A History
The very first copy of BRUTE! was published in February 1984, but its birth can be traced back to 1982 with the publication of BATTLE POET.
1982 saw the Argentine/British conflict in the Malvinas/Falklands and the emergence of the Daily Star war correspondent, John Beattie, who was to act as a major influence in the development of Bennett's prose. The shocking brutality of the journalists style led Bennett to reevaluate the entire language he was writing in and, thus, he began the ambitious project of rewriting the entire English dictionary, a project sadly unfinished, although its legacy can still be seen littering the pages of any of Bennett's publications.
In Bennett's mind, the popularity of TV was killing the written word and a radical new approach was required to be competitive. Delving back into the techniques he employed in BATTLE POET, 'brutal strings of sharp, staccato word sounds forced together into narrative', Bennett conceived his own language: WOODSPEAK! Indeed, the title page of the very first BRUTE! collection bares the title, BRUTE! A book in WOODSPEAK!.
WOODSPEAK! was a phonetic language based on sound. Comprised of a number of elements, namely Spikespeak, Forcephrase and Powerphrase, examples of which are clearly visible in the very first BRUTE! story to be written, Jim Mallet Strikes Back! (BRUTE! 1), which was originally devised as a ten-part epic to be published in the classified section of the Bristol Evening Post. However, the Editor rejected the story when Bennett referred to his newspaper as a 'rag'.
It was at this time that the printer Alan Cheesley contacted Bennett to tell him that the remaining stock of The Claim of Malcolm Bennett had been damaged by flooding and offered the author credit as compensation. Within weeks BRUTE! was rolling off the presses bearing the moniker CLASSIFIED PULP NASTIES on the cover, a reference to the original concept behind Jim Mallet Strikes Back. At 20p each the book was sold out within two days and BRUTE! 2 followed just a fortnight later, yet without the title WOODSPEAK! as Bennett realised that the BRUTE! language was quickly developing on its own.
Unique in the annals of modern literature, unrivalled in the civilized world, BRUTE! is an unparralled exercise in minimalist hard-boiled narrative, candid sagas of 'two-fisted action' and 'sheath-bursting romance' so real and raw they explode off the page. Wild untamable women and colossal work-hardened men grapple in savage unbridled passion. The BRUTE! style spans every genre and straddles the whole gamut of human emotions.
I, BRUTE! contains another fistful of stories featuring cowboys, hooligans, pig farmers, Romans, sailors and squaddies and will not be available in public libraries until each one contains a bar. The rest, as they say, is history.
( I, BRUTE! is available from the I,BRUTE! OFFICIAL SHOP at £10 soft back and £30 hardback, which is a limited edition. )
