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20/03/10: Saturday Night at the Movies
By Andrew Stevens.
There’s no link sadly (possibly conscious of inevitable online ridicule) but this week’s New Statesman carries a review of Hanif Kureishi’s Collected Stories by former Sun editor David Yelland. There’s something deliciously twisted perhaps about the notion of Yelland, who also toiled under the tabloid’s notorious Thatcherite editor Kelvin McKenzie, heaping praise on Kureishi as he, like Alastair Campbell before him, makes that post-breakdown transition from burnt out newsman to novelist himself and gets trotted out onto the publicity circuit.
Such surreal irony provides us with the opportunity to reflect back on that era. London Kills Me (1991) is a difficult film in many senses. Difficult to get hold of now, sure (a DVD release is both overdue and keenly anticipated). Difficult for Kureishi’s reputation as a screenwriter, as it has failed to secure anywhere near the critical attention of his mid-eighties work with Stephen Frears or The Buddha of Suburbia television adaptation in the early nineties. The film does however segue beautifully into the likes of Mike Leigh’s Naked (1993) and Patrick Keiller’s London (1994), both of which adroitly survey the ruins of the capital following the ravages of Thatcherism and act almost as a triumvirate of post-Jarman Kureishiland, an era which was in itself swept away by the synthetic (or naive) optimism of Britpop and New Labour. Chris Petit recently claimed that on reflection his own Radio On (1979) “ended with a car ‘stalled on the edge of the future’, which we didn’t know then would be Thatcherism.” The tragically misfortunate characters of London Kills Me find themselves staring right back into that void. The film includes Steven Mackintosh as a lead, him later going on to feature in Kureishi’s Buddha of Suburbia and The Mother, and most recently as Peter Mandelson in a TV docudrama (Yelland famously arranged for a sly wink homophobic war of words against the Europhile cabinet minister through the pages of his paper, declaring that Britain was run by a “gay mafia” and taunting Mandelson as the “Dishonourable Member for Copacabana East”, water under the bridge now, both claim).
David Yelland has his function here, but it’s as a stoker in the New Right’s boiler room during much of what transpired in Kureishi’s books and films, not a peer hopefully seeking to achieve a modicum of equivalence.
18/03/10: Urban film
The Bartlett UFS are running a series of events on urban film in association with PocketVisions, starting this afternoon. Of particular interest, Sandra Shevey’s talk, ‘Alfred Hitchcock’s London Odyssey: Location Art in the Capital’, at the Westminster Reference Library and En Construcción at the Architecture Foundation, as part of the Architecture on Film Season. Full details here.
17/03/10: Bombs, Buggery & Buddhism
Billy Childish is in the house. More here.
: For You
We have two tickets to give away to a lucky 3:AM reader for tomorrow’s talk between Ian McEwan and composer Michael Berkeley at the Purcell Room (7.45pm) on London’s glorious South Bank. You save 20 quid! Just send us an email here. Be quick!
Author Ian McEwan and composer Michael Berkeley discuss their artistic collaboration on the opera For You and reveal plans for a forthcoming opera based on Atonement. This event also coincides with the publication date of Solar, Ian McEwan’s latest novel which he will be signing post-show.
For You, is a tale of sexual obsession exploring a complicated relationship between a mature, boasting artist, his youthful self and a deluded, murderous woman. McEwan, who has often movingly evoked music in his fiction, and Berkeley, presenter of Private Passions on BBC Radio 3, discuss the interweaving of text with musical composition. They explore the distinctive means each strand brings to the narrative, as well as the particular power of opera in conjoining the different media.
The evening is accompanied by taped excerpts from For You, and is chaired by broadcaster and writer Dennis Marks, former General Director of English National Opera.
: Nice Day For a White Wedding…
Congratulations to Gerard Evans aka George Berger who is getting married to the lovely Joanna in Brighton as I write this. We wish them all the happiness in the world.
Gerard founded Flowers in the Dustbin in the early 80s. He then became a music journalist, writing for Sounds and Melody Maker. Besides being an early member of the 3:AM team, he is the author of two books — one about the Levellers and the other about Crass.
: ampere’s and
Today’s quick lit [& alt.cult] links from around the web:
John Foxx is curating the Short Circuit Festival, will include a project he’s working on with Iain Sinclair [via]
& To plug Iain Sinclair’s Hackney, that Rose-Red Empire, his publishers set up a one day pop-up-shop, flogging the paperback & some very desirable prints
& Coming soon, the new Dwang
& Collecting Philip K. Dick [via]
& What “good” book do you really hate? The Quarterly Conversation are starting a list
& HTMLGIANT bring word of some new Georg Trakl
& Scorsese rarities [via]
& Hilobrow on David Cronenberg
& Cronenberg’s commentary for the Andy Warhol retrospective 2006
& On Jacques Tardi [see also]
& Flotsam from a used bookstore [via]
& Fresh Letters, news for the literati [via]
& Welcome back The Midnight Bell, you have been missed
& A new national anthem for Ireland [Happy St Patrick's Day everyone]
16/03/10: Five for: Alan Kelly
1) What is your favourite motto?
That’s a tricky one, though I’d have to say a favourite of mine is, “If you can’t beat them, fight dirty.” Another one I have been known to use quite often after half a bottle of pink gin and those delicious and perfectly legal highs called Lime Fantasy is “You can eat shit for all I care Miss Sandstone.” I remember being at some sort of charity thing and my friend literally having to restrain me because I was going from one impenetrable clique (who are only there for the free wine anyway, the dirty hypocrites couldn’t care less about people starving in the third world or neglected children or animals thrown into canals) to another and shouting this at the top of my voice. This was also the reason security escorted me out of John Waters when he was at Vicar Street – I was furious. Who is he to judge me? He paid someone to eat dog shit for gawd sake. Another one I’ve had to use so many times after meeting a strange man, whether it be in a bar, on the street, through the Buy and Sell or down behind the Olympia is “Shut up and fuck me. I want cock you thick mule, not conversation.”
2) What is the most inspirational book you have read?
This is easy and I’m going to pick a non-fiction book. It’s by gender queer Kate Bornstein and called 101 Alternatives to Suicide, a book written especially for teens, freaks and other outlaws (I fall into all three categories except the teen one, though you’d never think I was over 18 to look at me) and basically gives you, er, 101 reasons to keep your head out of the oven. I keep it by my bed whenever I feel a bit blue and am thinking about throwing myself under a bus or drowning myself or slashing my wrists. And they really do work: so far I’ve baked a cake, took a deep breath and touched myself (this one I didn’t like so much) and attempted several others. Whenever I get the urge to top myself, I’ll dip in and find a new and innovative distraction which will steer me away from that bottle of pills.
3) Who are your favourite heroines in literature? And why?
Angel Dare (Money Shot) – former porn star turned Angel of Deliverance, soon to appear in Faust’s forthcoming sequel Choke Hold. Why? She is fucking fantastic, sexy, realistic and funny and after everything she is put through, she is still a hugely compassionate person. Bella (Dirty Weekend) by Helen Zahavi – she was a “video nasty in velvet gloves.” I love her because she was ruthless,
hilarious and ultra-violent and Zahavi gives her heroine a happy ending. Ariel Manto (The End of Mr Y), Scarlett Thomas‘ PhD student is a deeply flawed and immensely lovable creation. I think it’s obvious I’m quite drawn to damaged characters and I remember the end of the novel as really quite heartbreaking when Ariel didn’t want to return to the world she knew because there was nothing out there for her. I’ve read this book twice and really see a lot of myself in her – okay, I’m not even a third as smart as she is but I understood her loneliness, the solace she finds in literature and knowledge and, of course, the rough sex with strange men.
One of the reasons I submitted to Pulp Press was because of Eloise Murphy – the protagonist from Killer Tease – it was so refreshing to meet a character in print who could kick ten people’s asses in a bar fight and still look good in pasties. I also really like Diana Kemp from Cathi Unsworth’s The Not Knowing. There are so many others but my final one is Millie (Brass) - Helen Walsh’s critically acclaimed debut saw a young sexually predatory woman, high on beak, booze and an insatiable lust for sex with street prostitutes. Again, she’d hardly be described as a “heroine”, but I immediately fell in love and wanted to wander around the seedier side of Liverpool with this girl, high on beak and booze. She was a revelation to me. I’d never read a character quite like her.
4) What do you hate most of all?
One thing that bugs me is people saying with an absolute conviction that
they hate something when they refuse to look at the object of their disgust. Sarah Langan said to me that writers shouldn’t make their lives small and I couldn’t agree more – I suppose one of the things you learn when studying
journalism is to always keep an open mind and explore everything and anything and to be as informed as you possibly can be before coming to any sort of decision regarding anything. It’s stupid dismissing something because of word-of-mouth or whether it’s popular or underground, mainstream or cult. How can you hate something when you don’t even know what that thing is? That’s something I hate, I guess. That and Jeremy Kyle. What a fucking wanker.
5) How would you wish to die?
Somewhere prettier than where I am right now. A place where people don’t put me on their mailing lists without my permission. Knowing my luck I’ll probably end up a lonely pathetic old spinster with VD who drowns face down in a pool of my own shit.
Let Me Die A Woman by Alan Kelly is published by Pulp Press in April.
: peter orlovsky
..is unwell… please send good wishes and support - cards, poems, paintings - here… Peter Orlovsky, 44 Green Street, St. Johnsbury, VT 05819, USA…
15/03/10: 3:AM Cult Hero: Léo Malet
Cabaret singer, anarchist, ghost writer, poet (of the collections Ne pas voir plus loin que le bout de son sexe (Seeing No Further Than the End of your Prick) & J’Arbre comme cadavre (I Tree Like a Corpse) and aligned with Surrealists, Léo Malet hit his stride with Les Nouveaux Mysteres de Paris novels featuring Nestor Burma, his roman noir take on Hammett’s Thin Man and Chandler’s Marlowe.
Updating Eugene Sue’s Mysteries of Paris, Malet’s hard-drinking, pipe-smoking anti-hero Burma heads up the Fiat Lux detective agency and leads the reader through the Parisian underworld arrondissement by arrondissement (Malet intended to write 20 novels, one for each arrondissement, but gave up after 15), ushering in a new era of French detective fiction and given a further boost with Jacques Tardi’s comic book adaptations.
Though Fantagrpahics are publishing Tardi for an English-speaking audience, will we see the Nestor Burma stories? And, with the Pan paperbacks exchanging hands for silly money, isn’t it time to bring the man himself back into print?
Further: Obit in the Independent / Nestor Burma at Thrilling Detective / Burma in Cool French Comics / ‘Léo Malet & the French Roman Noir’ / Malet in ‘La Subversion des Images’, which continues at Fotomuseum Winterthur
: Lost in Sohemia
The Sohemian Society and some of the wonderful writers, artists and characters associated with Soho/Fitzrovia that they have featured will feature in a radio programme which will be braodcast on the arts radio station, Resonance FM, on Thursday 18th March at 10:30pm. This will be repeated on Saturday 20th March at 6:30pm.
The interview will then go up on the truly excellent Lost Steps website where it can be streamed or downloaded.
“Lost Steps seeks to explore and discover London though conversations with its artists, writers and filmmakers. Along the way it will feature discussions with historians, psychogeographers, bloggers and magicians too.”
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