Alfred Hoffman, inventor of LSD, has died; Ben Myers doffs his cap. * “A freestanding slab of concrete wall at the northwest corner of Houston Street and Bowery is being transformed into a fluorescent pink, orange, and green Keith Haring mural — again. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Haring’s birth on May 4, the gallery Deitch Projects, which has represented the artist’s estate for more than a decade, and the Keith Haring Foundation have hired artists to recreate the mural that Haring, who died of AIDS in 1990, painted on the wall in 1982.” * Aeronwy Thomas talks about her father, poet Dylan Thomas: “People need to have these legendary bad figures, and he has become an iconic figure, Brendan Behan-style, which is only part of the story. He was very focused in his 39 years. He wasn’t interested in anything but literature and writing it. It is very isolating to write, and he did it many hours a day. Then he’d go to the pub to play cards or skittles - he needed that. All the drinking and the womanising, you know, it is more understandable to me now.” * The Non-Expert’s Guide to the Hipster. * The LA Times reviews Tom McCarthy’s Tintin and the Secret of Literature: “McCarthy has given his American readers a savvy perspective on his sophisticated views of fiction, which we will (I hope!) continue to enjoy in coming years. In his introduction to S/Z, poet and literary critic Richard Howard mocked a snide review of the book that said it would profit anyone who had no “instinctive enjoyment of literature.” He sneered at the notion of “instinctive enjoyment” as naive and argued that we always need a poke in the ribs when we read a novel. McCarthy’s brainy dissection of Tintin hits us midpoint between the head and the heart.” * Michael Bracewell, Matt Thorne and Sean O’Hagan on Renegade: the Lives and Tales of Mark E Smith * Mark E Smith in Scotalnd on Sunday: This must be the first rock book – the first of any kind – to quote Arthur Schopenhauer (like the German philosopher, our hero adheres to a daily regime), Thomas Carlyle (”Produce, produce – it’s the only thing you’re there for”) and Grandad Smith’s old plumbing manuals. Smith also quotes Jean-Paul Sartre, Thomas Hardy and Knut Hamsun, but he wears his literary influences lightly. I tell him I’m surprised by all the unlikely name checks – Neighbours and also the Glitter Band for a double-drumming din, “like a war tank”, Alvin Stardust and Shakin’ Stevens for entertaining being their “duty”, Peter Waterman for being a “good worker” – and he puts an arm round my shoulder. “Only a Scotsman would have made those connections.” Surely not, I say. “No, lots of English tossers wouldn’t have done the research. You’re a product of a superior education system, almost as good as Germany’s.” * The Guardian run an extract from the Mark E Smith book and ask readers to share MES encounters. * Plathophilia, Elizabeth Bachner re-reads Sylvia for Bookslut: “My Sylvia Plath obsession started because, as a ten-year-old rummaging around the public library in search of “grown-up” books, I read some of her poems and got a strange rush of vertigo, and I wanted to feel that again. I spent the next decade religiously exploring the intrigues and biography wars that bubbled around in the wake of her thirty-year life.” * Ahead of the Ian Fleming centenary, Sam Jordison celebrates the brilliance of the Bond books: “There’s certainly good reason to take Fleming seriously as a creator of “literature” in the approving, FR Leavis sense of the word. There are few more atmospheric literary routes into the misery (I’m thinking especially of the descriptions of the drab life in the USSR at the beginning of From Russia With Love), as well as the reliably exciting paranoia of the Cold War years. Thanks to the cartoon violence of the films it’s also easy to forget just how effective the sadism in the novels can be. Fleming’s books are creepy and chilling and this graphic cruelty, combined with painstakingly accurate descriptions of high-living, fine eating and the pleasures of quality consumer goods must make Bond a direct ancestor to characters like Patrick Bateman and the unnamed protagonist of Fight Club as much as the promiscuous father of so many lesser pulp-thriller spies. It certainly merits him a place in the canon.” * For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond; plus Penguin 007, the countdown to Devil May Care is on. * More from Houellebecq’s mère: “[An] evil, stupid little bastard..this individual, who alas came from my womb, is a liar, an imposter, a parasite and above all - above all - a petit arriviste ready to do absolutely anything for money and fame.” [Previously<<] *
First posted: Thursday, May 8th, 2008.
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