Chris Hall Those who have read Peter Ackroyd’s Dan Leno and The Limehouse Golem will recall that the word golem comes from the medieval Jewish for an artificial human being brought to life by supernatural means, a “thing without form”. Ackroyd’s latest book, London: The Biography, has itself managed to breathe life into a seemingly […]
Jeff Noon: Cobralingus
Antony Johnston START > INLET Welcome to the review of Jeff Noon’s latest book, Cobralingus. DRUG: HYPERBOLIN > ENHANCE Jeff Noon’s latest masterpiece, the work of literate beauty that is Cobralingus, takes the reader on an unparalleled journey; one which will never be forgotten. This exemplary poetry, finely encapsulating the very essence of language, ensures […]
George Pelecanos: Washington DC Crime Quartet
Chris Wiegand on George Pelecanos’ contemporary hardboiled Washington DC novels With his critically acclaimed Washington DC Quartet, comprising The Big Blowdown, King Suckerman, The Sweet Forever and Shame the Devil, George P. Pelecanos has done for the mean streets of the Chocolate City what Raymond Chandler did for Los Angeles and Chester Himes did for […]
Hunter S. Thompson : Fear and Loathing In America and Screwjack : Postcards From The Edge
Nathan Cain reflects on the journalistic legacy of elderly dope fiend Hunter S. Thompson I found Hunter S. Thompson by accident. I was looking through the stacks at my local public library, searching for something, I don’t remember what, when I read the title Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on the spine of an […]
Gitta Sereny : The German Trauma
With the publication of her new 75 year study The German Trauma, Eugene Byrne talks to Gitta Sereny Eugene Byrne For someone who’s spent most of her adult life staring into the abyss, Gitta Sereny laughs a heck of a lot. “I love to laugh. I laugh a great deal. I think because of my […]
Ernesto Quinonez : Bodega Dreams : Spanglish Stories
Chris Wiegand meets Ernesto Quiñonez and dives into Spanish Harlem with Bodega Dreams With the short story collection Drown, Junot Diaz proved that modern literary representations of the Latin American experience could be both critically and commercially successful and Ernesto Quiñonez’s assured debut novel Bodega Dreams follows suite. Published in the U.K. by Serpent’s Tail, […]
James Ellroy: American Tabloid
Richard Pendleton The reader always mainlined crime fiction in front of the TV. He picked up the book. He rubbed his chin. The bristle made a noise like the crackle of fire spreading through a condo in the background . The reader said "It’s American Tabloid. It’s by James Ellroy." Cynical reader said it was […]
Paisley Rekdal: The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee
David Remy Based upon journals kept during the author’s travels through Asia, the essays in The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee: Observations On Not Fitting In read less as a search for family roots than an investigation into how society’s attitudes about race shape cultural identity. According to Rekdal, the daughter of a Chinese […]
Jean-Yves Tadie: Marcel Proust
Stephen Mitchelmore For a short time, I used to stay up most of the night. In the long summer months between school years there was no all-night radio let alone all-night television. To pass time, I would listen to the BBC World Service on poor Medium Wave reception. One night around two in the morning, […]
Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier And Clay
Miriam McDonald This book, set mostly in the 1940s, begins when Joe Kavalier escapes with the legendary Golem from Nazi-occupied Prague, only to find himself in America with no way to free his family, no matter what he does. Just as America is wide-open for these characters, so Europe closes around their loved ones and […]
J.G. Ballard : Super Cannes : Flight And Imagination
Chris Hall talks about the dark side of capitalism and the deceptions of reality with J.G. Ballard Walking along Oxford Street the day after I finished reading JG Ballard’s new novel, Super-Cannes, it struck me, literally, the total acceptance of the substrate of violence in consumer societies when it manifests itself. A silent, monolithic crowd […]
Gabriel Josipovici – On Trust: Art and the Temptations of Suspicion
Jimmy Tarbuck, the no-nonsense Scouse comedian, was on a chat show a few years ago and was asked what kind of reading he preferred. Without pausing to reflect he said, or rather bellowed, “Pure escapism!” He didn’t elaborate. You wouldn’t expect him to. Actually, he repeated the phrase, perhaps impressed by the sudden acquisition of […]
Andrew Vachss: Dead And Gone
Miriam McDonald Every review I’ve seen of one of Andrew Vachss’ novels talks a lot about the man first. It’s similar to the way James Ellroy is treated in reviews, as though the man is more important than the literature. Certainly both have seen and been involved of things most people only see touched on […]
Anne Rice: Merrick
Miriam McDonald Anne Rice is one of the most important writers of vampire fiction. The impact her novel Interview with the Vampire had is indisputable. If the vampire of the ninetheenth century was the outsider threatening society and the vampire of much of the twentieth century the enemy within our own society (or a by-product […]
Irvine Welsh and the UK Drug Debate
Chris Mitchell ponders the impact of Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting on the UK drug debate [Spike note – this article was written in December 1997 for the now defunct Canadian online magazine Can Say. With the recent furore in the UK after seven Conservative Shadow Cabinet ministers admitted smoking pot, it seemed worth republishing. Despite there […]
Annabel Chong : Sex: The Annabel Chong Story
Robin Askew meets porn star Annabel Chong to discuss her infamous DVD documentary Sex: The Annabel Chong Story “Oh my god – this couple just turned around and gave me a dirty look!” Annabel Chong giggles like a schoolgirl. “It’s like, no sex please we’re British.” Perhaps unwisely, she’d stepped outside her film company’s noisy […]
Lawrence O’Toole : Pornocopia : Talking Dirty
Chris Mitchell meets Lawrence O’Toole, author of Pornocopia: Porn, Sex, Technology and Desire It’s a well-worn joke that any dinner-party discussion of the Internet will inevitably include a mention of finding pornography while on- line. As Lawrence O’Toole points out in his book, Pornocopia: Porn, Sex, Technology And Desire, the Internet has been the biggest […]
Will Self : How The Dead Live : Dead Man Talking
Chris Hall has a lively conversation with Will Self Although, at 39, Will Self is approaching mid-life and he can see the “lowering storm of age and extinction” ahead of him, there is still certainly nothing in his prose or his physiognomy to suggest that he will become flabby or paunchy. Indeed, even though his […]
Simon Mawer: Mendel’s Dwarf
Robin Askew Nature has played a cruel trick on Dr. Benedict Lambert, the great-great-great nephew of Gregor Mendel, father of modern genetics. He’s achondroplastic, phenotypically abnormal, macrocephalic with pronounced lumbar lordosis: a dwarf. A brilliant geneticist himself, Ben has devoted his life to isolating the gene that made him the way he is. There’s not […]
Cedric Mims: When We Die
Robin Askew The first thing to happen is regurgitation of the stomach contents into the mouth or air passages. At the same time, urine is passed and semen emitted. The skin gets purple on the underside of the body where the blood accumulates, rigor mortis sets in, and the intestinal microbes gobble up the gut […]
Amy Prior: Retro Retro
Chris Wiegand As Y2K dropped, London-based writer Amy Prior wasn’t thinking about the new millennium. Her thoughts were with passed eras populated by teddy boys, ’50s teenagers and matinee idols. When Serpent’s Tail asked her to come up with a theme for a new short story anthology, the former charity shop clothes model decided to […]
Barry Miles: The Beat Hotel
Nathan Cain 9 rue Git-le-Coeur is an address that looms large in the literary landscape of the last half of the twentieth century. It was, until 1963, the site of an anonymous, low-rent flophouse on the traditionally bohemian Left Bank. It would be a wholly unremarkable place, indistinguishable from the many other similar hotels in […]
Huston Smith: Cleansing The Doors Of Perception
Nathan Cain Popular culture is, for the first time since Aldous Huxley published his (in)famous book The Doors of Perception in 1954, without a narcomancer. With the recent passing of Terrence McKenna, a void has been left in our culture. No one dominant individual is out there positing far out theories about the purported benefits […]
Paul Celan : After The Disaster
Stephen Mitchelmore explores the post-Holocaust poetry of Paul Celan “With a variable key you unlock the house in which drifts the snow of that left unspoken. Always what key you choose depends on the blood that spurts from your eye or your mouth or your ear. You vary the key, you vary the word that […]
Jeff Noon : Pixel Juice : Dub Til It Bleeds
Polly Marshall hears why sci-fi is a four letter word for the Lee Scratch Perry of contemporary letters, Jeff Noon Jeff Noon’s gorgeous girlfriend has her hands on the wheel and a crazy glint in her big blue eyes. Jeff and Julie are my not entirely reliable guides on the Vurt tour, a late night […]
