The Other Morrissey – Euro 96, TFI Friday and My Summer With Des
When England’s baser enthusiasms – for beer, patriotism and football – had coalesced to exert pressure on those who did not buy into them as mean-spirited and dour. Even though Morrissey’s character at the start of the series (from the vantage point of 1998) bemoans the contemporary presence of sleaze, Teletubbies and New Labour he does not realise what halcyon days of fleeting hope he is living in. A brief time in which the slovenly behaviour and lack of ambition of the English ‘lad’ could credibly elicit the affections of a woman like Weisz’s character. As England perform on the pitch, their followers perform to each other their identity with a lack of apology that is almost charismatic.
An extract from Albion’s Secret History – Snapshots of England’s Pop Rebels and Outsiders, by Guy Mankowski.
Lionel Trilling: Literature & Liberalism
Does our taste predict our politics? Is someone who watches House of Cards likely to vote any differently than someone who watches Big Bang Theory? Or someone who uses Spotify and someone who only listens to vinyl? And that these taste in any way present incompatible realities? In a market-based monoculture, where difference of taste is mere niche or “alternative,” no one can claim that aesthetics reveal values, or that people’s politics are likely to be shaped by the art they consume. If there are political divisions to be had on matters of taste now, they have moved on to other areas of the culture and are almost all superficial: liberals drive electric cars and shop at Whole Foods and conservatives drive trucks and eat red meat.
Jared Marcel Pollen on Lionel Trilling.
Letter to the Author of the Letter to the Father
Letter to the Author of the Letter to the Father, the debut short fiction collection by 3:AM Magazine co-editor-in-chief Tristan Foster, is forthcoming from Melbourne-based publisher Transmission Press. From the publisher: Eels, snakes, artists, photos, writers, sprinters, dead men, thieves, possums, sphinxes, whales, fathers, mothers, children, neighbours, lovers, churches, rivers, oceans, devils, heroes, stones, fur, […]