3:AM Magazine

What you (may have) missed on 3:AM recently:
Reviewed: Max Dunbar on Patrick Ness’ Monsters of Men & John Ortved’s Simpsons Confidential
Interviewed: Ben Pleasants presents the John Fante Tapes, part four; Alan Kelly & Danny Hogan shoot the breeze
Poetry: In the eleventh of his Maintenant series, SJ Fowler interviews the Romanian poet Ruxandra Novac; ‘Two [...]

Any consideration of the life and work of Charles Bukowski inevitably runs up against the rocks of his personality and his misdeeds, the litany of actions that suggest that he could be, and was, a monumental asshole. These are not small incidental factors so much as a great lumbering herd of elephants in the living room. And yet what condemns him is also his chief redeeming quality. For we all are. Jerks that is. Deep down. It’s the common constituent of humanity, uniting countries, races and classes. A United Nations of pricks, jerks and fuck-ups. With Charles Bukowski the closest we’ll get to a patron saint.

Darran Anderson considers the legacy of Charles Bukowski through Canongate’s recent reissues.

What we read in 2009 [part one]:
Reviewed / Non-fiction:
King Kong Theory - Virginie Despentes
Bad Vibes - Britpop and My Part in Its Downfall - Luke Haines
Disorientations - Travis Jeppesen
Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire: A Confidential Report - Iain Sinclair
Moral Relativism - Steven Lukes
Lula of Brazil: The Story So Far - Richard Bourne
Khomeini’s Ghost - Con Coughlin
Lucky [...]

What you (may have) missed on 3:AM recently:
Fiction: ‘An Insurrection’ by Jonathan Woods, ‘Shiny New Shrink’ by Tiff Holland
Non-fiction: Danny Hogan spends ‘Saturday Night at the Movies’ with The Descent: Part 2
Interviewed: Alan Kelly puts five questions to original Riot Grrrl Katiejane Garside
Reviewed: Pádraig Ó Méalóid on Harvey Pekar’s The Beats: A Graphic History:
As a [...]

By Alan Kelly.
[Alan Kelly wraps up his mini-interview series with Women in Horror. Previously, Juvanka Vuckovic, Shannon Lark, Suzi Lorraine, Hannah Neurotica & Barbie Wilde]

1) I’ve saved the best ’til last - so give me a good reason why you should be my final girl?
Because I defy the stereotypes of what a final girl is [...]

What you (may have) missed on 3:AM recently:
Fiction: ‘This Is Where We Live’ by Jeff Landon
Non-fiction: Owen Hatherley on the City State exhibition
Interviewed: Susan Tomaselli puts five questions to Jedediah Berry, Alan Kelly’s five for Barbie Wilde plus his interview with playwright Harold Finley, David Hoenigman talks to Kirk Marshall of Red Leaves / 紅葉 [...]

What you (may have) missed on 3:AM recently:
Fiction: ‘Ever After’ by Nicholas Hogg, ‘The Elect’ by Gavin J. Grant, ‘The Silent Lily’ by Letícia Palmeira (courtesy of 3:AM Brasil), ‘Dog’ by Jeremy C. Shipp
Flash Fiction: ‘Piglet ‘ by Anne Elliott, ‘This is Only a Test’ by Tiff Holland
Reviewed: Max Dunbar on David Aaronovitch’s Voodoo Histories, [...]

Kate Moss consistently fails to turn up at the events, but finally during an A-list Venetian masked ball at Strawberry Hill House in Richmond, Jane dodges past security men into the depths of the mansion, until she is face to face with Pete Doherty and Kate Moss, who sweetly displays her engagement ring, while Pete gives Jane his phone number after she says she has done some paintings of him. Then Kate asks if she is a journalist, and looks horrified at the affirmative answer. Jane rushes out of the building with her scoop story, which makes a tabloid double spread (and is, to her chagrin, credited to another journalist).

Charles Thomson on Jane Kelly’s prison teacher memoir Inside.

I’ve read Chuck Palahniuk, at least four or five of his books which I loved. I’d read [Bret Easton] Ellis and loved him. Trainspotting, the whole canon. It just seemed done. Maybe I’d gotten that little bit older, the anger was still there but it wasn’t nihilistic. Now I just think that a nihilistic for the sake of it novel is a cop out from humanity…You look at the proliferation of websites and writing clubs and all that kind of thing where it’s just first-person nasty male narrative doing transgressive anti-social stuff, and some of its amazing, but it just seems the area seems overpopulated. And, you know, as the book became truer to my own upbringing, once I got over that adolescent hump, I was never really like that anyway.

Who’s that writin’? Alan Kelly meets John the Revelator’s Peter Murphy.

1 December demo: Steven Yates, Charles Thomson, Jane Kelly, Shelley Li, Edgeworth Johnstone
By Charles Thomson.
They ought to remake Downfall with Sir Nicholas Serota in his Tate office, surrounded by curators aghast at the sustained fantasies of their leader in the face of all the evidence. Serota is a master of external self-control, but he [...]