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 […]
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 […]
Huston Smith: Cleansing The Doors Of Perception
Nathan Cain Popular culture is, for the first time since Aldous Huxley published his (in)famous book The Doors of Perception in 1954, without a narcomancer. With the recent passing of Terrence McKenna, a void has been left in our culture. No one dominant individual is out there positing far out theories about the purported benefits […]
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 […]
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 […]
Jim DeRogatis : Paul Morley : Let It Blurt : Nothing : Critical Mass
Brian Dillon on the lifechanging journalism of Lester Bangs and Paul Morley Lou Reed’s magnificent “Rock’n’Roll” recounts the peculiar tale of a five-year-old girl living in a blank suburb where there’s ‘nothing happening at all … not at all … Then one fine day she turned on a New York station, she couldn’t believe what […]
The Onion: Our Dumb Century: Max Cannon: Red Meat
Gary Marshall damages his health laughing at The Onion’s Our Dumb Century and Max Cannon’s Red Meat According to popular belief, the phrase “American humour” belongs in the same oxymoronic category as “military intelligence” and “virtually spotless”. We British take great delight in reminding Americans that they have no sense of irony – not because […]
Emily Jenkins: Tongue First: Adventures In Physical Culture
Jayne Margetts It’s no secret that the thought of wading through another chapter and verse of literary cultural dissection usually holds about as much appeal as taking a skinny dip in a bath full of female pythons with PMT. After all, how many book store shelves are stocked with feminist rant and rave from the […]
Paul Gootenberg: Cocaine: Global Histories
Gary Marshall The story of cocaine is a depressingly familiar one. Like many of the drugs now banned, it was originally hailed as a groundbreaking new chemical and was manufactured entirely legally throughout the world. People claimed it could treat all kinds of illnesses, presumably because the patients were too whacked off their gourds to […]
J.G. Ballard: Cocaine Nights
David B. Livingstone There’s something wrong with Estrella Del Mar, the lazy, sun-drenched retirement haven on Spain’s Costa Del Sol. Lately this sleepy hamlet, home to hordes of well-heeled, well-fattened British and French expatriates, has come alive with activity and culture; the previously passive, isolated residents have begun staging boat races, tennis competitions, revivals of […]
Irvine Welsh: Alan Warner: Queerspotting: Homosexuality in contemporary Scottish fiction: Queerspotting
Zoe Strachan drags Irvine Welsh’s and Alan Warner’s writing from out of the closet… Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electric tin openers. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. But […]
Irvine Welsh : You’ll Have Had Your Hole : You’ll Have Had Your Theatre
Dr Willy Maley applauds the theatrical assault of Irvine Welsh’s stage play You’ll Have Had Your Hole Brecht once remarked that he’d like to see the kind of people who attended football matches at his plays. Scotland has not had a particularly distinguished record in the field of football, but in recent years, blessed with […]
Will Self : Tough Tough Toys For Tough Tough Boys : Pre-Millennium Tension
Robert Clarke hears why Will Self has become an uncertain satirist No other author in recent years has divided the critics with such relish as Will Self. With, three novellas and two novels to his credit, and now a third collection of short stories, Tough Tough Toys For Tough Tough Boys, he has established himself […]
Allen Ginsberg : Cosmopolitan Greetings : Cosmopolitan Greetings
Graham Duff meets Allen Ginsberg, the self styled “old auntie of the Beat Generation” Allen Ginsberg – poet, Jew, Buddhist and self styled “old auntie of the Beat Generation” – is 68 years of age. Forty years on from the publication of Ginsberg’s infamous Howl, his latest collection, Cosmopolitan Greetings: Writings from 1986-92, has just […]
Nicholas Blincoe: Jello Salad: John L. Williams: Faithless
Jason Weaver sees two very different sides of London in Nicholas Blincoe’s Jello Salad and John L. Williams’ Faithless What is there to say about Jello Salad by Nicholas Blincoe? Well, there’s a bit of sex, and a lot of drugs and even more violence. Blincoe’s characters do things to the body that will never […]
Timothy Leary: Design For Dying
Chris Mitchell Even in death, Timothy Leary is still trying to shatter society’s taboos. Design For Dying appears eighteen months after the former Harvard psychologist turned LSD guru passed away from prostate cancer. Written during his last months, Leary’s book attempts to dispel our fear of death by suggesting that technology increasingly lets us orchestrate […]
Trainspotting: The Play : Expletives Repeated
Harry Gibson’s stage adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s Trainspottinghas taken the theatre world by storm. Chris Mitchell discusses censorship, sincerity and swearing with the director. [Note: this interview is about the original stage production of Trainspotting in 1996. Spike also has another interview with Harry Gibson on the 10th anniversary stage production of Trainspotting in 2006.] […]
Marie Darrieussecq : Pig Tales : Shelf Life
Chris Hall gives the lowdown on Marie Darrieussecq Who’s Marie Darrieussecq? The 28-year-old author of debut novel Pig Tales, which has taken France by storm. The book took just 24-hours to be accepted after she sent her unsolicited manuscript to publishers Big deal. Well, quite. It’s sold a staggering 250,000 hardback copies and has been […]
Will Self : Great Apes : Self Destruction
Chris Mitchell finds out why Will Self doesn’t give a monkeys Will Self is the man who brought a whole new meaning to the phrase “mile high club”. Unless you were in a apathy-induced coma during the run-up to the general election, (or living in another country), you can’t have failed to have seen […]
Cookie Mueller: Ask Doctor Mueller
Chris Mitchell This is one book you can judge by the cover. It shows a home snapped portrait of Cookie Mueller laughing, her head thrown back and her hand out against the wall for support. Ask Dr Mueller is three hundred pages of that laughter, gathered together from over 25 years worth of her writing […]
P.J. O’Rourke : Age And Guile : Sex, Drugs, O’Rourke And Roll
Chris Mitchell encounters the age and guile of political satirist P.J. O’Rourke the American political satirist P.J. O’Rourke recently published Age And Guile, which gathers together previously uncollected material spanning his 25 years of journalism. PJ has built his merciless literary reputation on three things: irritating American liberals, abusing chemicals and visiting every warzone […]
Douglas Coupland : Polaroids From The Dead : From Fear To Eternity
Chris Mitchell emails Douglas Coupland about fame, the future and the problem with American chocolate Douglas Coupland is not your average novelist. Since the publication of Generation X in 1991, he has become one of this decade’s most important writers, thanks to his unerring ability to capture the zeitgeist of young middle class America in […]
Francis Ford Coppola : The Godfather : Saturday Night Fever: John Badham: Sex And Spaghetti
Bethan Roberts watches the transformation of the American-Italian man, from The Godfather to Saturday Night Fever With The Godfather recently re-released in a new print, Don Corleone and his family are back on our screens, shovelling spaghetti into their mouths, screaming at their wives and shooting other Mafia families – all with excessive amounts of […]
Irvine Welsh: Ecstasy: Three Chemical Romances
Chris Mitchell With the phenomenal success of Trainspotting (in all its various literary, filmic and dramatic guises), Irvine Welsh has moved from semi-literary obscurity to the centre of contemporary English writing. Trainspotting was one of those books that provoked people who hated reading to devour its three-hundred plus pages. This never happened with Martin Amis. […]