What you (may have) missed on 3:AM recently:
Fiction: ‘Every Sinne Is’ by Tim Scott
Poetry: In the seventh of his Maintenant series SJ Fowler interviews Jan Wagner, arguably the German poet of his generation; ‘Two Poems’ by Jan Wagner
Reviewed: Christopher Madden on Judith Butler’s Frames of War: When is Life Grievable?, Max Dunbar on Greg Grandin’s Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City & Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones
Interviewed: Charlie Williams talks to Royston Blake; Ben Pleasants in conversation with John Fante :
Ben Pleasants: Who were some of your mentors in terms of fiction, prose fiction? Who were the ones you looked up to?
John Fante: Well Sherwood Anderson. [pause] Knut Hamsun.
BP: That’s interesting. One of Bukowski‘s favorites, too.
JF: Is that right? The curious thing about my admiration for Knut Hamsun is it brought me quite a lot of trouble when I joined the Guild in 1938 because –
BP: Because of his politics.
JF: Yeah, because of his politics. And I knew nothing about Hamsun’s politics, and I’m glad I didn’t know, otherwise I never would’ve read his marvelous works.
BP: It’s kind of a shame because he was an old man when he did that and they dumped all that crap on him.
JF: Yeah.
BP: Another writer that Bukowski admires is C éline. Of course there’s a tremendous hated of him, too, but he’s still a helluva good writer.
JF: Yes, I like C éline, too. C éline is a marvelous writer.
BP: Did you have anything you were trying to prove when you started out as a writer in Los Angeles as a novelist?
JF: No, no. The only thing I wanted to prove and that was hardly conscious was that I could write a good story.
