Source: “The lost boys (and girls),” Tom Boncza-Tomaszewski, The Independent, 14 November 2004
“It’s a dismal afternoon and I’ve ended up searching for lost authors on the internet: writers who once had flourishing careers, but who now face extinction. Like many things that occur online, it’s a kind of sordid game, depressing even; but it’s addictive. I type an author’s name into a search field: Marlowe, Gabriel. He cropped up in a memoir I was reading; a mysterious figure who had a critical and commercial success in the mid-1930s with his first novel, I Am Your Brother, a tale of someone who finds he may have a brother hidden in the attic above his studio, fed offal and fairy stories once a day by their mother. I like the sound of it, and but I’m primarily interested in how many copies of it still exist: how much Marlowe there is left in the world.” At the end of the artice, Boncza-Tomaszewski selects his own “Five Forgotten Gems”: Thru (1975), by Christine Brooke-Rose; The Woman With the Flying Head and Other Stories (1997), by Yumiko Kurahashi; Crisis Cottage (1956), by Geoffrey Willans; L’Ecume des Jours (Froth on The Daydream) (1947), by Boris Vian; and The Life of Cardinal Polatuo (1965), by Stefan Themerson.
I don’t know if any one on here can get a hold of this tom guy but I have a copy of Marlowe’s book I am your brother
I’m a young novelist, and I’d like Tom to read and tear my book apart–who must I sent chocolate to for this kind of mauling to occur?
Thousands of books are out here, catering for all markets, neglected before ever being selected, rejected by that ring-fenced mafia of pseudo-academics, bigots and hypocrites who run the publishing world and ensure the thoughts and ideas of most never reach light of day.