SPIKE MAGAZINE

Dr David Stephen Calonne has written and edited a number of books around Beat-era American literature with a particular focus on Charles Bukowski. The recent collection More Notes of a Dirty Old Man will soon be followed by an appraisal for Reaktion’s

Jacob Knowles-Smith sits down for a TV dinner with Tom Wolfe Thankfully BBC Four hasn’t been demolished just yet. If it had been, we wouldn’t have had chance to enjoy its recent ‘All American’ season. They say that BBC 2 would absorb the channel’s

Reviewed by Ben Granger 1. The purpose of politics is to inspire art. The only useful thing it has ever achieved When Marshall Brennan argued “The Manifesto is remarkable for its imaginative power… It is the first great modernist work of art”, he

For comedy aficionados, Richard Herring needs no introduction. So we’re not going to give him one. Declan Tan asks the questions What is it you strive for in your shows? Mainly to make people laugh, but along with that I suppose my main goal is doing

Gerald Locklin has, in his lengthy career, alternately been called a “people’s writer”, a “stand-up poet” (co-credited for coining the term) and, by his friend and contemporary, Charles Bukowski: “one of the great undiscovered talents of our

Carrying the torch passed on by Bukowski and Hubert Selby Jr, for many Dan Fante is America’s most vital writer. Interview by Declan Tan Dan Fante is one of the last surviving writers of his generation that could be called a “maverick”. Having spent

Chris Hall revisits J.G. Ballard’s childhood and finds the future in the past The opening of J.G. Ballard’s Empire of the Sun (1984) has young Jim watching British war propaganda films with fellow choristers in the crypt of the Holy Trinity church

Published a few years before the works that made him a posthumous literary superstar, Roberto Bolaño’s Nazi Literature in the Americas is an evasive, hybrid beast. Ben Granger gets to grips with it This arcane curiosity of a book – first published

Kevin Fitzgerald gathers together the narrative fragments of Didion’s novels and finds that identity is a collaborative process In her essay ‘Facing Reality’, Marilynne Robinson likens our present model of the world to so much ‘floorsweep’

Gonzo scribbler, internet entrepreneur and backing vocalist for Eliza Carthy, Ralph Steadman spills the beans on being ripped off and Hunter S. Thompson’s mother. Chris Wood listens. “I felt savaged a bit by the whole thing… Hunter was in the middle

Perhaps Josef K will get to testify in the ongoing wrangle over Kafka’s manuscripts in an Israeli court. The Czech author instructed his friend Max Brod to destroy his papers, instead two-thirds eventually made its way to the Bodleian Library via Kafka’s

Take a ride on the wild side with Esotouric’s tours of LA’s underbelly “We’re not your ordinary tour company,” suggests the website of Los Angeles-based Esotouric. Indeed. Rather than curb crawling around Laurel Canyon squinting at George Clooney’s

Jason Weaver goes in search of the creative city and loses himself in the collective mind Where does creative work originate? Anybody who has worked collaboratively can tell you about the mysterious processes at play. The excitement and flow of a creative

Jason Weaver revisits Don DeLillo’s premillennial opus of paranoia and baseball. The title of Don DeLillo’s 1997 novel Underworld alludes both to living under the canopy of the bomb and to a world beneath us, more specifically a hell. DeLillo

Hugh Graham concludes his exploration of Houellebecq’s dessicated terrain with the Stoic imperative to “bear up and do without”. PART THREE: THE INDIVIDUAL Every revival of philosophy begins with the individual. Today the individual,

In the second of three parts, Hugh Graham examines the theme of atomization in Houellebecq’s novels, finding bad conscience in good intentions and fatal contradictions in the biometrics of happiness. PART TWO: THE PRESENT AUGUSTAN AGE A desert landscape

In the first of three parts, Hugh Graham looks through the prism of Houellebecq’s novels and finds a Gnostic theme for our times. Deserts creep and sea-levels rise. Populations expand and resources are depleted amid poverty, wealth, and intractable

Ben Granger First published in 1914, Wyndham Lewis’ Blast has just been republished by Thames And Hudson. For centuries, when the Great British reading public scanned the covers of their journals, from Blackwoods through to the Edinburgh Review

Ben Granger Borges is that rare writer, one who can truly change your outlook forever. To read Labyrinths or Ficciones is to experience the universe anew, to find a poetry in mathematics, a mysticism in reason. In tales like “Funes the Memorious”,

Dan Coxon Over the last few years Chuck Palahniuk has revelled in the sordid, the grotesque, and the downright dirty like a particularly literate pig in shit, and for many readers his decision to set a novel within the pornography industry must have

Ben Granger Monsignor Quixote – Graham Greene See all books by Graham Greene at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com Whenever there was a chance to have a shot at Catholicism in his writing, George Orwell could always be relied on to take aim and

Himalaya – Michael Palin See all books by Michael Palin at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com Dodgy dentists. The Dalai Llama. High-altitude polo players. Maoist rebels. Yak herders. Imran Khan. Just a few of the diverse personalities professional

Greg Lowe Original interview with Ian Rankin on the publication of A Question of Blood and the re-issue of Watchman. A Question of Blood – Ian Rankin See all books by Ian Rankin at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com Not many punk rockers will tell

Dan Coxon House Of Meetings – Martin Amis See all books by Martin Amis at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com Any new Martin Amis book always comes with plenty of baggage, and House Of Meetings is no exception. As his first full-length fiction since

Dan Coxon The Gum Thief – Douglas Coupland See all books by Douglas Coupland at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com In recent years Douglas Coupland has achieved a remarkably consistent output. It’s not that every novel he’s written has been