3:AM Magazine

» To not dishonour the dead

Crossword fans will have spotted that ‘Dicky Star’ is an anagram of yardstick, and that ‘garden rule’ can be used to produce the same solution, but there are other kinds of predictions going on here too. Some are retrospective but that doesn’t make the prophecies they contain any less striking. (The writer and broadcaster Ken Hollings reminded me of the McLuhan quote: ‘To be a good prophet never predict anything that has not already happened.’) There is a connection, too, perhaps to the divinatory aspect of storytelling: Calvino’s The Castle of Crossed Destinies. So, somehow out of this mandated vocabulary, the yardsticks and the coverage of a broken Dungeness, it becomes clear to Laura and Jeremy that if there were a nuclear disaster in the UK it would be covered up in a different way than in the Soviet Union. It would be displaced by the deployment of a new myth based on some traditional, typically English, craft-based activity.

The mighty Tony White interviewed by Richard Marshall.

» The urban age: an interview with P.D. Smith

‘Every city is unique, but there are certain features shared by cities. It was fascinating trying to identify these and then exploring them through time and space. It was like writing a natural history of cities and urbanism. The global view was always central to the project. Certainly, having to absorb so much material was a challenge, but it was also immensely rewarding. It brought home to me the astonishing continuity that runs through city life around the world, from the first cities to today’s megacities.’

Karl Whitney interviews P.D. Smith about his new book City: A Guidebook for the Urban Age.

» Truth, reason & democracy

During the Bush administration, Ron Susskind famously reported that one of Bush’s top advisors (probably Karl Rove) sneered that the administration’s critics were continuing to live in the “reality-based community”. That was a mistake, he said, because “we are an empire now, we create our own reality”. This is a telling remark. It illustrates not only what was wrong with that administration but why truth is so important a concept – and not just for philosophers. When we ignore the difference between what those in power say is true and what is true, we risk not only losing our rights, but the ability to even give ourselves any critical voice. So that is why thinking about truth matters - because the truth matters.

Continuing the End Times series, Richard Marshall interviews Michael Lynch.

» From the East End to Wembley & back again

Two London-themed books published this spring, although different in almost everything, from jacket design to word count, can be read in the same subversive spirit. 1948, a monstrous haggard face casting a sinister shadow on its cover, is easily recognised as a parody of Orwell’s most famous work. More precisely, it is an inversion, where a dystopia becomes a utopia, heroes and villains swap places, while the 1948 Olympiad is contrasted with the forthcoming games. The dramatis personae include Winston Smith, a policeman, O’Brien, his boss, Julia, his girlfriend; there is even a fleeting appearance of one Eric Blair. The story is a political farce, a whodunnit which culminates in a massive Two Minutes Joy at Wembley.

Anna Aslanyan reviews 1948: A Novel in Verse & Acquired for Development by… A Hackney Anthology.

» Last call

The people who kept Touch and Go going for Studs were Sydney Lewis, his assistant, Dan Terkel, his son and J. R. Millares, his live-in help. When Touch and Go was being finished, they stumbled upon some things by Studs that deserved to be printed in book form. Studs was nearing death, what were his best pieces, his favorite pieces, and what little things could he leave behind as tokens of who he was and what he liked? Those things are collected in P.S.: Further Thoughts from a Lifetime of Listening. It’s one last note before Studs had to stop. He died on October 31, 2008 with a copy of the book at his bedside. The book came out a few weeks later.

Robert O’Connor ends his series on the complete works of Studs Terkel with his last book, P.S.

» Whether we last the night

By 2007, Studs’ normally robust health had deteriorated. He had open-heart surgery in 2005 at the age of 93, and had gotten less and less mobile. His hearing was mostly gone. His longtime transcriber and assistant Sydney Lewis had moved to Massachusetts to work for Atlantic Public Media. André Schiffrin sensed Studs would go soon, and asked Lewis to help him write one last book - his memoir. In the end, it became Touch and Go.

Robert O’Connor continues his series on the complete works of Studs Terkel with his second memoir, Touch and Go

» Our veteran tree walk

It’s hard to orientate in the cemetery away from the main paths. The trees have completely obscured lines of sight on the original strong axial vistas. Even on a path leading directly towards the chapel it’s hard to see it until you’re quite close. I meant to look for the white marble lion - F. hasn’t seen it since it’s been cleaned - but abandon the idea. We look up at the sky. At nearly half past four the sun has dipped right down towards the west and to get to a gate we need to go east or south. But when there isn’t a path that goes in what we think might be the right direction, we can only follow the one in front of us. The trees are too thick to press our way through easily and the rubble of monuments potentially treacherous underfoot. The noise of traffic from Church Street or Stoke Newington High Street should give us some indication of which way to head but in here everything fades to a surrounding hum.

By Bridget Penney.

» 29M

A broad cross-section of Barcelonans had come out to protest reforms which affect everybody. There was a palpable combination of playfulness and potency about the occasion. One irony of protest since 2008, has been that as resistance has become more direct, the message has become subtler and there’s an intellectual agility about this movement that is, to me at least, a revelation. Occupy is accused of lacking coherence but, by eschewing leadership, they have challenged the notion of hierarchy that underpins most organisations and which, for the most part, even those on the left take for granted. If, as Eliot said, “Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important,” Occupy have shown that one person needn’t be considered more important than another for an organisation to be effective.

By Max Liu.

» Against All Ends: Hauntology, Aesthetics, Ontology.

Unsurprisingly, the main features of this aesthetic are sampling in music and appropriation in the visual arts. By emphasizing the anachronisms of these samples and appropriations, mainly through the maintenance of the distance from their origin and the decay that occupies that distance: as crackles and scratches, or faded colours and images that become almost literally ghostly. Instead of mere repetition, this distance provides a sense of loss and mourning, making the present the future of that past, and in turn providing the possibility of another future for the present, a new utopia.

By Liam Sprod.

» Under the Sign of the Black Raven

The collector merely shrugged when Martin pointed out the odd note, dismissed it as ‘doggerel’. Martin, horribly fascinated, asked the collector if he would be prepared to part with the handbill, and he agreed to do so, for a modest sum. Intrigued by his find, Martin, for a few months, spent much of his spare time in research, hoping to discover something to cast light on the dark enigma. At some point during this period, knowing my interest in such things, he showed me the handbill, asked my opinion of it. I told him that, though the handbill itself was certainly real, I thought the note faked. He enquired why; I pointed out how neat the hand was. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘But you’ve no imagination. I find that utterly chilling.’

By Timothy J. Jarvis.

» The Drums

His hands were cold and he dug them in his pockets. His face was buffeted by the chill wind and a few strands of hair that had escaped from underneath his hat danced in the breeze. He moved his fingers up and tucked them away, because he did not feel much like dancing. He tensed his stomach muscles almost involuntarily. He accidently scuffed his shoe on a stone. He saw someone he vaguely recognised and they both found interest in the uneven pavement as they passed. His nose ran and he sniffed. He came by the main road and the cars were too loud for him. The passing lorries became boisterous sticky children in a waiting room. The trucks were crying out for sweets, and the cars were smashed milk bottles on a Sunday morning. They all annoyed him. The aeroplane above him sounded very far away.

By Christopher Kennerley.

» Death of a Ladies’ Man 3

Forty lilies in forty vases, forty cakes with forty candles, forty kinds of dip and forty bruschetta, forty heart-shaped sandwiches and forty kinds of cupcake. Forty sorts of cocktail, necessary for the more than forty guests, mostly from the past fifteen years of Lily’s life, but a few from that distant childhood, those blurry university years. Everyone she knew and many she wished she didn’t. But it was too late now to take back the invitations. It was too late to regret it all. “Forty years and forty lovers!” An old friend teased. Lily, as they all knew, had hardly been with anyone except her absent husband. But Lily laughed it off and turned around, and went to the bathroom, and wished this wasn’t happening. She had never been a birthday party kind of person. She didn’t want everyone to meet and talk and share stories about how they knew her, what they remembered. She didn’t want them all to get flashbacks to embarrassments, remind her of what she happily forgotten, and ask her what she was doing now, and how is Adrian?

Read the third part of Christiana Spens‘ novella, which is being serialised by 3:AM.

» Viewing

Should they go up to the bedroom, he asked. He let her walk in front of him again and on the stairs she noticed paintings on the wall. She tried to look at them, a blur of greens and blues and undefined lines. She thought about the middle-aged man’s life outside of this moment in time, how she didn’t want to know any of it. The bedroom had a single bed, a dresser, a window that looked out onto a garden and some shelves. She had placed her beer on the dresser and turned, realising that the middle-aged man was closer than she had expected. At this distance, she could clearly see the skin between his eyelids and eyebrows drooped down like his developing jowls, making his eyes look half-shut.

By Giles Ruffer.

» Roman Road

We moved into the house next to the fire station on the fifth of November and all night the sirens raged. Our ritual began that first night. As I lay in bed reading Lydia Davis, you put your head around the door. “Can I sleep in here tonight?” “OK,” I said and turned over to face the wall. You deposited your loose change on the broken chair next to the bed and climbed in fully clothed. Our transaction continued in this way, a few loose coppers in exchange for sleeping next to me. No kisses, no sex, no affection, just uneasy sleep.

By Celia Forbes.

» Lone Ranger Ain’t No Stranger

Mescaline, mescaline, that’s my tipple of toxin.

Bit pretentious, mine’s an Amaretto on the rocks.

A book will give you all you need simpers the tiny reader on the aperitif woman’s head.

Bite hard on a porcupine, crumple it up and squeeeze out its poison onto your lips booms the Lion.

I like a concertina when it sings, steams the anvil man behind his mask of glass.

By Alan McCormick & Jonny Voss.

» Frame of House

XII

He came to hollowed

Glassless and craven but only to his own he would breathe and breathe again a silent course through reason and barricades to convince the attire of a man to heal the merkin-like franchise my rutting genitals hidden away like ancient beans in a cave sunk in a tub of fluorescence and baked to fuel the passing train (a rough dressing that floats out for anyone to see the man at the table who pulls out his cock and a water bottle to pee) today I sit in front of the fire and the warmth of the day has nothing to do with the sordid nature of basements

By Samuel Ace.

» Maintenant #93 - Charles Simic

When I’m writing, I’m as oblivious as a dog digging a hole in the ground with his paws. There may be a bone there or nothing at all, but while I’m doing it… that is all I know. After decades of reading and listening to debates about tradition versus avant-garde, I’m frankly bored. Good poetry has been written in all sorts of ways since the days of Rimbaud as everyone ought to admit. If someone can get away today by writing poems that sound like Byron or Emily Dickinson, poems that one can’t stop reading, let’s not worry about what the disciples of Gertrude Stein will say.

In the 93rd of the Maintenant series, SJ Fowler interviews the Serbian / American poet Charles Simic.

» Ghost Cinema

And act like sweethearts
On a bare mattress laid out for their use
On a warehouse floor
Under the bright spotlights.

Standing afterwards
With their foreheads touching
As if about to be hung
By a single rope
From the high ceiling,

By Charles Simic.