No-one ever grows up
The Informers, directed by Gregor Jordan and staring Mickey Rourke, Billy Bob Thornton and Winona Ryder, got trashed at its Sundance premier last week. I’m reserving judgement on the Bret Easton Ellis adaptation, but if this review from Salon is anything to go by, it’s not looking too good: Some movies, as the saying goes, […]
Three Poems
Among the many numbers
of philanthropist whores,
unfinished names and eternal damnation.
In a bathroom stall of a rest stop
on a long, black stretch of highway
glistening under a steady, slow rain.
An anarchic scrawl,
an epitaph to a dead man made famous
by something he once said about God.
By Andrei Guruianu.
Crackling Embers IV: Art’s Dirty Secret Redux
It was, indeed, evident by the number of press in attendance, that the appearance of Tom McCarthy and Simon Critchley in person was crucial to the event’s authenticity. One can only imagine the caterwauls of derision that would have rightly descended upon the two ‘Necronauts’ up on the stage if they had dared hoodwink those present and petulantly hired two actors to stand in for them — such temerity and tom-foolery would have undermined their, and our intentions, right? To reiterate this point I am put in mind of the unified scorn Andy Warhol suffered after he sent out various assistants and toadies to his own press conferences — in his own wigs — to impersonate him, only to answer the outraged media, after their collective protestations (to paraphrase): of course it was me, that’s what I’m all about!
Lee Rourke attends the reading of the INS Joint Declaration of Inauthenticity.
Word spaces
HTMLGIANT, 3:AM‘s blog of 2008, have this neat series going called ‘Word Spaces’, kind of an anti-Writers’ Rooms. The most recent contributor is Tony O’Neill, who as one commenter points out, has the best ‘to do’ list ever: I use a pinboard for my ‘to do’ type stuff, and also stuff that catches my eye […]
3:AM Top 5: Sophie Erskine
Sophie Erskine is 3:AM‘s latest co-editor. She is also part-time research assistant to the novelist Karen Essex, media manager for the poetry group Perdika Press and is in the first stages of writing a film with the neuropsychologist Paul Broks and the theatre director Mick Gordon. Sophie is currently listening to: 1. “Over the Hill” […]
Next Month’s Literary Salon Of Beauty And Grace
Next month’s 3:AM PP organised by your soaraway 3:AM Magazine in conjunction with Pen Pusher takes place on Tuesday 3 February at the Green Carnation (5 Greek Street, Soho, London W1D 4DD). It starts at 7pm and goes on until 8.30pm. Here’s the line-up Dean Wilson on poetry Grace Andreacchi on fiction Sarah Jane Morris […]
Rabbit at rest
While there’s some debate as to whether his recent works were relevant, the death of writer, essayist and critic John Updike has sent tremors through the literary world: Martin Amis, “He took the novel onto another plane of intimacy”; Michiko Kakutani, “Arguably this country’s one true all-around man of letters”. Recipient of last year’s Bad […]
Literary barnburners
It’s that time of year again: Broken Pencil magazine’s Indie Writers Deathmatch. Four writers battle it out, the last story standing is declared the winner. See also: Ben Myers’ ‘Punch Prose’, boxing in literature / ‘Hemingway never did this’, on the Jonathan Ames/Craig Davidson boxing match / ‘A pug’s life’, on Thom Jones, author of […]