'Magic Alex's Revenge' is the final instalment of Michael O'Leary's trilogy, 'The Dreamlander Express'. Following on from the first two parts, 'Unlevel Crossings' and 'Straight' Magic Alex is a complex and often beguiling look at the "Sixties" generation of peace and love and anti-materialism degenerated into the 'I, me, mine' selfishness sparked by the mid-eighties Rogernomics which continues into the 21st Century Schizoid Person, fuelled by technology and greed. Magic Alex also contrasts the Beatles in the 1960s with the 'All You Need Is Hate' of the 1930s epoch of Nazi Germany, how both used technology, one to emphasise good the other evil. Magic Alex's Revenge is a cultural and individual tour de force through the 20th Century and early 21st, it incorporates one person's attempt to understand and ride the nightmarish 'Dreamlander Express'.

 

 

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Neil Wright at the launch

LAST RIDE ON THE DREAMLANDER EXPRESS
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Having launched the first two volumes in this trilogy of publications I take great pleasure in launching the third and final volume, MAGIC ALEX’S REVENGE.

I did not write the blurb on the back cover. I don’t know who did. But it is a good one.

I say of my good friend C K Stead that he has written some excellent examples of the C K Stead novel. And I say something similar, that in MAGIC ALEX’S REVENGE Michael O’Leary has in fact written the finest example of the Michael O’Leary novel. Take on board what it is you are dealing with and you will appreciate that it is done superlatively, every word of it. My commendation of this book is full on, as you see.

Many people of Michael O’Leary’s generation and later have tried to write a novel in what might be called a post modernist way. I have not looked at such novels from James Joyce down, but it seems to me that Michael O’Leary has made a success of this mode of fiction simply by working harder and longer than most people, 30 years at least on this book. I recognise that there are many significant resemblances in Michael O’Leary’s work to my own work. So Michael O’Leary is in good company.

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You have to come to this book understanding what you are dealing with.

The pattern is simple. A man thinks he is working in London. A man returns to his roots and Auckland and learns about or remembers goings on in his lifetime back to childhood. At least the focus is on such a run of episodes however real they are or whoever they apply to.

MAGIC ALEX’S REVENGE ie the character’s revenge is the situation in which we live and which we all face in future, for which he takes responsibility and perhaps we should too.  Michael O’Leary informs me this is made clear in the last sentence on page 11.

Much of this book is written at the point where history and fantasy collide, so the question is whose history and whose fantasy.

The simplest answer is given at pages 57-72 where there are repeated references to Bishop Liston who was tried for sedition in New Zealand in 1922.

Throughout this passage sentences from the legal defence of Bishop Liston are interwoven with more recent events in Auckland. I don’t know whether the legal defence is taken from historical documents, or is a reconstruction or is a parody or satire, whatever.


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I have pointed out that every work of art needs signposting to direct the attention of the reader/
observer wherever so that they can keep their bearings.

Michael O’Leary does signpost MAGIC ALEX’S REVENGE by the devise of email headings, which for instance signpost a cricket match across pages 72-127 and an episode of geographical confusion across pages 148-183.

When the signs change you can say the subject matter changes.

I have said that to those who know Michael O’Leary’s writings they all hang together and cross illuminate one another. So here much of this novel draws together material previously published separately, as in the page references I have just given you as well as elsewhere. Included is some of Michael O’Leary’s finest prose and verse writing, material that has been widely and highly acclaimed.

On page 49 a prose passage begins The last train is about to leave etc. On page 171 you will find the same text as a poem. This is an extreme example how everything hangs together in Michael O’Leary’s writings. It is a good example that your sense that you have been here before is justified. Both times however this is an impressive piece of writing.

But there is also considerable new material in the book.

There are a few misprints in the book, but most of what you have got there is what Michael O’Leary intends.
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What I have given you are some hints on how to find your way through Michael O’Leary’s new book MAGIC ALEX’S REVENGE. All you have to do now is buy a copy and get thoroughly lost in it. It is worth the money and the effort to do so. You will find you are dealing with a brilliant piece of literature according to the Earl of Seacliff.

Now I have told you all you need to cope with the book as I also was able to do with understanding and pleasure page by page all through.

Michael O’Leary doubts whether he will add any more prose fiction to his corpus. But what he presents in the DREAMLANDER EXPRESS is a significant achievement for those who can to match.