3:AM Magazine

Mark SaFranko is the author of the novels Hating Olivia and Lounge Lizard. His short stories have been included in Best American Mystery Stories 2000 and nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and his plays, The Bitch-Goddess and The Promise, have been performed in Derry, Ireland and New York. He is the Guest Editor of the March edition of Beat the Dust litzine and his story, ‘Vacation’, is included in 3:AM London, New York, Paris. He tells us he has currently been listening to:

1. ‘Klondike,’ — McGuiness Flint
2. ‘Last Tango In Paris (Tango),’ — Gato Barbieri
3. ‘Everybody’s Talkin,’ — Fred Neil
4. ‘Dream of a Child,’ — Burton Cummings
5. ‘Magdalena,’ — Danny O’Keefe

Bonus tracks: ‘Kern River’ - Merle Haggard + ‘Lorelei’ - The Pogues + ‘Strawberry Tea’ - Tiny Tim + ‘Galveston’ - Jimmy Webb + ‘Waterloo’ - The Dream Academy

Toby Litt is the author of Adventures in Capitalism, Beatniks, Corpsing, deadkidsongs, Exhibitionism, Finding Myself, Ghost Story and Hospital. His new book, I play the drums in a band called okay, will be published in March & is the “continuing adventures of mid-level Canadian indie rock band okay“. Appropriately, he has currently being listening to a drumfest:

1. ‘Tusk,’ — Fleetwood Mac
2. ‘The Weight,’ — The Band
3. ‘Moby Dick,’ — Led Zeppelin
4. ‘Tabla Solo in Jhaptal, Live at the Woodstock Festival,’ — Ravi Shankar
5. Anything from Congotronics — Konono No1

He has contributed ‘Girl 333′ to 3:AM London, New York, Paris, out now.

Ben Myers is a novelist, Brutalist and journalist. His second novel, The Missing Kidney, will be published by Social Disease soon. He is the Minister for Information & Propaganda for the Captains Of Industry record label and currently lives in Peckham, South London. His story ‘When The Clocks Go Back’ can be found in the new anthology 3:AM London, New York, Paris, which is officially launched this week. To celebrate, Ben tells us he is currently listening to:

1. Krakenhaus? — British Sea Power
2. An Anthology Of Klezmer (1905 - 1952) — Various
3. Slipknot — Slipknot
4. Isle Of Grain — One More Gain
5. The Dirty Story: The Best Of ODB — Ol’ Dirty Bastard

The “evil glamour” of Anita Pallenberg. * Friction author — and singer with (We Are) Performance — Joe Stretch interviewed on Brightcove TV (more here and there). Also on Brightcove, John Barker reading from Bending the Bars, his prison memoir. * Check out the official Offbeat Film Channel. * Jim Jones (Pere Ubu) and Alain Robbe-Grillet have both kicked the bucket. * Jon Savage on Derek Jarman in The Guardian: “Jarman had already put his life into his art, so why not his slow death?”. And in Time Out: “You used to go up to Derek’s tiny flat and there would be some German punk kid who’d come to talk to him, together with Norman Rosenthal from the Royal Academy, John Maybury and Derek’s latest rent boy discovery. Not that Derek was having sex with them necessarily, but he liked those marginal lads. Derek was always unbiddable, that’s what I liked about him: ‘I’m going to do what the hell I want. I’m going to do the opposite to everybody else, and sod you’.” (See also Jarman the gardener and painter. There’s a video here.) * Zachary German’s Eat When You Feel Sad. * Je n’ai pas connu Jacques Vaché. * Lee Rourke’s Everyday reviewed in RSB. * The first issue of the UK Network for Modern Fiction Studies‘ journal, Critical Engagements, is available. * Will Ashon in The Indie. * Larry “If I wasn’t cool I couldn’t get within two miles of these kids” Clark: “This is where the complexity lies in Clark’s photographs, in the distance between their subjects’ lack of self-consciousness and the camera’s all-too-aware rendering of the same”. * “Morrissey, Michael Stipe, Brett Anderson, Noel Gallagher — j’accuse”: Toby Litt on why rock stars always lose it in the end (“Once the old todger goes a bit soft, everything else does, too”). * The Open Humlanties Press. * Listen to a Wisconsin Public Radio feature here about The Apocalypse Reader anthology. * Nowhere Fast — the Brutalists’ first offering — is reviewed here. The Brutalists are also interviewed in dogmatika. * Dan Crowe in the New Statesman: “When I edited Zembla, a literary magazine that ran from 2003 to 2005, I often asked writers if they had any unpublished gems in their desk drawers — but our backer was the antiquarian bookseller Simon Finch, not the richest man in the world. A big (and fun) part of the challenge was seeing what I could get them to work for instead of money. Will Self was given a first-edition William Burroughs. J T Leroy asked for a pair of Manolo Blahnik heels (I should have realised there was something going on with the chap at that point). Robert Macfarlane settled for a UK first edition of Lolita, which I think we still owe him (sorry about that, Robert; you will get it)”. Another interesting extract: “It is no longer enough for a literary magazine to publish ‘good writing’, or even ‘new writing’. We’ve got the internet now. When Plimpton founded the Paris Review it was an act of rebellion; similarly for Bill Buford when he relaunched Granta in the 1970s. They wanted to shake things up a bit. With the new owner in place, it is time for another shake-up. Granta must loosen up; it must rock and roll”. * Martin Amis interviewed in Time Out (London). On Terry Eagleton: “He’s a disgrace to the academic profession. He’s like an old boxer who keeps picking fights. But it’s time for him to take off his trunks”. * Mr Merde. * The greatest stories never told. * Novelist Nicholas Blincoe (who appeared at 3:AM’s very first London event) wouldn’t buy an unused condom from the Ramones. * What has Tamra Spivey been up to? * Heidi James in Vauxhall; Joseph Ridgwell in Bethnal Green. * Lynne Tillman in The Independent: “[S]he comes from an era when the hottest upstart literary magazine (Between C&D) was printed on a nine-pin dot matrix printer, and some of the most evocative young fiction writers Kathy Acker and Mary Gaitskill had worked as strippers. The art and literary worlds mingled in the pages of new magazines like Bomb, which launched in 1981″.

[l-r: Former 3:AM editors Andrew Stevens & Richard Marshall
with 3:AM editor-in-chief Andrew Gallix]

Andrew Stevens is editor of the just published collection of short stories, 3:AM London, New York, Paris. To celebrate its release, Andrew shares five tunes, “to note that it’s been 15 years since the ‘Daytripper’ Charlatans/Ride seaside gigs, surely the apogee of indie like it used to be, despite being slated by Simon Reynolds recently,” he says:

1. ‘Here and Now,’ — Ride
2. ‘Page One,’ — The Charlatans
3. ‘Taste,’ — Ride
4. ‘Not Fazed,’ — Ride
5. ‘Indian Rope,’ — The Charlatans

3:AM London, New York, Paris can be ordered here.

Here’s a sneak peek at the cover of 3:AM London, New York, Paris, the short-story collection edited by Andrew Stevens to be published shortly by Social Disease. You can order yours here.