Karaoke and Cold Lazarus

By Dennis Potter

'Karaoke and Cold Lazarus are as fitting a summation as they are a testament both to my character and to my career as I should ever want.' Dennis Potter In the first part, Karaoke , Daniel Feeld, a writer, is in a physical crisis: he is dying. He more than half-imagines that something he has recently written has escaped into the world outside. Or is he imagining it? Fact and fiction collide. In this extremity, he has to struggle back towards the relationships and understandings he thought he had managed to do without. In the meantime, the screenplay he's written is being arranged by the director who is blinded by his lust for the leading lady - who has her own secret life and a desire for revenge on the sadistic karaoke club owner who glassed her mother's face.The second part, Cold Lazarus , is set 400 years in the future, where Feeld's cryogenically preserved head is used for historical and social research purposes until an American media tycoon realizes the astronomical ratings potential of a TV show where the 'real' twentieth century history of Daniel Feeld's life, via his chemically induced memories, can be fed to millions of viewers. Whilst Daniel's 'memories' ebb and flow and the TV moguls fight over him, a dissident organization of Luddites, R.O.N. (Reality or Nothing), seeks to return to what they believe to have been a gentler age - the twentieth century.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0571174787
• ISBN13: 9780571174782
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Length: 392 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.3" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Goodbye Dear Genius

This Is a Fantastic, moving piece of literature. Much criticized at its time of release (mainly by those not intelligent enough to understand it), this stands out as the last thoughts of a dying genius. It was Potters dying wish that these pieces be televised uncut and the BBC pretty much respected this. I dont want to spoil this for anyone, so buy it and prepare to be enlightened on a high level. Perhaps the greatest author ever?

historical truths, as Stendahl said, come only in fiction

Both above comments are accurate appraisals of Dennis' last works. These last writings reveal a consciousness far deeper than most of us can fathom. Stendahl knew that fiction often carries more _real_ truths than official history. Dennis' portrayal of the "Total Universal Entertainment Corporation" in "Cold Lazarus" is coming true, even as we watch.... And, as he knew, its not governments that are the source, but corporations. Dennis revealed what can happen to the psychic lives of real people in times of elite domination as no other ever has, save James Joyce, perhaps. All the appraisals of his storys as idiosyncratic, quirky, or some other negative category are simply clues to how little most understand about what he provided for us. "Cold Lazarus" is a 'must read' because the TV production took too many liberties (hyped futurism) and the dynamic process among characters was shadowed and often hidden. Dennis Potter was a gift and a sacrament. Literate folk should enshrine him close to the heart.That, after all, was his subject: the heart in the over-produced, over-commodified "war of all against all."

Reality or Nothing. Do you want to know more?

karaoke and Cold Lazarus have come in for an enormous amount of criticism, mostly unfair, since Potters' death, both at the time that it was transmitted and since. Most of the writing about the pieces has been critical. Ignore the bad comments. The pieces are extrordinary of two reasons. Firstly, the piece together the most intense, powerful and moving selfportraits written for television. Alternatively tender and aorrgant, by the time you have watched the pieces you feel you have glimpsed inside the author's own soul. There are very very few pieces of writing you can, fairly, say that about. Secondly, it is an important attack on the late twentieth century and the moral and spiritual values we are happily selling to the Murdochs of this world every day. As the group says Reality or Nothing... Yes, potter let himself down with his vain stereotypical and cliched writing in places but these pieces are so unusual, imaginative and defiant, they deserve more than anything to be read. (You'll probably hate it now and it has to be said the Singing Detective is better.) .

A really great couple of plays, will surely twist your head.

The author's terminal illness as he wrote these plays really comes out in what I see as his most powerful work. It reveals a clever blend of a hint of an autobiography with fears of our "Brave New World". The Potter style is unmistakable and unlike anything else ever done.Subtle hints at social progress paint a sad glimpse into our future if we let governments have their way.