Dr Willy Maley applauds the theatrical assault of Irvine Welsh’s stage play You’ll Have Had Your Hole Brecht once remarked that he’d like to see the kind of people who attended football matches at his plays. Scotland has not had a particularly distinguished record in the field of football, but in recent years, blessed with […]
Iain Banks: A Song Of Stone
David B. Livingstone Anybody would be forgiven a measure of confusion upon entry into one of Iain Banks’ many fictional worlds. From the moldering attic at the epicenter of The Wasp Factory to the immense, hallucinatory title structure of The Bridge, Banks has always delighted in plunging his readers into strange, painstakingly described settings and […]
Don DeLillo: Underworld
Gary Marshall Starting with a 1951 baseball game and ending with the Internet, “Underworld” is not a book for the faint-hearted. Elegiac in tone and described variously as DeLillo’s Magnum Opus and his attempt to write the Great American Novel, the book weighs in at a hefty 827 pages and zips back and forwards in […]
Richard Powers: Gain
David B. Livingstone Nobody talks much about the quest for “great American novel” anymore; the phrase, once a sneering European attempt at an oxymoron, was long ago answered by Faulkner, Hemingway, and Miller. To the surprise of some, even America – first, the motley amalgam of immigrant trappers and farmers; later, the citadel of capitalism […]
Todd Fahey: Wisdom’s Maw interview
An interview with Todd Fahey about his gonzo conspiracy theory novel Wisdom’s Maw SPIKE note: This interview first appeared in the print zine Carbon 14. Todd Fahey is still without a UK publisher for Wisdom’s Maw, despite rave reviews from every sector of the literary press. Go figure, as they would say in America. Check […]
Will Self: Tough Tough Toys For Tough Tough Boys
Robert Clarke In his new collection of short stories, Will Self once more welcomes us to the terrifyingly trenchant world of the literary recusant. With his usual irreverent wit and unrestrained surrealism, Tough Tough Toys For Tough Tough Boys sees Self move from the ridiculous to the downright absurd through a mixture of high art […]
Will Self : Tough Tough Toys For Tough Tough Boys : Pre-Millennium Tension
Robert Clarke hears why Will Self has become an uncertain satirist No other author in recent years has divided the critics with such relish as Will Self. With, three novellas and two novels to his credit, and now a third collection of short stories, Tough Tough Toys For Tough Tough Boys, he has established himself […]
Geoff Ryman: 253
Chris Mitchell Despite appearing in print for the first time this month, Geoff Ryman’s 253 is not a new book. This self-styled “interactive novel” has been available on the Internet since 1996 at http://www.ryman-novel.com, and its electronic success has prompted the “print re-mix” version to be published. The original Internet version of 253 was not […]
Melanie McGrath : Hard, Soft And Wet: Doing It For The Kids
Chris Mitchell meets Melanie McGrath, chronicler of the Digital Generation The days of travel writing being produced by someone wearing a pith helmet and clutching a pink gin are thankfully over. The new generation of travel writers are increasingly venturing into uncharted territories, as Melanie McGrath’s new book Hard, Soft And Wet demonstrates. No, it’s […]
Arthur C. Clarke : 3001: The Final Odyssey : The Final Odyssey
Arthur C. Clarke on life, the universe and everything Spike note: This interview was released as part of the PR package for Clarke’s most recent book, 3001: The Final Odyssey. Therefore it’s appeared in several places before. However, since interviews with Clarke these days are rare, it seemed foolish not to reproduce it here. Transcript […]
J.G. Ballard : David Cronenberg’s Crash : Future Shock
Chris Hall finds out why J.G. Ballard thinks Crash is the first film of the 21st century One week before David Cronenberg’s Crash opened in the UK at the beginning of June, the normally reclusive author J.G. Ballard appeared at a regional press conference and pre-screening of the film in Wardour Street, London. Cronenberg’s film […]
E.M Cioran: To Infinity And Beyond
Stephen Mitchelmore explains why the writing of E.M. Cioran refuses explanation “Nothing is more irritating than those works which ‘co-ordinate’ the luxuriant products of a mind that has focused on just about everything except a system.” What is there to know about Emile Cioran? He was born in Romania, in 1911, the son of a […]
Nicholas Blincoe: Jello Salad: John L. Williams: Faithless
Jason Weaver sees two very different sides of London in Nicholas Blincoe’s Jello Salad and John L. Williams’ Faithless What is there to say about Jello Salad by Nicholas Blincoe? Well, there’s a bit of sex, and a lot of drugs and even more violence. Blincoe’s characters do things to the body that will never […]
Jeff Noon: Nymphomation
Chris Mitchell After giving Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland electric shock treatment last year in Automated Alice, Jeff Noon’s new novel Nymphomation returns to the near-future Manchester of his first two books, Vurt and Pollen. While Automated Alice was an audacious exercise in seeing quite how far he could push reinventing a classic, Nymphomation sees […]
Tibor Fischer: The Collector Collector
David B. Livingstone here are going to be people who’ll complain that this book and its author are just a little bit too clever for their own good. In The Collector Collector, Tibor Fischer strains suspension of disbelief to within millimeters of its snapping point, thanks to a presumptuous – and on the surface, unpromising […]
Thomas Pynchon: Mason And Dixon
David Livingstone Brevity, the aphorism has it, is the soul of wit. So where does that leave Thomas Pynchon, whose current offering Mason & Dixon weighs in at close to eight hundred pages – and of often-impenetrable stylized “old english” text, no less? The real Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, America’s original sub-dividers, took upon […]
Trainspotting: The Play : Expletives Repeated
Harry Gibson’s stage adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s Trainspottinghas taken the theatre world by storm. Chris Mitchell discusses censorship, sincerity and swearing with the director. [Note: this interview is about the original stage production of Trainspotting in 1996. Spike also has another interview with Harry Gibson on the 10th anniversary stage production of Trainspotting in 2006.] […]
Marie Darrieussecq : Pig Tales : Shelf Life
Chris Hall gives the lowdown on Marie Darrieussecq Who’s Marie Darrieussecq? The 28-year-old author of debut novel Pig Tales, which has taken France by storm. The book took just 24-hours to be accepted after she sent her unsolicited manuscript to publishers Big deal. Well, quite. It’s sold a staggering 250,000 hardback copies and has been […]
Toby Litt : Beatniks : Shelf Life
Chris Mitchell gives the lowdown on Toby Litt Who’s Toby Litt? “Britain’s answer to Douglas Coupland“, according to various critics. “If you don’t want to be him or have him, you’re dead” drooled Julie Burchill with her characteristic understatement Our very own homegrown Generation X guru, then? Last year’s debut short story collection Adventures In […]
The Sugar Mummy: Bertie Marshall
Psychoboys is set in the cities of Moscow and Berlin. It tells the story of Rez, a rent boy living on the streets, and his fight for survival in a world of bizarre strangers. He meets a riot of characters – Ms Thing, a transvestite sugar mummy who educates him in the art of coprophilia […]
Bertie Marshall : Psychoboys : Text Maniac
Chris Mitchell meets Bertie Marshall, the original psychoboy When does a debut underground experimental novel featuring a stomach-churning mix of depraved sex, hideous death, wanton coprophilia and insane genetic mutation gain critical praise from the mainstream likes of i-D, Time Out and The Big Issue? When it’s written by Brighton author Bertie Marshall. Psychoboys is […]
make up: it’s not only rock N roll but I like it
Jason Weaver on the musical impact of rock’n’roll band make up The Marxist project was about the conditions of work. Parasites grew fat on the labour of those who worked only to stay alive, an imbalance based on the arbitrary division of society. Marx phrased this situation as an equation, a mathematical formula, an argument. […]
JG Ballard: Extreme Metaphor: A Crash Course In The Fiction Of JG Ballard
Chris Hall gives a crash course in the fiction of JG Ballard Existing somewhere between the manifest edifices of Crash and Empire Of The Sun, the rest of JG Ballard’s fiction glides and grinds like vast tectonic plates. Those already acquainted with Crash, the polar extreme of Ballard’s oeuvre, and his most successful book, the […]
Will Self : Great Apes : Self Destruction
Chris Mitchell finds out why Will Self doesn’t give a monkeys Will Self is the man who brought a whole new meaning to the phrase “mile high club”. Unless you were in a apathy-induced coma during the run-up to the general election, (or living in another country), you can’t have failed to have seen […]
A.L. Kennedy : Original Bliss : Blissed Out
Bethan Roberts talks to A.L. Kennedy about weird sex and the problem with women’s writing I recently went to see AL Kennedy give a reading at the Sussex Arts Club. While the atrocious lighting made her look as if she were about to burst into a rock anthem or become involved in some sci-fi nonsense, […]
