seferis. A woman who enjoys sensual pleasures to their fullest (...)She enjoys being their pleasure toy. Begins with her running away from home in Australia and ending up going all over the world as a prostitute, a slave, etc.
Probably Trocchi's most famous erotic work. One of the founding books of Olympia Press. Well written and erotic, even for a novel written for sex's sake.

When compiling a list of the worst books ever written, this one should place somewhere near the top. I am not sure whether to blame the initial author or the translator. The prose is sometimes readable, but mostly flowery romance-novel type fare with little redeemable value. Some passages caused me real pain to read through, as filled with luxuriously long descriptions of the Countess' skin and hair, facts I'm sure the author cannot possible glean from portraits or contemporary records. but fictionalized to add pages to the book.

The speculation the author engages in constantly seems to be the biggest problem. The book's publishers proclaim on the back cover that The Bloody Countess is a work of 'History/Decadence.' I don't know if the 'History' part of the description actually applies, as the book seems to be very reliant on extemporaneous guesses about individual motives and very thin on citing documents or any form of historical data. One of the most glaring and irritating flaws of this book comes from the author's constant quoting of letters and journals with single quote marks' ' ' and not explain who or where such information came from. I suspect this is because the letters are a product of the author's mind. Either way, it would be nice to see where these items came from, and where one might verify the source. Sadly, we get none of this; instead, we get minimal fact and maximum fantasy from the mind of the author.

Lack of documentation could be forgivable in a work of 'Historical Fiction,' but for a book to get published as 'History' and then translated without the slightest attention to research standards is unforgivable. Even in an undergraduate paper one expects sources to be properly cited and acknowledged. This book seems to be using the 'based on a true story' method of citation so common for television and movies, which is simply deplorable in a work of serious history.

More than anything, while reading The Bloody Countess I felt as if the author were trying to stretch 30 pages worth of (bad, undocumented) material into a 200-page book. This book is sloppy, pedestrian, and a complete waste of time, beyond being poorly written and painful to read.

a quick interesting read,its too bad there isnt more available about this bizzare subject.

I loved this book. I only gave it 4 outta 5 due to very detailed Hungarian history. It was hard to keep all the names of all the towns and castles in order. The story itself was great and full of delicious gore and I have recommended this book to many friends.