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[29.8.05] [Andrew Gallix]
THE MISSING LINKS
 Peter Culshaw claims in The Observer that Brazilian outfit Cansei de Ser Sexy "sound like something only" Malcolm McLaren's "feverish imagination could dream up -- except they actually exist". * Adam West aka the original Batman in The Independent on Sunday: "When you go to the Sistine Chapel with Sophia Loren, it can be quite some time before your thoughts turn to the ceiling". * Francis Ford Coppola, who has owned the rights to On the Road since 1979, is to turn Kerouac's Beat classic into a feature film. Another Kerouac film, based on his girlfriend Joyce Johnson's memoir Minor Characters, may also be turned into a movie with Scarlett Johannson mooted for the part of Johnson. * The art of William Burroughs. * It's a good time for the short story: a new 15,000 quid prize in Britain and the launch of Amazon Shorts on the other side of the Pond. * dogmatika interview novelist Danny King, who was one of the speakers at 3:AM's recent summer gig. You'll also find a review of King's Milo's Marauders. * A big thanks to Londonist for describing 3:AM as a "powerhouse in the online lit journal world (a genre that we aren't sure is capable of having powerhouses, but if it were, 3:AM would certainly be one), and well worth supporting and partying with, we think". * According to The Sun, John Lydon and Jimmy Pursey (Sham 69) get into a fight at the US Embassy in London. Similarly, Pete Doherty (Babyshambles) headbuts Johnny Borrell (Razorlight)! * Great new interview with Dee Generate (drummer with punk schoolboy band Eater) over at Punk 77. They have also reproduced our interview with Keith Levene. * The Only Anarchists Are Pretty site has a new address. * Time magazine interview Bret Easton Ellis: "The truth is, even if Ellis decided to drop all the layers and the games, you get the feeling he wouldn't know how. He's just as confused as we are. 'I'm a weird person,' he insists. 'I'm not normal. Do you think the guy you're sitting across from, who wrote these books and who's put himself out there, do you think that that's, like, conducive to normal behavior? I'm beginning to think it's not. I'm beginning to think it's all one big mistake'". Ellis is also interviewed in LA Weekly: "I was there (LA) during the elections, and I thought people acted ridiculously, absolutely ridiculously. I thought the whole thing was a joke. People didn't go to work the day after the election, people were so upset that they were making plans to move, and it was like GET A FUCKIN' LIFE! Jesus, it pissed me off! Kerry was a terrible candidate, a horrible candidate, I don't care what you think about Bush. I think it's all about aesthetics, basically, and I think the country's basically centrist, and except for the religious stuff I didn't think it was that big a deal for the quality of life among Hollywood people no matter who was elected. So that was what angered me. If they're all poor, yeah, sure, but they're not. I'd lost it for Kerry long before, but the moment when he introduced Bruce Springsteen at that rally, I think in Madison, and he was saying, 'This is the walking street minstrel, Mr. Bruce Springstein,' that was it." Finally, there's also an interesting interview on Chuck Palahniuk's website: "I don't think any book should be tough to write. You should be inspired enough by the material to find the experience exciting. I don't understand writers who mope about how tough it is to write a book. When I'm not feeling it that day then I simply take a break. I don't sit at my desk with my head in my hands groaning. You can't will creativity. It comes when it comes. Sure, the book is your focal point while you're writing it and you're often driven by it much to the detriment of other things going on in your life--other things can get left behind. But writing a novel is not method acting and I find it easy to step out of it at cocktail hour". Lots more Ellis news here. * Diana Evans makes it onto this year's Guardian First Book Award longlist. * The suburbs embrace girl-on-girl action. * Jon Courtenay Grimwood in The Guardian: "Marquee Moon was an album that ripped apart the souls of all who heard it. Well, those of us who believed punk really belonged in New York and was best exemplified by people whose name ended in Verlaine rather than Vicious. And the lessons we learnt about using seven chords while pretending to use only three translated into pretty much everything we did afterwards. Hide the complex inside the simple. Layer everything". * 13 October is John Peel Day. * Russell Brand in Time Out London on Carl Barat: "The chief reason I think Carl is such a great Londoner is that he is a great Englishman. He has successfully rebranded England. Once more it is the nation of Coleridge Taylor and William Blake, wrestled from the gnarled fists of chavs. . . . The Libertines undoubtedly had an ideology, and much of that is embodied by Carl, who founded a tribe of piratical devotees here in Londinium." * Salman Rushdie in The Guardian: "What does he think of Home Office plans to deport extremists? 'Oh, God.' He chuckles. 'I have to tell you, I don't mind. I mean I think that England made a very big, historical mistake to allow itself to become the kind of terrorist capital of the world. And people were telling them this for 20 years. It was just dumb. The idea that by allowing all these groups to hang out here it would somehow protect England from attack was a deliberate philosophy. And it's not even party political because both of them did it. Thatcher did it, Blair did it. I think it's extraordinary to see people screaming hate while living off the state. No, I don't mind.'" Rushdie also clashed with George Galloway on British TV: ""The simple fact is that any system of ideas that decides you have to ringfence it, that you cannot discuss it in fundamental terms, that you can't say that this bit of it is junk, or that bit is oppressive ... we are supposed to respect that?" * Rick Moody's first "happy novel". * Billy Childish is profiled in The Independent. On Tracey Emin and the origins of Stuckism: "'Look, I'm not interested in this piss-poor version of Dadaism which has got no balls to it.' And she had a hissy fit. Because I didn't want to go to a party. She said, 'Well, you're stuck.' And Charles [Thomson, co-founder of the Stuckists] loved it because it reminded him of the Fauves and the Impressionists, whose names also originated as insults, I believe. And art movements are always based on these insults." On conceptual art: "The question of what is art is 'very, very simple', he reckons. 'Would the person do it if he wasn't being paid? This would eradicate all of contemporary art! You don't pickle sharks in your shed for 20 years because you believe in it. So basically it's sausages. But not as useful. Because you can't eat it'. A Childish exhibition ("Childish: Made in Chatham") opens at the Aquarium Gallery in London on 1 September (and runs until 1 October). * Canongate supremo Jamie Byng. * Alan Donohoe of The Rakes in the NME: "I'm neither an alcoholic nor a thug. I'm British, and the pub is our glorious, mundane way to spend an evening. Amen to that". * How do you film experimental novels? * As Houellebecq is poised to publish his The Impossibility of an Island, John Harding talks about island novels from Homer to Alex Garland. * Julian Barnes who, interestingly enough has talked of writing as "life declined," is profiled by Vanessa Thorpe. * Nick Love's film, The Business, revives the early 80s casual cult.
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