Wu Ming

Book review: 54

54 by Wu Ming.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars.

Last year I read Q, the medieval pastiche created by Luther Blissett, a guy who did exist but also – for authorial purposes – didn’t.

They’re a photogenic lot. Or are they?

This year, I moved a bit forward in time and read 54, set in 1954. It’s another creation by parts of Q‘s creative steering committee, except this time around they’re known as Wu Ming. Basically they’re a bunch of anonymous Bologna-based scribes who create playful pieces, which is just as well because their nom-de-plume is the Chinese phrase for anonymous.

How handy is that?

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Book review: Q

Q.Q by Luther Blissett.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars.

Q is a book I’ve had on my to-read list for quite a while. I can’t remember where I first heard of it but I’m willing to lay money on the fact that it was in my pretentious “I only read LITERATURE!” stage, fairly recently after graduation. (Which, as we all know is bullshit, because airport lit absolutely slaps in the right circumstances.)

Where was I? Pretension. Right. Well, I’m assuming that Younger Me was driven by that rather than an earnest interest into the religious and political machinations of middle Europe in the 16th century. (Unlike Me Of Today who is All About That Shit.) So I have to assume that the main reason I wanted to read it was that the author, Luther Blissett, doesn’t exist.

Pictured: the author, but also not the author.

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