Tao Lin: does the novel have a future? * Alfred Hitchcock and the “fright complex“. * On hauntology. * How do you commemorate Cioran‘s anniversary? * The Sex Pistols‘ first media exposure. * Wittgenstein the polymath. * Poly Styrene RIP. More here. Zoë Howe‘s obituary. Everett True‘s tribute. * Samuel Beckett‘s public image: “‘All the obituaries said he hated to be photographed,” Dilks says, “but each one had a different photograph of him.’ As Dilks looked into this incongruity, he found that the way Beckett was photographed was similar to that of a movie star — posed and carefully crafted by his personal photographer, John Minihan, to perpetuate an aura of celebrity. Dilks writes that the methods used for these photos ‘documents a moment in his private life in order to reinforce his public image as a man averse to intrusions into his public life’.” * The art of physical criticism. * Dads: the original hipsters. * Ray Davies: “I write songs about people, and I happen to feel that the suburbanite kind of person who’s not much noticed is quite interesting”. * The kid with the replaceable head. * Modern fairy tales. * Pippa Middleton’s bum. * William Burroughs on another Royal wedding. * Beat poet Ira Cohen RIP. * Buddhism and the Beat Generation. * UbuWeb at 15. * On Judy Nylon and Ruth Marten (Savage includes a link to 3:AM‘s interview). * Gabriel Josipovici‘s Only Joking reviewed: “As he says about Mallarm é, Hofmannstahl, Kafka and Beckett — words that may apply as well to Josipovici — they all feel impelled to write, this being the only way they know to be true to their own natures, yet at the same time they find that in doing so they are being false to the world–imposing a shape on it and giving it a meaning which it doesn’t have — and thus, ultimately, being false to themselves”. * Mid-60s Sunset Strip. * Morrissey in Penguin Classics? * Why George Formby was the first pop star. * The secret life of libraries. * Bookshelves of creative people. * Is Will Self like a medieval tyrant? * Cat’s Eyes. * Jon Savage on Berlin as sexual playground. * The metaphysics of crackle. * On The Monkees‘ Head. * After the death of David Foster Wallace. * Bookish band names. * An in-depth interview with PJ Harvey. * The blossoming of Bloomsbury. * The amortals. * On a similar subject: “Forty Tiddly Winks“. * Top 10 British indie labels.
