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 […]
Liz Evans: Girls Will Be Boys: Women Report On Rock
Jason Weaver Now, here’s a conundrum. Liz Evans has edited a volume of journalism on contemporary rock music written exclusively by women and here am I, a man, sent out to review it. Ideologically thin ice. I have to confess, I’m tripping over every nuance. A wrong-footed phrase is going to sound like an alibi, […]
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 […]
Keith Haring : A Brief Meeting : Hieroglyphic Icon
Michael Morrissey recalls a brief but memorable meeting with Keith Haring Remembering is a strange voyage. The mind, a dreamy traveller, retraces its steps to an event in ways elevatory. It turns a simple statement into so much more. Looking back on meeting the artist Keith Haring in November 1989 puts me at an odd […]
Cookie Mueller: Ask Doctor Mueller
Chris Mitchell This is one book you can judge by the cover. It shows a home snapped portrait of Cookie Mueller laughing, her head thrown back and her hand out against the wall for support. Ask Dr Mueller is three hundred pages of that laughter, gathered together from over 25 years worth of her writing […]
Michael Bracewell: England Is Mine
Jason Weaver Before his passport read ‘novelist’, Michael Bracewell learnt his trade on the first rush of British style magazines. Much of Bracewell’s work from the mid-’80s could be found in Arena, sibling to The Face but with a considerably higher brow. Sadly, the magazine got crushed in the publishing stampede that has instead brought […]
John seabrook: deeper: no flame, no gain
Deeper grew out of two articles John Seabrook wrote for The New Yorker magazine. The premise of the book is both simple and effective: the “newbie” is sent on a passage to cyberspace, armed only with rudimentary vocabulary and a tube of factor 30 to protect against “flaming”. The voyager then records his progress and, […]
The Basquiat File
Robert Knafo In his short life (1960-1988), Jean-Michel Basquiat came to personify the art scene of the 80s, with its merging of youth culture, money, hype, excess, and self-destruction. And then there was the work, which the public image tended to overshadow: paintings and drawings that conjured up marginal urban black culture and black history, […]
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, […]
Body Piercing: The Customised Body And Tribal Transgression: Remake, Remodel
Spike enters the strange world of body modification [Award Winning Tattoo Designs – The Biggest And Best Collection Of Tattoos.] Tattoos. Piercing. Dreadlocks. Body Art. What is the world coming to? It would seem if we follow the lead of much of the popular press a minority of degenerates are corrupting our sensibilities, and so […]
P.J. O’Rourke : Age And Guile : Sex, Drugs, O’Rourke And Roll
Chris Mitchell encounters the age and guile of political satirist P.J. O’Rourke the American political satirist P.J. O’Rourke recently published Age And Guile, which gathers together previously uncollected material spanning his 25 years of journalism. PJ has built his merciless literary reputation on three things: irritating American liberals, abusing chemicals and visiting every warzone […]
Albert Camus: SPIKE interviews Catherine Camus, daughter of Albert Camus: Solitaire et solidaire
Russell Wilkinson talks to Catherine Camus about Albert Camus’ The First Man [Cliquez ici pour la version française de cette interview] In January 1960, the French writer and philosopher Albert Camus was killed in a car crash along with his friend and publisher, Michel Gallimard. Recovered from the wreckage of the crash was the unfinished […]
Tibor Fischer: Under The Frog: The Fischer King
Cliff Taylor gets a rare interview with the reclusive Tibor Fischer The scene: a typically wintry Wednesday afternoon. Upstairs at The Lift in Brighton’s Queen Road, some whey-faced literary types are gathered around a table for a seminar of sorts. Their rapt attention is focused upon The Writer in their midst, a slightly grizzled […]
Douglas Rushkoff : Children Of Chaos (Playing The Future) : Lost In Translation
Chris Mitchell speaks to Douglas Rushkoff about making sense of the future “My career is based on the fact that I’m close enough to the boomers to be able to speak their language, but close enough to the busters to understand what the hell it is that they’re doing. I’m one of the hinge […]
Gwyneth Jones : Phoenix Cafe : Phoenix Rising
Chris Mitchell hears about the strange truth of science fiction from Gwyneth Jones “I’m in a fairly lonely position as a British woman writing science fiction,” says Brighton-based novelist Gwyneth Jones, but then, it’s always lonely at the top. Her new novel Phoenix Café has recently received widespread acclaim from the national press, which […]
Samuel Beckett: Beyond Biography: The Last Modernist by Anthony Cronin and Damned To Fame by James Knowlson :
Despite two recent authorative biographies, Stephen Mitchelmore argues that Beckett remains an enigma It has not been easy assimilating Beckett into our culture. While his mentor James Joyce made with ease the familiar journey from public outrage and bewilderment to universal love and admiration, Beckett, seven years after his death, remains as distant as ever. […]
Douglas Coupland : Polaroids From The Dead : From Fear To Eternity
Chris Mitchell emails Douglas Coupland about fame, the future and the problem with American chocolate Douglas Coupland is not your average novelist. Since the publication of Generation X in 1991, he has become one of this decade’s most important writers, thanks to his unerring ability to capture the zeitgeist of young middle class America in […]
Jeff Noon : Automated Alice : Fairytales From The Future
Bethan Roberts talks to Jeff Noon about his new novel Automated Alice What’s really nice about Jeff Noon is that, firstly, I can use a word like “nice” about him (not, I expect, a word most cyberpunks would be comfortable with), and secondly, beyond the street-level-city-techno-punkiness that precedes him in the form of his […]
X20: Richard Beard
SPIKE presents an exclusive extract from this hilarious cigarette obsessed debut novel DAY 1 DR WILLIAM BARCLAY, born 7 March 1936, died 3 March 1994, age 57. Mysterium Magnum. The principle of all generation is separation, he used to say. Distract your mind. Take up a new hobby. Occupy your hands. He said that the […]
Keith Haring : Keith Haring’s Journals : Artist Or Radiant Baby
Spike looks at the man behind the spray can with the publication of Keith Haring’s journals At the close of the twentieth century, trying to find a stable definition for the term “art” has become increasingly difficult. The traditional notion of art as the privilege of the educated and wealthy, preserved within galleries and private […]
Iain Banks : Whit and Excession: Getting Used To Being God
Chris Mitchell meets the relentlessly imaginative Iain.M Banks Twelve years and fourteen books since the publication of his debut novel The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks has become one of Britain’s most prominent and prolific writers. Whether writing mainstream novels as plain “Iain Banks” or science fiction under his ubiquitous “Iain M. Banks” nom-de-plume, Banks […]
Francis Ford Coppola : The Godfather : Saturday Night Fever: John Badham: Sex And Spaghetti
Bethan Roberts watches the transformation of the American-Italian man, from The Godfather to Saturday Night Fever With The Godfather recently re-released in a new print, Don Corleone and his family are back on our screens, shovelling spaghetti into their mouths, screaming at their wives and shooting other Mafia families – all with excessive amounts of […]
Bruce Chatwin’s travel writing: In Search Of The Miraculous
Spike on the enduring enigma of Bruce Chatwin’s travel writing Bruce Chatwin was a truly singular voice in British travel writing, and whose silence is now all too apparent. Since his untimely death in 1989 of what was described at the time as a rare Chinese disease (but which was later admitted to be AIDS), […]
