Title: The Looney
Author: Spike Milligan
Category: Fiction
Page Count: 202
Rating: 3.5/5
The first thing to mention here is that there’s a hell of a lot of casual racism in here, as well as some that’s not-so-casual. If seeing derogatory terms (specifically the “w” one and the “n” one) is deeply upsetting to you, you’re not going to be able to get through this.
With that said, if you can take it all with a pinch of salt, there is also a lot of good stuff here. Spike Milligan was a super influential comic writer, it’s just a shame that he has the sensibilities that are pretty typical of a guy who fought in the Second World War.
There’s not a lot of plot here, because the whole thing is essentially a surrealist, free association missive that’s designed solely to get the reader to chuckle. It succeeds at that, although a lot of it is dad jokey. A case in point is when a doctor says he can’t continue speaking to someone because he has a lot of patients and then a humorous misunderstanding soon follows.
Overall, interesting but also pretty racist. Like most Spike Milligan.
