Two interesting pieces in the Guardian review recently - James Campbell on the twisted tale of how the Naked Lunch was put together. I very rarely get round to re-reading novels in their entirety - there’s always far too many new ones out there - but I do think I’m overdue for a second helping of Lunch.
Elsewhere Alex Danchev on FT Marinetti and the Futurists is a good overview too. Futurism was a fascinating movement, fizzingly inventive, very much the progenitor of punk. It’s posturing was adolescent and malevolent, and all the more exciting for that. Of course, there came an unforgivably nasty side. Great art got mistranslated into scummy politics. Danchev underplays Marinetti’s Fascism, just as others did of Wyndham Lewis when he was being re-appraised last year. Even less justified with Marinetti as he was a Fascist to the end. But Futurism produced some real masterpieces, my fave of which is Carra’s Interventionist Manifesto.
