a message from ben williams

“excellent work, mr. k - 12shooters is one of my books of the year.”
B
(ben williams is editor of south africa’s best read literary site, book.co.za)

“excellent work, mr. k - 12shooters is one of my books of the year.”
B
(ben williams is editor of south africa’s best read literary site, book.co.za)

you write like i want to live
like i want to make art.
tear open my own skin no matter how it hurts
and subject the world to the beauty of my despair.
thank you
for being you
for your life
and for writing your truth
thank you
Love
Lerato
October 2nd, 2007 by Ben Williams

Independent publisher Gary Cummiskey (Dye Hard Press) has done SA letters a service by garnering some review space in a major newspaper for the prolific Aryan Kaganof, another independent publisher (Pine Slopes Publications), and most recently the author of 12Shooters and The Ballad of Sugar Moon and Coffin Deadly.
As anyone who has explored his extraordinary website at Kaganof.com (which includes the best kept secret in the SA avant art world: Kagablog!) will know, Kaganof is active in any number of mediums, and appears to be ruled by his id, albeit one that’s ever-so-lightly restrained.

gary cummiskey’s review starts out:
The two latest publications from the often-controversial, multitalented Aryan Kaganof — filmmaker, novelist, poet, publisher and visual artist — offer some interesting contrasts and similarities.
The Ballad of Sugar Moon and Coffin Deadly is an unusual work: a book-length narrative poem in four sections; the first section composed in the traditional four-line stanza form of the ballad, though telling a story that is anything but traditional — it is instead mind-blowing, bizarre, hilarious, as well as often offensive and outrageous.
Coffin Deadly, a former member of 32 Battalion, is now a bank robber who, by his own admittance, enjoys killing people.
read the full review on the weekender







this review appeared in the weekender of saturday 29/09/07