3:AM Magazine

16/05/08: The Missing Links

“The only book I ever banished from my library was Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho, which I felt infected the shelves with its prurient descriptions of deliberately inflicted pain. I put it in the garbage; I didn’t give it to anyone because I wouldn’t give away a book I wasn’t fond of. Nor do I lend books. If I want someone to read a book, I’ll buy a copy and offer it as a gift. I believe that to lend a book is an incitement to theft” Alberto Manguel on his personal library of 30,000 books, American Psycho-free and housed in a barn * The Art of Manliness offer The Essential Man’s Library [100 must-read books to you and me] [via Largehearted Boy] * Martin Amis’s darkly comic novel London Fields is being made into a film * If you’re a would-be writer, it’d be helpful if Johnny Depp was your brother, wouldn’t it? * Poems by William McGonagall, “the world’s worst poet”, go for £6,600 at auction * “An egg sculpted in lard, with goggles on”; the vain Philip Larkin * Nabokov’s The Original of Laura will be published by his son * Resusitating the dead; Faber launch a print-on-demand service of out-of-print works * And Faber’s photo-gallery of classic covers [via i like] * Are doodled-covers this year’s look? * Kevin Wlliamson, poet and Rebel Inc man, gets his own radio slot * Best enjoyed with an accordian? Music and wine * You thought the Arts cuts were bad in England; it’s just as bad in Scotland * Ian Curtis’s reading habits: “In the same way that Jim Morrison referenced Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Journey to the End of the Night in the Doors‘ moody masterpiece, “End of the Night”, Curtis dropped hints in song titles such as “Dead Souls”, “Colony” and “Atrocity Exhibition” that he had read writers as diverse as Gogol, Kafka and Ballard, while the lyrics reflected, in mood and approach, his interest in romantic and science-fiction literature.” * Hitsville UK, a website of Punk 7″ sleeves [via Design Observer] * Independent, an exhibition of indie record shops [via LeCool] * 3:AM’s Tao Lin recommends a favourite, obscure book, as does Donna Tartt, Ned Vizzini, Jonathan Ames and Sheila Heti [via Literary Saloon] * A Joseph Ridgwell story in Pulp.net * I could link to the Slate’s special issue procrastination, but I can’t be moved * Robotic poetics [via 3QD] * Five sci-fi films that get it right * “A great seducer, adventurer, traveller, spy, musician..theologian” [and librarian]; will the real Casanova please stand up * End of the road for book clubs?

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14/05/08: Art & Hunger

So, the Turner Prize shortlist has been announced. Big. Fucking. Deal. Of more interest, to me at least, is the news that artist Steve McQueen has directed his first feature film and like ‘Deadpan’—his Buster Keaton mis-en-scene film that took the prize and raised the boring “is it art?” question—Hunger, given its subject, sounds no less controversial:

An uncompromising new film that examines the last six weeks in the life of Maze prison hunger striker Bobby Sands has drawn criticism from those who see it is an untimely celebration of the martyrdom of a terrorist.

The 96-minute film, Hunger, which has been part-funded by Channel 4, will have its world premiere at the Cannes film festival, which opens on Wednesday.

Sands, a member of the IRA jailed for possessing a gun, achieved iconic status for the Irish Republican movement when he died 27 years ago this month in the infamous H-Blocks at Long Kesh after 66 days of hunger strike in protest at prisoners losing their political status.

The film is the directorial debut of the Turner Prize-winning British artist Steve McQueen, best known for his recent work for the Imperial War Museum. An official war artist, he produced a provocative series of postage stamps bearing the faces of dead soldiers who had served in Iraq.

The artist’s first feature film has now placed him in controversial territory once more. ‘In Hunger there is no simplistic notion of “hero”, or “martyr” or “victim”. My intention is to provoke debate in the audience, to challenge our own morality through film,’ McQueen said.

‘If this film disarms the viewer, removes their barrier for a moment in time, then we’ve got them and through that experience the film can have some power, some meaning and hopefully make a difference. If, through entertainment, one can grab people’s attention, then it is great.’

But Richard O’Rawe, who was the IRA prisoner’s press officer at the time when Sands was dying, is not happy about a film that makes the hunger strike an artistic emblem. A former IRA prisoner himself, O’Rawe expressed concern that any life story about his comrade ‘did not reflect the narrative of the later peace process’.

Related: The Stuckists’ Turner Prize Protest Apology

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: No New York

“No Wave was a short-lived but influential art music and art scene that thrived briefly in New York City during the late 1970s and early 1980s alongside the punk subculture. The term No Wave is in part satiric wordplay rejecting the commercial elements of the then-popular New Wave genre. The term also highlights the music’s experimental nature: No Wave music belonged to no fixed style or genre. In many ways, No Wave is not a clearly definable musical genre with consistent features. Various groups drew on such disparate styles as funk, jazz, blues, punk rock, avant garde, and experimental. There are, however, some elements common to most No Wave music, such as abrasive atonal sounds, repetitive driving rhythms, and a tendency to emphasize musical texture over melody. No wave lyrics often focused on nihilism and confrontation. No Wave is often better defined in terms of the artistic environment in which it thrived and the character of performances typical to its context. No Wave performances drew heavily on performance art and as a result were often both highly theatrical and minimalistic in their renditions.”

The Weaklings, Dennis Cooper’s wonderful blog, hosted a No Wave day the other day. Included in the (incomplete) No Wave line-up was Sonic Youth’s ‘Death Valley ‘69′ [above]. You can read a new poem by Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore right here in 3:AM.

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13/05/08: In the company of men

Granta are showcasing writing by an emerging writer every two weeks and on-line. The most recent in the ‘New Voices’ series was Evie Wyld who, you’ll remember, contributed ‘The Building Opposite’ to 3:AM London, New York, Paris. As well as publishing ‘Something Close to Heaven’, an excerpt from her novel After a Fire a Still Small Voice, Granta interview the author:

When did you start writing fiction? And why?

I always wanted to be a painter, but I wasn’t very good at painting. When I was at school I found I received the same satisfaction from writing a short story that I did doing awful self-portraits – only the results were much better. When I was a teenager I wrote terrible magical realist stuff about attractive young girls having love affairs with old men with twisted spines.

You did an MA in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. How did this help you as a writer, or inform the way in which you write? Do you think creative writing degrees are a good idea?

A lot of people have funny ideas about writers, like they’re born with novels fully formed inside them or something. Just like everything else, writing takes practice, and I believe that the right creative writing degree can be hugely helpful. Some people seem to think that a writer goes and works out the formula to a great novel in a room somewhere and then regurgitates it in a soulless, dead way. If you are a good writer and you do a creative writing degree, you are given the time to write and you are able to talk to other writers. You read widely, and through your classmates’ mistakes you pick up your own more efficiently. But it’s only helpful if you go in with a certain amount of openness. There’ll always be students who consider their work perfect as it comes out – and perhaps there are a lucky few for whom that is true – but most of us need time and advice and criticism, and that is what the course at Goldsmiths is about.

[..]

You write extraordinarily vividly about desolation and desperation, about hunger for all kinds of things. One of the things that impressed me about this story is its empathy. The men with whom Leon, your protagonist, finds himself have rejected wider society and have attempted to create a society of their own – one devoid of women and children. They see their ‘town’ as being idyllic, but of course this unnatural environment has perverted the way they think and feel. Your story never caricatures these men or judges them.

In After a Fire a Still Small Voice, Leon has returned from Vietnam and is trying to cope with the after-effects. When I was researching the novel, I talked to my Australian uncle who was conscripted and fought in Vietnam. He was nineteen and he had to kill people. When he returned he found that nobody wanted to hear about it. My grandparents picked him up from the airport, thrilled he was alive, and they all went to the nearest pub to celebrate and because he was in uniform, they were chucked out. I tried to think about the strange silence you might feel having fought in a war and then being expected to get on with things with no help, and no talking about it, thank you very much. My grandmother’s sister married a man who fought in the Second World War and was a big hero in public, but in secret he used to beat his wife. Everyone knew but no one would talk about it. You couldn’t talk about the bad things that had happened, only the heroic things. I’m interested in the idea that it’s not the person who is the brute but that the things that happen are brutish.

Is the community of men in ‘Something Close to Heaven’ in any way a comment on a certain kind of masculinity, one prone to aggression, violence and fear or mistrust of those different from themselves?

After a Fire a Still Small Voice is about men and the things they can’t talk about. I can see why someone would want to live out on a farm with no one they find threatening – in this case no women or children, nothing to lose face over. It’s like the impulse to stay in bed and live in your imagination for the rest of your life.

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: The Funnies

The Forbidden Planet Blog on the Jeff Smith Bone and Beyond exhibition in Ohio + Johnny Ryan on restrictions imposed by Vice Magazine: “No boners and no Nazis, so I did ‘Chief Sitting Bullshit Versus Nazi Penis.’ That one never made it to print, but it did go up on the website and I remember there was a lot of feedback.” + Dazed & Confused go to the zoo with Tony Millionaire and ask him why cartoonist are fond of humanising animals: “It’s hard to explain why something works. If it happens to be funny that a duck is shooting you, then you just do it. Ducks are funny.” + Heidi MacDonald on the new New Wave of graphic artists: Jeff Lemire, Dash Shaw, Hope Larson and, a favourite of mine, Eleanor Davis of Little House Comics + The Daily Cross Hatch talk to Jessica Abel: “[Readers] assumed that the Artbabe character, who was on the cover, was me, which she isn’t. The stories, not so much, because often they don’t have a female protagonist. I didn’t get that as much. But I get that all the time with La Perdida—people think it’s autobiographical.” + Dan Clowes‘ ‘Man’s Best Friend’ on the cover of the New Yorker + Chris Ware, Art Spiegelman and Rory Hayes in the Virginia Quarterly Review + Forbidden Planet give Marc Ellerby some love: “Autobio has it’s own sort of cliche and stereotype that the medium often falls into and more often than not, new work produced has hints of Tomine, James Kochalka, Jeffrey Brown and therefore doesn’t stand on it’s own rather it’s a just a poor cover version. With my book Venal Muse and like wise with my personality I try to engage the reader as much as I can, inviting them to relate to what I’m saying or question if I’m wrong or if they have a different viewpoint. As I with all my autobio stuff I just try to write stories that people can go “oh this reminded me of such and such” or “oh I do that too!” I think sometimes with Joe Matt or Chris Ware they can often alienate the reader because they’re so self critical and self deprecating, personally I find it a bit tiresome, I mean they can be endlessly harsh on themselves that it’s sometimes hard for the reader to care.” More Ellerbisms + Megan Kelso is interviewed by The Daily Titan: “If the creator leaves things a little open - I leave space for you, the reader, to have your own thoughts about what it’s all about - that’s definitely my favorite kind of art. The kind that kind of respects my intelligence and assumes that I will have my own thoughts about what it all means. That’s definitely the work that I’m trying to do.” [via Journalista!] + Drawn & Quarterly share some pages from John Porcellino’s just-released Thoreau at Walden + Paul Gravett on Herge + Michel Faber on Jack Kirby: “One of Kirby’s plentiful woes was Marvel’s insistence that he did not own his art; it was the company’s to keep or dispose of at will. Obsessed with providing for his family, Jack drew 14 hours a day, seven days a week, “chained to the board” in a windowless basement cubicle he called the Dungeon, haunted by the fact that when he became too old to work, he would have nothing to sell. After a protracted “Shame-on-you” campaign by the most renowned figures in the comics world, Marvel returned a crateload of pages to the seriously ill 70-year-old, and it is from this retrieved booty, and from disparate pieces in private collections.”

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11/05/08: glitter, doom, the night sky & other waitsian b.s.

“People Envy Happiness Dogs Though Sense Courage Knowing Jubilation Means Better Ass-ets. Pretty profound.” The guiding word of Tom Waits‘ US summer tour: PEHDTSCKJMBA (pronounced ‘pesskah-jumbah’). Let the man himself explain:

European dates, from Spain through to Dublin, will follow.

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10/05/08: Offbeat TV XII

Continuing the “My Favourite Author” series, 3:AM columnist Sophie Parkin loves this writer so much, she named her daughter after her:

Further: The Offbeat Generation / The Offbeat Generation Film Channel / Matthew Coleman reads ‘Dream Poem’ / Heidi James reads two pieces / Adelle Stripe reads 3 poems / Ben Myers reads four Brutalist poems / Matthew Coleman reads from Her Naked Self / Lee Rourke reads Everyday / Andrew Gallix talks Offbeat / Tony O’Neill reads ‘Mark Twain & I’ / Heidi James: My Favourite Author / Lee Rourke: My Favourite Author / Tom McCarthy: My Favourite Author / Andrew Gallix: My Favourite Author

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: The Hamster Manifesto

Tao Lin provides Book Notes for his new poetry collection Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. Here, he introduces his Book Notes choices:

I wrote Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy while on tour with my band “Spanish Rilo Kiley” in Taiwan and Japan. I played drums and my friend played keyboard and “sang.” Taiwan has a 24-hour mall and we lived there for four days. I slept inside a circular display of clothing. Just kidding, our band has not toured Taiwan or Japan. Taiwan has places where people pay money to sit indoors fishing from a small concrete “pond” and then grill the fish that they catch and eat it while still fishing. People do this “for something to do” like people in America might take walks inside shopping malls or go on deep sea fishing trips. Some of these places in Taiwan have giant shrimp instead of fish. Some of the places do not use bait or reel, you hold a pole and move it around until the hook goes into a fish’s scales then you “pull,” or “yank,” the fish out of the water. I have done this before, when I was ten or eleven. It was like a video game. I wouldn’t do it today.

I feel good when I look at an album or book and see that someone was selective about what to include. I think this means I “value excellence” or something. But I don’t feel bad when I see that someone has “put a lot of shit” together into a book or album. I think it’s “funny.” “Either way is okay with me somehow.” I just put an entire sentence inside quote marks and it was not a quotation. When I start using quotation marks for single words or phrases I feel the urge to put everything in quotation marks. I think it’s because I become aware that the words and ideas already “exist” as possibilities and therefore I am, sort of, “quoting” no matter what I type—the sentences are not really “mine.” This might be “Zen” of me. It felt good to put an entire sentence in quotation marks. I felt calm and detached. I edited Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy in a lot of places including in my bedroom in Florida. I remember editing it in Florida. I “laid out” every page on the floor in order, separated into four sections, and thought about it for three weeks or something, staring at it from different angles moving pages around and writing things on it. I listened to “emotional and sincere yet quiet, catchy, pleasant, and unobtrusive” music during this period of editing, I think it was mostly Rilo Kiley and Neva Dinova (songs off their split with Bright Eyes). I tried to be very selective in what I put into Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy.

At some point in my life I want to publish a book where I “just put all my shit into it” in a random order. People will probably like that because it will include my “screwing around” stories and poems and people like my “screwing around” things according to what I have read on the internet. Taiwan seems to me like “someone just put all their shit into it.” Japan seems to me like the “selective” version of Taiwan. I have been to both places and like them both.

I don’t know what to type about Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. I tried to type some things about it but then typed those other things.

Look out for a 3:AM/Tao Lin “exclusive” very, very soon. Meantime, Tao is having a book-launch party for Cognitive-Behavorial Therapy, and y’all are invited.

Further: Cognitive-Behavorial Therapy, the website, with special features including a promotional video and every page edited ‘half-assedly’ into haikus

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09/05/08: Putting away Childish things

There’s a new work out on Billy Childish. Penned by Neal Brown and introduced by Peter Doig, Billy Childish: A Short Study is available as a limited edition hardback—with a portrait of Childish by Gareth McConnell—as a paperback and as a free PDF (but as with all Childish/Aquarium productions, you’ll want to put your hand in your pocket and get yourself a hard copy). Here’s a teaser from the Introduction:

Billy and I met at St Martin’s School of Art in 1980 – where we ‘studied’ together. I have had respect and admiration for him from the beginning. He had already had a stint there in the late seventies and was back for seconds by the time I arrived . . . Billy was not really around very much. Early on I remember him in the life drawing room. We drew ‘Dog Jaw Woman’ – Billy’s nickname for what was easily the most attractive and animated model we had there. Billy subsequently made a Xeroxed book of poems and drawings as an ode to her. For a second-year exhibition Billy turned up with a heavily rendered green, black and white portrait of his friend Sexton Ming, painted so thick and wet that (when hung above a radiator) it curled up like a stiff sail.
 
There was never any doubt in my mind that Billy is an artist. A lot of people are embarrassed by work like Billy’s – but that’s what’s great about it as well. He is very honest. I don’t ever remember Billy painting in the studios of Charing Cross Road, but do remember him busking in the underpass at Centre Point and in Coffee Bar Dave’s, where he challenged a hairy Hell’s Angel (a real one) to prove that he could balance a full pint of beer on his erection. Billy was in Hamburg a lot of the time, or so it seemed. While we were down Le Beat Route, he was playing the Star Club . . . and on one great occasion his group The Milkshakes played at a house party next to the British Museum where all us students had paintings hanging in the back garden. Occasionally Billy appeared in photos, in his self-published books of poems and drawings, dressed like Rodchenko or Kurt Schwitters, along with drawings that looked like rough Paul Klees.

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: Five for: Mark Safranko

1) Lounge Lizard has been compared to Henry Miller’s Sexus and Charles Bukowski’s Women. As “Henry Miller” and “Henry Chinaski” were extensions of those writers, is Max Zajack your literary alter-ego? How much of Mark Safranko is there in Max Zajack?
Absolutely, yes. Well, at least one of my alter egos. How much of Mark SaFranko is there in Max Zajack? Insofar as my life experiences go, everything. But it’s long been evident to me that any sort of autobiographical or confessional writing is essentially a lie. As soon as pen hits paper, truth is deflected at the source. Something perverse happens in the attempt to be “honest.” A writer can recount his experiences but altogether fail to capture the essence of something because so much, from so many different angles, is brought to bear on a specific experience. There’s usually a lot more to the author than emerges on the page. I would question whether even someone like Proust succeded in pulling it off.

2) Last time we met Zajack, he was a struggling writer in a tempestuous relationship, recalling John Fante’s great book Ask the Dust. This time around, he’s working for the man and shagging rings ’round him. Aside from Miller and Bukowski, does Lounge Lizard have any other direct literary influences?
Probably the biggest is Bill Naughton’s Alfie novels, too underestimated and ignored in my opinion. Also Pedro Juan Gutierrez, the Cuban writer. We have something in common as well. Others too, I’m sure.

3) I’ve been enjoying reading your articles on The Guardian Books blog, highlighting some of your favourite under-rated writers. You even been
the subject of one yourself, “a genius overdue for recognition”. Who’s the best writer we’ve never heard of? And why?
Susan, that’s the toughest question you’ve asked. Mohammed Mrabet, the Moroccan who collaborated with Paul Bowles. You can’t find his books anymore, at least in America. He’s a great confessional writer. Seance On A Wet Afternoon by Mark McShane. Small 1961 British novel that was the basis of a great film with Kim Stanley and Richard Attenborough. That one just popped into mind. Alberto Moravia, who no one reads anymore, specifically The Conformist. Here’s another: Among The Dead, a potboiler by the Frenchmen Boileau and Narcejac. Japrisot’s One Deadly Summer. Robin Maugham’s The Servant. My reading tastes are all over the place.

4) You recently were Guest Editor for Beat the Dust. How did you find that? How did you select the writers for that issue?
Difficult, because there was something to be admired in every submission. I have a great deal of respect for what people put down on paper. I hated to turn any of it away. In the end it was whatever struck me as good on a given day.

5) Aside from a novelist, you’re a playwright, musician, actor and short story writer. What are you working on at the moment? Can we expect to meet Max Zajack again soon?
At this moment I’m working on a couple of non-Zajack novels and two story collections. I’m always working on something — including some kind of a job.
Can we expect to meet Max Zajack again soon? I hope so. The next Zajack novel, written before Hating Olivia and Lounge Lizard, should see the light of day within the next couple of years, hopefully. That one’s been done for a long time. I’m also working on a fourth. who knows, maybe there will be a fifth if I’m around long enough.

Lounge Lizard by Mark SaFranko is available now to buy from Murder Slim Press.

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