Stephen Mitchelmore (Editor’s note: this review was written a couple of weeks prior to W.G. Sebald’s untimely death in a car crash on 14th December 2001). In its official press release, the committee for the Nobel Prize for Literature praised VS Naipaul, the 2001 recipient, for "works that compel us to see the presence of […]
J.G. Ballard : Rushing To Paradise : Not A Literary Man
Marcus Moure’s 1995 interview with J.G. Ballard about his novel Rushing To Paradise Ballard is one of the best writers of speculative fiction alive today. Whether exploring the innate sexuality of automobile accidents, the power of dreams as reality, or navigating through the rubble of modern civilization, his often savage, apocalyptic work has influenced artists […]
J.G. Ballard: Rushing To Paradise
Marcos Moure J.G. Ballard’s latest psychodrama is an intensely raw, tense, and bloodied tale of extremes set in the mythical “paradise” of Saint-Esprit, a desolate atoll somewhere in the South Pacific. The novel is thinly veiled as an adventure story as seen through the eyes of its narrator, 16-year old Neil Dempsey. This is no […]
David Markson: This Is Not A Novel
Stephen Mitchelmore There’s always someone telling us that the novel is dead. And that is how it should be. As well as offering us the chance to laugh at the fools who parrot this announcement, it makes us ask, for the umpteenth time: what is the novel for, exactly? The question should not be answered […]
Gilles Deleuze: Proust And Signs
Stephen Mitchelmore This isn’t a new book. The French original was published in 1964 and in English eight years later. But don’t dismiss it as out-of-date. Like the book it analyses, Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, it pitches the reader into the future with a rare vigour. Buy this re-issue and give your […]
Peter Ackroyd – London: The Biography
Chris Hall Those who have read Peter Ackroyd’s Dan Leno and The Limehouse Golem will recall that the word golem comes from the medieval Jewish for an artificial human being brought to life by supernatural means, a “thing without form”. Ackroyd’s latest book, London: The Biography, has itself managed to breathe life into a seemingly […]
Jeff Noon: Cobralingus
Antony Johnston START > INLET Welcome to the review of Jeff Noon’s latest book, Cobralingus. DRUG: HYPERBOLIN > ENHANCE Jeff Noon’s latest masterpiece, the work of literate beauty that is Cobralingus, takes the reader on an unparalleled journey; one which will never be forgotten. This exemplary poetry, finely encapsulating the very essence of language, ensures […]
Hunter S. Thompson : Fear and Loathing In America and Screwjack : Postcards From The Edge
Nathan Cain reflects on the journalistic legacy of elderly dope fiend Hunter S. Thompson I found Hunter S. Thompson by accident. I was looking through the stacks at my local public library, searching for something, I don’t remember what, when I read the title Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on the spine of an […]
James Ellroy: American Tabloid
Richard Pendleton The reader always mainlined crime fiction in front of the TV. He picked up the book. He rubbed his chin. The bristle made a noise like the crackle of fire spreading through a condo in the background . The reader said "Its American Tabloid. Its by James Ellroy." Cynical reader said it was […]
Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier And Clay
Miriam McDonald This book, set mostly in the 1940s, begins when Joe Kavalier escapes with the legendary Golem from Nazi-occupied Prague, only to find himself in America with no way to free his family, no matter what he does. Just as America is wide-open for these characters, so Europe closes around their loved ones and […]
J.G. Ballard : Super Cannes : Flight And Imagination
Chris Hall talks about the dark side of capitalism and the deceptions of reality with J.G. Ballard Walking along Oxford Street the day after I finished reading JG Ballard’s new novel, Super-Cannes, it struck me, literally, the total acceptance of the substrate of violence in consumer societies when it manifests itself. A silent, monolithic crowd […]
Gabriel Josipovici – On Trust: Art and the Temptations of Suspicion
Jimmy Tarbuck, the no-nonsense Scouse comedian, was on a chat show a few years ago and was asked what kind of reading he preferred. Without pausing to reflect he said, or rather bellowed, “Pure escapism!” He didn’t elaborate. You wouldn’t expect him to. Actually, he repeated the phrase, perhaps impressed by the sudden acquisition of […]
Irvine Welsh and the UK Drug Debate
Chris Mitchell ponders the impact of Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting on the UK drug debate [Spike note – this article was written in December 1997 for the now defunct Canadian online magazine Can Say. With the recent furore in the UK after seven Conservative Shadow Cabinet ministers admitted smoking pot, it seemed worth republishing. Despite there […]
Will Self : How The Dead Live : Dead Man Talking
Chris Hall has a lively conversation with Will Self Although, at 39, Will Self is approaching mid-life and he can see the “lowering storm of age and extinction” ahead of him, there is still certainly nothing in his prose or his physiognomy to suggest that he will become flabby or paunchy. Indeed, even though his […]
Paul Celan : After The Disaster
Stephen Mitchelmore explores the post-Holocaust poetry of Paul Celan “With a variable key you unlock the house in which drifts the snow of that left unspoken. Always what key you choose depends on the blood that spurts from your eye or your mouth or your ear. You vary the key, you vary the word that […]
Jeff Noon : Pixel Juice : Dub Til It Bleeds
Polly Marshall hears why sci-fi is a four letter word for the Lee Scratch Perry of contemporary letters, Jeff Noon Jeff Noon’s gorgeous girlfriend has her hands on the wheel and a crazy glint in her big blue eyes. Jeff and Julie are my not entirely reliable guides on the Vurt tour, a late night […]
Jeff Noon : Needle In The Groove : Liquid Culture
Antony Johnston discusses cities, prose remixing and the death of Vurt with Jeff Noon I meet Jeff Noon in his now-native Brighton, stepping off the two o’clock from Victoria to greet a man surprisingly recognisable from his dustjacket photographs, casually dressed and affable. You heard me. Jeff Noon, the man who made Manchester live, breathe […]
Saul Bellow: Ravelstein
Stephen Mitchelmore "I stood back from myself and looked into Amys face. No one else on all this earth had such features. This was the most amazing thing in the life of the world." These sentences come from the final page of Saul Bellows previous novel "The Actual", which, I seem to remember, he said […]
Mark Danielewski: House Of Leaves
Gary Marshall House Of Leaves is one of the strangest books we’ve seen for some time. With multiple narrators, a mass of footnotes and direct transcripts of video tapes, the novel has been described as a "literary Blair Witch Project’ – a description we’d wholeheartedly agree with. The novel is narrated by Johnny Truant, a […]
William S. Burroughs: Last Words
Nathan Cain The works of William Seward Burroughs have always, even among those who think themselves the hippest of the hip, been considered a bit much. Without a doubt, Ginsberg and Kerouac have been the most popular authors of the Beat movement, but the fact remains that Kerouac’s reputation is based on one work of […]
James Gleick: Faster
Chris Mitchell Faster is a survey of the speed of modern life. Subtitled "The acceleration of just about everything", its a book which takes time out to stop and think about the breakneck pace at which we live our lives and the ramifications of doing so. Unsurprisingly, technology has played a big part in increasing […]
Kodwo Eshun: More Brilliant Than The Sun
Chris Mitchell Technology is often seen as having a negative influence on music. Ever since the advent of sound generated by machines rather than traditional instruments, there have been dire predictions about the death of the Song. More Brilliant Than The Sun takes the opposite attitude and celebrates these strange new technologically-based forms of music, […]
Alan Warner : The Sopranos : Existential Ecstasy
Zoe Strachan talks to Alan Warner about French intellectuals and the chemical generation genre ZS: Your story ‘After the Vision’ was in my opinion the best in the Children of Albion Rovers anthology produced by Rebel Inc. It says it was taken from something called The Far Places. Was this a novel? It seems to […]
Laurence O’Toole: Pornocopia
Robin Askew "To write, as I have, with an enthusiasm for something so loathed in certain quarters is maybe asking for trouble," acknowledges Independent, New Statesman and Daily Telegraph contributor Laurence OToole in his introduction to this excellent survey of "porn, sex, technology and desire". Hes certainly seen enough of the stuff during his three […]
Jorge Luis Borges: The Total Library
Stephen Mitchelmore The last story in The Book of Sand, a collection of stories by Jorge Luis Borges, is itself called "The Book of Sand". It is a story about the discovery and disposal of a book whose pages never remain the same from one reading to the next. The book is in effect infinite, […]