Ben Myers wonders if rockers can write? * Sophie Woolley in the New Statesman: “Does art make a difference? It’s hard to make a difference. I tried to make a difference the other day but ran out of fuzzy felt and sticky stars”. * Publish and Be Damned: it’s on 29 July in the London Republic of Shoreditch. * Surplus Matter, the site dedicated to all things Tom McCarthy has been revamped by James Bridle. * Joyce Carol Oates on Tom McCarthy, Steven Hall and others in the New York Review of Books. * Tom McCarthy, Tintin, Richard Nash and The Elegant Variation. * Maggie Dubris and Scott Gillis in dogmatika. * On the late George Melly: “George carried on writing in the same vein of open wonderment about himself, even in Hooked!, his book about fishing, where he described landing a trout, then lying down in the undergrowth and masturbating into a large dock leaf”. * Borders goes Polish. * Edwyn Collins back from the dead. * Stella Vine: “She is drawn to ‘damaged’ people because she feels that she is damaged herself and, ‘I think when you’re damaged you have a childlike vulnerability that never grows up until you fix it”. * Lee Rourke on Anna Kavan (more here) and Shakespeare & Co. * A new French literary website (connected to one of the big news weeklies) called Bibliobs.com will be launched in September. It will work in conjunction with Rue89. * The Bad Brains (who I remember hanging out with in New York back in 81) have still got it. * Learn to Read at Tate Modern. * Jah Wobble reviews Alan Parker’s Sid Vicious book: “I would certainly not dispute the fact that Sid’s early life was far from easy. I recall seeing him use a syringe to inject drugs with his mum. I was 16; it was a shocking and stark image to behold. To me, at that age, your mum was someone who left your tea in the oven, not someone who you banged up drugs with”. * Outsider books. * Former 3:AM member Jude Rogers regrets that “indie has become the mainstream”. * On Malcolm Lowry: “In tragic biographies, perhaps, dwells a half-confirmation of the idea that to approach the mysteries, to capture the figure that will resolve the question mark of existence, a descent must take place, an immersion in what Joseph Conrad called ‘the destructive element’. ‘Lift not the painted veil,’ enjoined Shelley, ‘behind lurk Fear / And Hope, twin destinies; who ever weave / Their shadows, o’er the chasm, sightless and drear.’ For Lowry that chasm was the barranca, the fathomthless ravine running through Cuernavaca into which the consul is thrown, and a dead dog after him — also a vision of hell, the frightful cleft that swallows Marlowe’s Faustus, misquoted by Jacques Laruelle in Under the Volcano: ‘Then will I headlong fly into the earth: / Earth gape! it will not harbour me!’” (and while you’re at it, listen to this). * The Book Of Hopes And Dreams is a poetry anthology published to raise money for the Medical Aid (Afghanistan) appeal of the Glasgow-based charity Spirit Aid — an entirely volunteer-run organisation headed by Scottish actor and director, David Hayman. The anthology includes Margaret Atwood, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Carol Ann Duffy, Simon Armitage, Tony Harrison, Alasdair Gray and many other prominent authors.
* Gülcher live. * Sam Jordison argues that Hunter S Thompson’s suicide was modelled on Hemingway’s. * Hari Kunzru interviewed: “Is there a secret to writing? Yes”. * Douglas Coupland news. * A lengthy article on Parisian dandy blogger-cum-novelist Jérôme Attal. * Porn for book geeks (more here). * Twitter fiction. * London’s Barbican turns punk and punk turns 30. * The London Fetish Fair. * On British theatre. * The rise of Chinese pop fiction. * When The Clash modelled for Laura Ashley! * Gwendoline Riley’s latest reviewed. * Jarvis Cocker interviewed. * Heidi James and others on Radio 3. * Spoken word in Paris. * Teenage bands and teenage classics. * The genesis of Will Self’s Book of Dave. * Turning the enemy gay. * Ellis Sharp on Noah Cicero who is interviewed by Gothamist: “Here [Youngstown] I can hide. No one cares about being an intellectual here. To me, writing and being an intellectual is like a hobby, the internet with its blogs and websites fulfill all those needs for me. I’m not big on people. If I’m in a large crowd I start to hyperventilate and get panic attacks. I can’t go to concerts or go to a restaurant on Friday or Saturday night. I work in one, but in the back with only eight people and sometimes I have little panic attack back there”. * Exit Julie Burchill. * Sam Jordison wonders why Stephen King is so derided. * The hippies now wear black. * William Boyd on Alasdair’s Gray’s Lanark. * A university degree in northernness. * On Manu Chao: “I woke up many mornings thinking maybe I wanted to kill myself. I thought I had lost my instinct, I was thinking only with my reason. A cow saved my life, though. I was in a bar in Rio and a cow walked in, I looked into its eyes, and I saw such tranquillidad, serenity. Then I started seeing cows everywhere. I realise why the Indians worship them”. * Steve Almond reviews Jerry Stahl’s new collection of stories. * Mike Palacek has a new blog (can’t see a link to 3:AM on there, can you?). * Jail guitar doors. * Carolyn Cassady’s Off the Road republished (via dogmatika). * Irvine Welsh’s new collection of short stories. * D. Harlan Wilson has a new book out. * Colin MacCabe on saving our film heritage. * Man Raze (featuring the Pistols’ Paul Cook).
