3:AM Magazine

It’s Nosferatu. It’s Ed Wood. It’s Adelle Stripe’s Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid - Love & Loss in London, coming soon from Blackheath Books:

Further: The Offbeat Generation / The Offbeat Generation Film Channel / Matthew Coleman reads ‘Dream Poem’ / Heidi James reads two pieces / Adelle Stripe reads 3 poems / Ben Myers reads four Brutalist poems / Matthew Coleman reads from Her Naked Self / Lee Rourke reads Everyday / Andrew Gallix talks Offbeat / Tony O’Neill reads ‘Mark Twain & I’ / Heidi James: My Favourite Author / Lee Rourke: My Favourite Author / Tom McCarthy: My Favourite Author / Andrew Gallix: My Favourite Author / Sophie Parkin: My Favourite Author / Heidi James and Matthew Coleman’s ‘Footsteps’ / Stewart Home on 69 Things.., Trocchi and Goddard / Heidi James & Matthew Coleman’s ‘Dagger’ / Tony O’Neill’s War Every Day.

Dear Monsieur Horkheimer, It is over a year since I sent you my last résumé of French literature. Unfortunately it is not in literary novelties that the past season has proved most fertile. The noxious seed that has sprouted here obscures the blossoming plant of belles-lettres with a sinister foliage. But I shall attempt in any case to make you a florilegium of it. [via A&L Daily] * Jonathan Coe on working with the High Llamas: “I’ve always loved music more than I’ve loved language; and because I invariably find a line of melody more compelling than a line of thought, I find listening to songs an unsatisfactory experience. When a song is sung, all that I really hear is the music: the words wash over me and the human voice becomes just another element in the instrumentation.” * The lost tapes of Delia Derbyshire found (including a ”dance track 20 years ahead of its time”) * $25000 for a first edition of Douglas Adams‘ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy? Though it does include the typewriter he knocked it out on * Great opening lines from sci-fi novels * Heroes of Popular Wars * For Alan K, an Identity Theory interview with Scott Heim: ”At the risk of sounding self-important, I guess I do feel that writing a novel is sort of the ultimate achievement; then again, it’s also the most painful and lonely and potentially soul-destroying. The fact that fewer and fewer people read nowadays makes the task of writing a novel even more difficult..” * Down and Out on Murder Mile, Tony O’Neill’s new blog * Underneath the Bunker’s Gregory Riecke is now piercing the mists of obscure European literature * 50 outstanding literary translations from the last 50 years * Spaces repeating, BLDGBLOG interview Tom McCarthy [via Maud Newton] * Paul Collins has some useful advice for book thieves: “Aside from a face-melting Ark of the Covenant, a Shakespeare First Folio is the lousiest loot in the world to steal.” * “Writers like Sillitoe created a cultural template for the individual rebel that has been with us ever since” Mick Hume on the 50th anniversary of Saturday Night, Sunday Morning * 10 things you need to know about Haruki Murakami: MURAKAMI REALLY LIKES MUSIC..One interviewer visited Murakami’s flat and found a room lined with more than 7,000 vinyl records.” * [Missed this] Hipster Fight Club: They could have been watching some awesome breakdancing group or an unusually good street magician. But instead, two shirtless guys were flopping around on the ground, grunting and grating one another’s faces across the cobblestones. One guy pinned the other and a shirtless ref called the match. Both fighters leapt up, gave each other the universally-approved one-armed bro-hug and left the ring together, laughing. [via The Cult]

As Edinburgh braces itself for the annual influx of fools, thespians and f**kwits, 3:AM aims to sort out the wheat from the festival chaff.

The days of Trocchi and MacDiarmuid sparring together may be long passed but the International Book Festival (9 - 25 August) can still pack a punch, and hopefully the odd disreputable appearance, in its lineup.

Of the visiting contingent, highlights include Chuck Palahniuk, Will Self, Dan Rhodes, Alan Bissett, Toby Litt, publishing legend John Calder and a rare visit from the great Andrey Kurkov.

Comics and graphic novels are well represented by the presence of Bryan Talbot (Alice in Sunderland), 2000AD supremo Alan Grant, Hannah Berry (Britten and Burlightly) and Dave McKean (The Sandman - pictured).

It’s with native talent though that the festival comes into it’s own, featuring no less than Booker Prize-winning James Kelman, Laura Hird, Irvine Welsh, Liz Lochhead, John Burnside, Kevin Williamson, Tom Pow and Alice Thompson, all key figures in a Scottish writing resurgence.

Check out the official programme for tickets, dates, times and venues and Word Power for other book events off the beaten track.

In all the fuss in Britain over youth crime, Ben Myers wonders why books are never cited as a bad influence:

You never see the tabloid headline PECKHAM KILLER HID KNIFE IN PAPERBACK OF BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, or JACQUELINE WILSON NOVELS WARP BRAIN.

In the US, where even children’s literature regularly incurs the wrath of the Christian right, it’s slightly different. Yet when teenagers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed twelve of their Columbine High classmates, the media were quick to consider their record collection, but not their reading tastes.

Now I’m not saying literature should be added to the media’s list of easy targets - not at all. I just wonder why Marilyn Manson is vilified but not the similarly hilarious American Psycho.

Of course, books are occasionally blamed for causing trouble. Think of the hullabaloo over Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. But getting up the nose of a major religion is an entirely different matter. Nobody was suggesting for a moment that reading Rushdie was leading the kids astray.

Maybe it’s just the physical act of reading that keeps it out of the conservative media’s glare. Maybe it just makes sense that something that involves sitting perfectly still in a quiet room and flexing the imagination could never seriously be blamed for the rise of knife crime. Because that would be utterly absurd.

But I think the real reason literature stands outside of youth culture occurs at a deeper, more insidious level: because the media simply no longer consider literature to be a part of youth culture - that books are for the good, clean, knifeless middle class children. If it’s not part of the culture then it can’t be part of the problem. In which case is literature now confined - not for the first time - by class whereas the edgier, more visceral video games, movies and music span all the echelons of society?