Latest Features
Metrodaddy v. Ubermummy
The double-standard here is remarkable. Can you imagine the furore if a man wrote a book called The Future of Women? One in which women were attacked for daring to appropriate characteristics traditionally associated with men to try and get ahead, or just survive? Compared to retrosexuals, metrosexuals, having imbibed the lessons of feminism in utero, don’t necessarily need women to dress them, feed them, tell them what they’re thinking or feeling — or what their future is. Some women find this a blessed relief. Others, such as UberMummy, seem to find it just another reason why they want him dead.
Mark Simpson interviews himself.
When Libido Ran Wild
But one thing about us that’s a little bit different from the rest of you is our bars. A lot of you straight people go to bars to get drunk or watch baseball on television or sing karaoke or talk about books. We go to bars mostly to get our asses worked over. Sometimes we even suck cock right there in the bars. A good share of our bars have porn films playing right up there on the TV screen. We even have a few bars where we whip each other or lick each other’s boots.
By Bruce Benderson.
The Way Forward?
Over at The Guardian‘s Culture Vulture blog, Michelle Pauli has resurrected the ‘Site of the week’ function (which used to reside in the Books section of Guardian Unlimited and in 2001 actually provided 3:AM with its strapline of “dip into the edgier waters of literature on the net”) and tips a nod to Britlitblogs. Technorati’s claim yesterday that a blog is created every second lends the hook on this occasion. Update: John Sutherland, you’re too kind.
3:AM Top 5: Lee Rourke
Lee Rourke, editor of the cultish Scarecrow, has been listening to: 1: “Susanne,” Songs of Leonard Cohen — Leonard Cohen 2: “It Could Have Been a Brilliant Career,” The Boy With The Arab Strap — Belle & Sebastian 3: “1969,” The Stooges — The Stooges 4: “How Soon is Now?,” Hatful of Hollow — The Smiths 5. “She’s Lost Control,” Unknown Pleasures — Joy Division
Found In Translation: The Richard Hell Interview 2
We’ve posted our brand new interview with Richard Hell. In this extract, Mr Hell talks about his latest novel, Godlike: “There’s a chapter in the book, which is an essay by one of the characters, Paul, and it proposes that translations are more interesting than ‘original’ writing and that in the future all poetry will be translation. Now, that is a kind of provocation, although he does make a case for it, and I could make a case for it too, and I kinda like the idea. It’s food for thought. It’s not as if it’s meant in any more
3:AM Summer Bash 2005
Our first Summer Bash (‘Leaving The 21st Century’) in 2003 saw Billy Childish, Subway Sect and Marina Warner share the same eclectic stage, in London’s Horse Hospital (not to mention a talk and screening by Paul Tickell on his adaptation of B. S. Johnson‘s Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry). 2004’s bash (‘A Riot of Our Own’) saw us relocate to Shoreditch and the now-defunct Stuckist Gallery, where Colin MacCabe held forth on Godard, Tony White read from Foxy T and Mounsi read from his Good Sex Prize-winning The Demented Dance. 2005’s falls during our fifth anniversary, so long-winded titles are
3:AM Top 5: Four-Eyed Bitch
The capital’s newest litblogger, Four-Eyed Bitch, tells me she’s been listening to: 1. “Outdoor Miner” (cover from a Domino Records compilation) — Flying Saucer Attack 2. “Two Headed Boy,” In the Aeroplane Over the Sea — Neutral Milk Hotel 3. “Drummer Boy,” I Am — Scout Niblett 4. “That Little Sports Car,” Philosophy of the World — The Shaggs 5. “Glow Pt. 2,” Glow Pt. 2 — Microphones (Pic: not Four-Eyed Bitch)
The Missing Links
I’ve just been sent a copy of an American magazine called Verbicide which covers all things independent from punk bands to underground writers. 3:AM‘s mighty Matthew Wascovich, the one-man underground scene from Cleveland, is profiled in the latest (fourteenth) issue, and there’s also a story by Vladik Cervantes, another 3:AM contributor. Buy it now! * Popmatters, Number One Hit Song, Literary Kicks and others review Richard Hell‘s new novel. * Make Doherty History? * Playwright Mark Ravenhill in today’s Observer: “‘An al-Qaeda bomb, or planes going into a tower, doesn’t have a story, unlike an IRA bomb. That had a
All Poetry Is Translation: An Introduction to Godlike
Richard Hell‘s Godlike is subtitled “A Novel” which is probably a wise move. It is presented as the “Hospital Notebooks of Paul Vaughn”, but this first-person narrative, supposedly written in 1997, is interspersed with Vaughn’s third-person “memoir-novelette of R.T. Wode” set in the early 70s. Paul Vaughn — a very unreliable narrator (“I don’t have the best memory in the world,” p 10; “My memory’s not the best, and I don’t trust memory anyway,” p 23) who is on one of his regular spells in the psychiatric ward of a hospital (“I may be in the loony bin but I
The Missing Links
The Library of Unwritten Books. * Dennis Cooper (who has been interviewed not once but twice by 3:AM) started off his blog, back in May, with this rather ominous disclaimer: “I think I’m ill-suited to blogging”. Thankfully, he was totally wrong. * Rob Walker (author of Letters From New Orleans) is interviewed by flak magazine: “‘The gap between the college students partying on Bourbon Street and the reality of some of the poverty and so forth in New Orleans is particularly extreme,’ he says. ‘Some of what I’m saying might be true of certain Caribbean destinations like Jamaica, or whatever
3:AM Top 5: Chris Cleave
Incendiary author Chris Cleave lives in Paris with his wife and son. This morning, he tells me was listening to: 1. “Cells,” The Servant — The Servant 2. “Higher and Higher,” — Jackie Wilson 3. “All My Ghosts,” Frank Black and the Catholics — Frank Black 4. “Dali,” Open Heart Zoo — Martin Grech 5. “Revelator,” Time (The Revelator) — Gillian Welch
The New Hampshire Review
The New Hampshire Review has been launched. The first issue includes reviews, artwork and poetry by, inter alia, Cynthia Huntington, C. Dale Young, Dan Beachy-Quick, Timothy Liu, Peter Campion, Jon Davis, Jonathan Fink, Steve Mueske, Naomi Feigelson Chase, Philip Fried, John Pursley III, Ravi Shankar, David Biespiel, Lesle Lewis, Clay Matthews and Robert Phillips. Instead of charging a fee or carrying advertisements, The New Hampshire Review has set up a Contributors’ Fund through which they hope to provide their contributors with “a small honorarium”. They are already accepting submissions for the second issue, due out in October.