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[19.3.06] [Andrew Gallix]
THE MISSING LINKS
 Tom Gidley's excellent debut novel, Stunning Lofts -- another Offbeat Generation instant classic -- is reviewed in Ready Steady Book by Lee Rourke. * The art of ghostwriting. * Douglas Coupland meets up with Morrissey: ". . . His head (this is really weird, and I hope it doesn't go outside the boundaries of taste) is enormous. It's like a huge Charlie Brown parade float head. I walked into the bar to meet him and I saw this guy across the room with this massive head and I thought to myself, 'Man, that's one massive head', and it was Morrissey. . . . It's not my job to develop a therapeutic analysis of the man, but I think that he's pulled so far into his shell that, save whatever friends and family he has, he's genuinely become what he once pretended to be -- that reclusive glumster we all fell in love with -- cranky and restless in his bedsit, mooning about obscure stars from distant eras. Which is to say, it's his myth, and he's very happy with it, thank you, and if you don't like it, piss off. And it's also why we Morrissey fans love Morrissey. Everybody wins." * Coupland's new novel is called jPod. * According to today's Independent on Sunday, bad-girls' diaries are the new post-chick lit genre. * Dan Fante on John Fante. * Vic Godard of the Subway Sect is on myspace. * Also on myspace: France's answer to Nick Kent, Patrick Eudeline who used to front a punk combo (Asphalt Jungle) at the same time as Eletric Callas (Lyons' answer to Idiot-era Iggy Pop). The kids are on there too, of course: check out Plasticine or Les Naast. * The trials and tribulations of sex in print since Lady Chatterley. * Tom Hodgkinson of Idler fame reviews Anthony Thornton and Roger Sargent's book about The Libertines (The Libertines: Bound Together, Time Warner): ". . . The Libertines had something of the kitchen sink about them, something of Blake, something of the Clash, something of the Smiths, something of Dickens, something of the fin de siecle dandy, something of the Pogues. . . . At heart, the Libertines project was a romantic one. Doherty and Barat concocted an appealing mythology with echoes of William Blake: they were sailing to Arcadia on a ship called Albion. Through their music and their poetry they would free themselves of the bourgeois everyday. But really they were less like Blake, who after all was not a drug-user but a steady worker, than another great but short-lived creative partnership, Coleridge and Wordsworth." * More on London's red line mystery. * Ivor Cutler's obituary. * Lydia Lunch review. * More DBC Pierre. * Dave Gorman discovers the beauty of Flickr. * Looking back on the ICA's controversial Prostitution exhibition of 1976. * David Byrne's online journal. * Toby Litt on Winona Ryder. * The Sunday Times' Oxford Literary Festival. * The rise of blog publishing and the Lulu Blooker Prize. * The Greatest Living British Writer. * British poets in the Shanghai metro. * A review of Tony O'Neill's Digging the Vein (via dogmatika). * Atwood gadget does not work. * No Wavers Mars 25 years on. * William H. Gass's A Temple of Texts reviewed in the Complete Review. * Britain logs on. * Tox spotting. * More on Rip it Up and Start Again including an excellent punkcast. * Storyglossia. * The Crystal Palace dinosaurs. * Amazon to become a publisher? (Via Splinters). * Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott are interviewed over at Bookslut. * Salon on the lives and times of Laura Albert aka JT LeRoy. * Nice pictures from a Richmond to Surbiton walk. * Will The Penny become London's Village Voice? * Edna O'Brien on Beckett. * Wired's blogs. * More cool Beat stuff (via dogmatika). * Norman Mailer is interviewed by Nerve. * Paris's annual Salon du Livre book fair runs from 17 to 22 March. * The London Review of Books on Port Eliot (21-23 July), England's hippest literary festival: "Port Eliot's gimmick -- or 'unique selling point', as they say in the advertising business -- is that punters get to witness professional writers performing as amateur musicians, film-makers and dancers. Why this should be in any way appealing isn't at all clear, and it's certainly not the kind of thing very likely to happen the other way round: it's hard to imagine anyone trekking down to Cornwall to listen to the drummer from the Arctic Monkeys, say, read a couple of chapters from a novel-in-progess. Still, the Sunday Times has called Port Eliot 'a living, partying art installation with the rocking book set', and the Observer has said that, 'as literary festivals go, Port Eliot could not be more rock'n'roll if it tried.' The telling phrase here of course being 'as literary festivals go', since, let’s face it, writers aren't popstars, however much some of them would like to be, and publishing isn't rock'n'roll. Twenty years ago, Port Eliot was the site of the Elephant Fayre rock festival, but that's about as far as any connection goes.. * Celangate rocks the blogosphere. * Steven Wells on the crisis at the heart of American cheerleading. * An interview with Chuck Palahniuk (via dogmatika). * My space. * The Punk Vault. * Harold Pinter. * Blogging Demystified (The Apple Store, Regent Street, London on 5 April, 7-9pm). * The Old Misalliance. * Penelope Houston of early San Francisco punksters The Avengers has a website. * Tom Stoppard on free speech. * Alan Bennett's The Old Country is on at Richmond Theatre, the best theatre in the world. * More from "JT LeRoy" (via -- yes you've guessed -- dogmatika).
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