3:AM Magazine

1) Can I ask you about the name? Do you want to explain Bookkake , or shall I?

“Bukkake” is a Japanese term for a particularly filthy sex act, yet is has become surprisingly well-known. You’d be amazed how many people know what it means. I liked this aspect of surprise, and the inquisitiveness of those who don’t know, as well as the taboo. If we all know what it means, why the coyness? For me it embodies all the strange contradictions of eroticism, and the power of language itself.

2) You used to work for Snowbooks; what made you want to strike out on your own? And why to publish db’s in particular?

Well, Bookkake is still not a full-time job, and doesn’t (yet) pay me a salary. But I’ve always wanted to work for myself, and I had a lot of ideas I wanted to try out. I’m particularly interested in the intersection of literature and new technology (which I write about at Booktwo.org) and I wanted to put my money where my mouth is with a few of my assertions, which is why Bookkake uses a novel publishing and distribution model. When it came to choosing what books to publish, I needed to start with out-of-copyright books, and I chose what I loved, in a niche that I thought would work with individuals, the web, and independent bookstores.

3) Bookkake’s first five titles are, indeed, “mould-breaking, exciting, and unafraid.” How did you decide on them? And what sort of reactions have they gotten so far?

Some of them I had in mind already as among my favourites, and others were suggested by friends. I canvassed a lot of people, and came up with the opening five. There were a few others on the list, but they were unavailable for various reasons. The reaction has been fantastic: people who had a narrow view of erotic literature - even literature in general - have found them beguiling, fascinating, terrifying and even (intentionally) hilarious. Some of my straightest friends have come back for more.

4) Bookkake works to very high standards: you’ve designed new covers, reset the type and commissioned introductions from the likes of Stewart Home, Tom McCarthy & Supervert. With this much effort why, then, make Bookkake’s titles also available as free e-books?

I’m a huge fan of ebooks, and read this way regularly, but I don’t feel the reading experience they offer is yet on a sufficient par with traditional books to offer them at any great price, and I also don’t feel there’s much overlap between those looking for ebooks and those who’d pay for the paper edition. There are also many free ebook editions of these works available already. I therefore feel it’s worth it to offer my free, higher-quality ebooks to those who prefer to read that way, and who may become evangelists for the imprint. And the introductions are available on the website as well - another incentive to visit.

5) I understand that Bookkake will publish original works by contemporary authors. What can readers look forward to?

To be honest, I don’t yet know. I’ve received a number of submissions (if you want lots of free porn, set up an erotica imprint), but Bookkake is not actively looking for work in this way. There are some interesting projects in development, but you’ll just have to wait and see. Readers of the blog might get some hints of where we might be going…



Liber Amoris by William Hazlitt, Memoirs of a Young Rakehell by Guillaume Apollinaire, The Torture Garden by Octave Mirbeau, Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch and Fanny Hill by John Cleland are available now from Bookkake.

The New Yorker on Tony O’Neill: “As readings go, this one was a little like a rock concert. A tan-colored mutt, whom no one in the room could claim, roamed between our feet. A bleach blonde wore sunglasses indoors. During O’Neill’s reading—he began, apologetically, with four poems—a middle-aged couple near the front locked themselves into a prolonged kiss. The small room began to smell like cigarette smoke. People loudly booed the announcement that the bar would close during the actual reading. The novel’s newlyweds berated one another for spending their last fifty dollars on a marriage license, and not on drugs.” (via The Olive Reader) * Totally Dublin talk to poet John Cooper Clarke: “Whatever makes people good it ain’t drugs. Drugs will never furnish you with any particular talent.” * Hunter S Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, digested by John Crace: This gonzo shit was wearing thin. Sure, we went to the DA’s convention and found they knew jack shit about drugs. Everyone knows marijuana’s just for stoner losers. Sure, we got the locals a bit pissed at us on the freeway. Sure, we kited some cheques and did more drugs. Sure, we fooled the chambermaid into thinking we were undercover cops. What better cover was there than a pair of drug fiends? Sure, I bought an ape. But it was all getting a bit tired, a bit predictable. I tried writing in a new format. * Absinthe Minded, the blog * Robert Creeley’s library * The Village Voice have a word with Savannah Knoop, the public face of JT Leroy: “He fit easily into most people’s projections. He was the Jean Genet, the quiet-sage mute. He was wild and crazy; he was a train wreck. Or he was hope that we could all get through it and transform it into art. I was never offered so many drugs in my life as when I was the recovering addict JT—and for someone who didn’t like to be touched, I was constantly being touched.” * And a lengthy interview with Knoop in the SF Weekly * A David Foster Wallace Boston memorial tour * A bumper feast of William Burroughs * The Independent on Burroughs and Jack Kerouac: “It’s not the most sophisticated crime novel, and it doesn’t show either writer at his best. But it evokes a time, towards the end of the war, and a place, Manhattan, that’s become sour with drunks, whores, sailors, faggots and lost souls, all wondering when the world is going to re-start. It’s a fascinating snapshot from a lost era. If you’re looking for the link between Hemingway’s impotent post-war drifters in The Sun Also Rises, the barflies and Tralalas of Last Exit to Brooklyn and the zonked-out kids of Bret Easton Ellis’s Less Than Zero, look no further.” * In the LA Times, Carolyn Kellog writes on Charles Bukowski: “When I was young, and new to L.A., and hanging around dissolute poets, I read a lot of Bukowski, and it seemed to me, even then, that there was a lot of dreck to page through before something struck and resonated. So when I picked up Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook, it was with those hard questions in mind: doesn’t this guy need an editor? And a garbage can? But these essays have that sometimes-absent discipline (or help from editors) so that even when they consist of disconnected paragraphs, they have a kind of form. And, I think, a preciseness of language that’s missing in his lesser work.” * Henry Rollins and the emergence of hardcore * And Rollins talks to Time Out NY {and 3:AM’s interview with Rollins is here} * Ten of the best circadian novels * Twitter, Flickr, Facebook make blogs look so 2004. * Which character has the worst name in fiction? * Neal Stephenson meets Bat Segundo * 3:AM’s Chris Killen blurbs things around his flat: mysterious empty vase (once held flowers, now unsure what to do with it): “Precise and masterly, this empty vase tells us things we already knew, things we didn’t know, and things we would hope to avoid. Thrilling.” (via Pete Lit) * Black Bile Press are offering limited edition chapbooks by Zsolt Alapi & Mark SaFranko * SaFranko’s Loners * Noah Cicero’s Nosferatu * Boldtype talk to Kelly Link * Finally, a bit of good news: Word Riot have picked up Nick Antosca’s Midnight Picnic, that was to be published by now-defunct Impetus Press.

[Image: The Daily Aphorism / via Acejet 170]

Anyone interested in the history of the literary magazine, counterculture, and British poetry might like to check out the digitalized archive of Jeff Nuttall’s seminal ’60s avant-garde journal My Own Mag and the dedication site to all things Jeff Nuttall.

Other than that, Reality Studio is a great source for all things Burroughs - like this eloquent and scholarly review of And the Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks by Jed Birmingham. There’s also a fascinating piece by Graham Rae on Laura Lee Burroughs - William S. Burroughs’s mother.

Darran Anderson is an Irish writer from Derry currently residing in Edinburgh, Scotland. He co-edits poetry with 3:AM as well as Dogmatika and Laika Poetry Review. He is from a long line of drinkers, slanderers, deserters and horse thieves. Following several poetry collections, he is currently finishing a novel entitled The Ship is Sinking. His top 5 recent tunes are:

1. “Hang On” — Dr Dog
2. “Volcano” — Beck
3. “White Winter Hymnal”— Fleet Foxes
4. “Magic” — Bruce Springsteen
5. “Words Fail Me Now” — The Pictish Trail

‘Rock and Revolution with the MC5 and the White Panther Party’ with John Sinclair

The MC5 manager and leader of the White Panther Party signing It’s All Good: The John Sinclair Reader

Monday November 10, 1pm
Housmans, 5 Caledonian Road, London N1 (King’s Cross)