Comedian Graham Duff Now more than ever, publicity and promotion can spell life or death for an Edinburgh Fringe show. The people on the front line are the Leafleters, or as they are courageously known in the world of promotion, Foot Soldiers. The people whose job it is to whittle away a fad wad of […]
The Significance Of Names In The Fiction Of Martin Amis, Vladimir Nabokov, John Kennedy Toole, Joseph Heller, Samuel Beckett, John Updike, Will Self, Umberto Eco : Waiting For Go.Dot
Chris Hall on the significance of names in fiction and film The importance of names in literature has nowhere been more typified than in recent attempts to pin down the elusive etymology of Beckett’s Godot. Following that farrago you can be sure that the name ‘Godot’ is missing from any parental ‘Book Of Names’ (although […]
Derek Jarman: Preserving A Harlequin
Spike reflects on the work of England’s quintessential Renaissance man, Derek Jarman By the time you read this, Derek Jarman: A Retrospective will have closed at the Barbican Centre. However, the Barbican Centre’s comprehensive catalogue of the exhibition, which has been published by Thames And Hudson, gives a chance to re-evaluate the impact and splendour […]
Andy Warhol: SPIKE looks at I Shot Andy Warhol: There She Goes Again
Chris Mitchell sees the American premiere of I Shot Andy Warhol The debut feature from writer-director Mary Harron, which opened in New York last month, takes a hitherto unexamined angle on the Warhol myth. I Shot Andy Warhol tells the story of Valerie Solanis, Warhol’s would-be assassin and author of the S.C.U.M. (Society for Cutting […]
Alberto Sciamma : The Killer Tongue : Suck It And See
Chris Mitchell gets a sneak preview of the outrageous new film, The Killer Tongue This year’s Cannes Festival witnessed an explosion of tongues, transvestites and the tightest costumes ever devised with the premier screening of The Killer Tongue, the debut film from the Brighton-based production company Spice Factory. Starring Robert (‘Freddie Krueger’) Englund and Doug […]
Brian Patten: The Minister For Exams
When I was a child I sat an exam. The test was so simple There was no way I could fail. Q1. Describe the taste of the moon. It tastes like Creation I wrote, it has the flavour of starlight. Q2. What colour is Love? Love is the colour of the water a man lost […]
Brian Patten: Armada
Long, long ago when everything I was told was believable and the little I knew was less limited than now, I stretched belly down on the grass beside a pond and to the far bank launched a child’s armada. hidA broken fortress of twigs, the paper-tissue sails of galleons, the waterlogged branches of submarines – […]
Son Of G, 1993 (after Allen Ginsberg’s Howl)
Annalise Bomenblit I saw the best minds of our generation silent before a fluorescent light that screamed like the rainbow sky of the drowned man’s last memory who tried to fight it with pilgrimages at night to food and other scarce suburban treasures speaking of things they bought and things to buy and things to […]
Julian Rathbone: Intimacy
Naomi Delap I feel sorry for writers these days. It’s so terribly difficult to be iconoclastic, what with the Irvine Welsh backlash just about to break and that sinking feeling you get whenever blurb describes anything as remotely Tarantinoesque. There are no new subjects to write about, and any attempt at novelty eventually and inevitably […]
Richard Powers: Galatea 2.2
Adam Baron Richard Powers’ fictional hero (also titled Richard Powers) returns from years in the Netherlands to the University that gave him his love of Literature. The author of four novels, Powers is to be the Humanist in residence in the newly built cognitive science centre, a labyrinth of laboratories and computer networks. Powers does […]
Quentin Crisp: Resident Alien: The New York Diaries
Chris Mitchell As camp as Christmas and twice as sparkly, Mr. Quentin Crisp makes his literary return with Resident Alien. Featuring selections from his diaries between 1990 to 1994, Resident Alien describes the hectic social whirl of one “who is in the profession of being.” Never refusing an invitation, Quentin lives a life in which […]
Andrei Codrescu: The Blood Countess
Adam Baron When I was teaching English in the Slovak Republic a few years ago, I was told the story of Elizabeth Bathory, “the blood sucking Countess of Cahtice,” a town in Slovakia which used to be part of Hungary. Countess Elizabeth, in a bizarre twist to the droit de seigneur, was alleged to have […]
Mary Zuravleff: The Frequency Of Souls
Naomi Delap The Grand Affaire is ever the stuff great fiction is made of. Revelling in the cathartic effect of our protagonist’s roller-coaster ride of emotion, we gasp as the first illicit coupling finally takes place, groan as the inevitable disillusionment sets in, heave a sigh of pleasurable anguish when the tale ends in an […]
Patricia Morrisroe: Robert Mapplethorpe: A Biography
Nick Clapson Robert Mapplethorpe has long been a contentious figure in the art world, with much of this debate focusing on whether or not his erotic/homoerotic photographs trespass the boundaries of pornography. This is a matter which becomes especially prejudiced by the fact that they often deal with the difficult subject of gay sadomasochism. Much […]
Iain Sinclair: Conductors Of Chaos
Chris Mitchell Poetry, far more than fiction, is a difficult one to discuss. One reader’s revulsion is another’s revelation. So at first sight I thought Conductors of Chaos would be right up SPIKE’s alley (as it were) due to Picador billing it as the collection which Faber & Faber dare not publish. Cool! I thought. […]
Marcus Gray: It Crawled From The South: An R.E.M. Companion
Chris Mitchell This is the second edition of Marcus Gray’s definitive encyclopaedic guide to R.E.M., one of the few intelligent bands capable of regularly packing stadiums. Conceived as a comprehensive reference source for the diehard R.E.M. fan rather than the usual sycophantic rawk biography, It Crawled from The South features self- contained and cross-referenced chapters […]
Irvine Welsh: Ecstasy: Three Chemical Romances
Chris Mitchell With the phenomenal success of Trainspotting (in all its various literary, filmic and dramatic guises), Irvine Welsh has moved from semi-literary obscurity to the centre of contemporary English writing. Trainspotting was one of those books that provoked people who hated reading to devour its three-hundred plus pages. This never happened with Martin Amis. […]
Joel And Ethan Coen : Fargo : Love Minus Zero
Fargo Joel And Ethan Coen Chris Mitchell Snow most often appears in the movies as the signifier of Christmas cheer. It may be cold outside, but it looks beautiful and everyone has a rosy glow on their faces and in their hearts. Fargo is different. From the blizzard which rages in the opening scenes through […]
Quentin Crisp : Resident Alien : An Englishman In New York
Chris Mitchell goes for lunch with Quentin Crisp This month sees the publication of Resident Alien, the selected diaries of Quentin Crisp. It is difficult to surmise whether this man needs an introduction or not, such is his longevity as a cult figure of quintessential Englishness, “a stately old homo of England”, to quote […]
