[15.6.05][Andrew Gallix] THE MISSING LINKS Jonathan Safran Foer interviewed in The Independent on Sunday. On his "main cultural passion" at 14: "Looking at naked pictures of women. That was the only thing I thought about. Trying to buy them in drugstores or look at them in the aisles where no one could see what you were looking at." On his blank paper collection: "I have Haruki Murakami in a matt silver frame with grey matting behind it. John Updike is in wooden frame, kind of knotted. Susan Sontag's is old world and a little bit kitsch. I like them because blank pape ris like the cheapest, most mundane thing in the world but when someone writes on it, it can become the most valuable thing in the world. And these pieces of paper exist right between these two things". * Dreams That Money Can Buy, the recently-launched journal which covers contemporary art, poetry, prose and political satire, are organising a spoken word event at the Aquarium Gallery in London on Saturday. Speakers include Sophie Woolley.* Fascinating: Paris Underground. * Jonathan Coe has won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction for his excellent biography of BS Johnson. * The all-important rockism debate. * The Don't Look Back concerts. * Sir Del Boy. * Are you one of the beautiful people? * Best Penguin titles ever. * Special Needs ride dodgems to the Barfly! * City Lights and San Francisco's beat history. * Alan McGee claims in this week's Inrockuptibles that he use to believe there were two great periods in rock history: 1967-69 and 1977-79. He now adds 1991 and 2002-05. He also reckons he'll find another major band in the next 5 years. * An interesting article about the rise of Serpent's Tail: "Nicholas Royle, one of Serpent's Tail's many loyal authors, agrees. The novelist (whose most recent book is Antwerp) calls Ayrton 'a wonderful contradiction. He's the most forward-thinking, unconservative publisher in the UK, prepared to take on avant-garde work that wouldn't get a look in anywhere else'. However, Royle adds: 'At the same time he's the closest we have to the old-fashioned kind of publisher that has almost completely vanished from the business. He buys books according to taste and preference, rather than allowing himself to be dictated to by sales and marketing people.' Royle points out: 'Ayrton is a writers' favourite as well, allowing authors to write what they want to write without forcing them down a particular road.'" * American students launch porn mags like Harvard's H-Bomb. More here. Related: Punk Fever. [permalink]
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