Within this grip of modernity
Lee Rourke on the joys of the chapbook: Over the bank holiday weekend, I spent many an hour reading the diverse collection of poetry chapbooks Blackheath Books had recently sent me. The first thing I did before reading them, was marvel at the sheer beauty of these things. The feel of them, the texture and […]
Lemurs & lava lamps
“The paintings were shite, basically, any old junkie with a shotgun could’ve pulled it off…” Hot Press‘s Peter Murphy drags Will Self along to the William Burroughs / Hans Christian Anderson exhibition that was on in Dublin a while back: “I had an introduction to go out and meet him the year he died, but […]
Little Blue Books
In The Believer, Rolf Potts on Emanuel Haldeman-Julius, the “huckster visionary” behind Little Blue Books: When Emanuel Haldeman-Julius drowned in his backyard swimming pool, on July 31, 1951, he was popularly regarded as a has-been, even in his adopted hometown of Girard, Kansas. Denounced as a communist in national newspapers and investigated by J. Edgar […]
Shane’s world
[Image: Paul Bednall] “I wanted with this film almost to leave my directing hat at the doorstep. I realised quite early on that it was going to be quite an observant film. It almost feels like a documentary at times, which I really like, because there were a few scenes which took a long time […]
Not bored, neutral: An interview with Tao Lin
My next novel is something I want to not feel embarrassed to read aloud to any audience including hipsters or farmers or my parents or something. I feel free to write whatever I want to read and even to “ruin” my books like I did with Eeeee Eee Eeee by adding animals to it. It feels exciting to me to “ruin” a book in that way. I feel like it would be exciting to write a linear, realistic novel that has not been “ruined” in any way, which is what I want my next novel to be like I think. The tone I currently am writing in is “neutral” I think. I am writing it like a journalism thing maybe, like an AP story. AP stories are really funny to me, they have funny quotes and describe things concretely, “severely detached.”
Lee Rourke talks to Tao Lin.