Disco Bloodbath Book

It's a fabulous story of course. New York clubkid extraordinaire Michael Alig batters another clubkid, Angel, injects him with Drano, saws him into chunks in the bath, and throws his body into the river. But being a clubkid, Alig then brags about his latest escapade to whoever will listen. To broadsheet journalists and documentary makers, it's a dream: a chance to poke into this most insular of cultures and to prove its manifold dangers with this macabre ending. It's a fabulous story, but not one that pours easily into a fictional mould because it lacks tension, meaning or indeed motive--beyond that most banal of motives: the craving for drugs and money to buy drugs. St James senses this problem, and tries to counter it by spinning out the story, but we've already been told the gory details in the first few pages. What he does create is the most convincing account yet of club life, with its intricate hierarchies, exquisite etiquettes and total self- absorbedness. Despite his disarming claim that this is the running commentary of a babbling drug addict, St James is a totally poised and entertaining host to his specialist subject: his book a splendid social anthropology of one of New York's little-understood tribes. --Alan StewartRead More