[eugenics] Guardian Unlimited reports on a new book alleging that an American scientist infected thousands of South American Indians with a measles-like virus [in the process killing hundreds] to test a theory on the effects of natural selection on a primitive society. ‘Prof Turner says that Neel held the view that “natural” human society, as seen before the advent of large-scale agriculture, consists of small, genetically isolated groups in which dominant genes – specifically a gene he believed existed for “leadership” or “innate ability” – have a selective advantage. In such an environment, male carriers of this gene would gain access to a disproportionate number of females, reproducing their genes more frequently than less “innately able” males. The result would supposedly be a continual upgrading of the human genetic stock. He says Neel believed that in modern societies “superior leadership genes would be swamped by mass genetic mediocrity”.’

[books] Crime Magazine asks if In Cold Blood is a dishonest book. Interesting look at the story behind the creation of the book — but be warned… the page contains some disturbing images. ‘However, early on I’d like to raise the question of Capote’s basic honesty in writing this book. He set out to write a masterpiece, yet he took no notes. He recounts lengthy, complex conversations – sans notes. Capote told Plimpton that he had trained himself to do this – that, for a year and a half prior to embarking on the book, he had a friend read passages from a book to him, for an hour or two a day, then he would write down what he had heard – and in his estimation he had a unique facility for accurately remembering interviews, with an accuracy quotient of 95 percent. Which any newspaper reporter can tell you is horse feathers.’

[books] The Guardian’s original book review of In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. ‘The utter banality of the Clutter murder, the fact that it was resolved not through some acute feat of detection but by a facile indiscretion – one of the assassins had discussed the family with a cell-mate before leaving prison – make Truman Capote’s radical point. Looked at minutely enough, filtered through the lens of a highly professional recorder, caught by the tape recording ear in its every inflection and background noise, the most sordid, shapeless of incidents, take on a compelling truth. Exhaustively rendered, the fact is richer than any fiction.’ [Buy this Book: UK / US]

[horror] The Observer interviews Stephen King. ‘Stephen King paused, took a breath, he got stiffly to his feet, and smiled. ‘That’s not to say that there won’t always be a market for crap… Just look at Jeffrey Archer! He writes like old people fuck, doesn’t he?” [part of the Observer’s Stephen King Season]

[ellroy] Old Salon interview with James Ellroy… On his mother: ‘She gave me gifts — her death did. Those gifts have stood me in very good stead. I cannot go back and undo the past. I never even think of what might have happened had she lived. Would I be a writer? I had gone to great lengths in my life, in my career, to seek consciousness and get better and better. That eclipsed everything with me, everything in my subconscious.’

[censored] Guardian Unlimited covers the handling of Lady Chatterley’s Lover censorship case back in the 1960s. ‘Under the heading “Gratuitous filth”, the DPP’s office had tried to keep a running count of the offending words. It notes on page 204 a “bitch goddess of Success (coined by Henry James)”, a “fucking”, a “shit”, a “best bit of cunt left on earth” and “balls” (three times). On page 232 is found “arse” (twice), “arsed” and “slits” (twice), and so the file goes on. At the trial Griffith-Jones told the jury that the word “fuck” or “fucking” appeared no fewer than 30 times.’

[80’s authors] Bright Lights, Big City — the Observer profiles Jay McInerney. “‘I think I’ve been trying to prove I’m a really bad guy for 20 years, that I’m not a mother’s boy. But part of me is stuck with being a Catholic boy who is slightly shocked by things.’ Part of him – but perhaps a decreasing part. He once admitted that, as a teenager, he was deeply influenced by the Playboy ‘Adviser’ section and he still retains that slightly tacky notion of sophistication – he really has to have a beautiful woman on his arm. And the emotional detritus is piling up.”

[adrian mole redux] Must…. not…. blog… Adrian Mole… ‘It’s time I found a sexual partner: a non-neurotic, childless, non-smoking, beautiful woman who enjoys literature, spotting Eddie Stobart lorries and housework would be ideal. Is it too much to ask that I should be allowed a little happiness?’

[more adrian mole] I’m repeating myself but I cannot live without a weekly dose of Adrian Mole. ‘Glenn’s romance is over before it began. Courtney has been “long promised” to her second cousin, a lad called Eli, who works on the whelks and cockle store on the quay. Things are certainly feudal down here. They are but simple folk – untouched by the sophisticated outside world. It is impossible to get a Leicester Mercury.’

[comics] BBC News takes a look at Ralph Steadman and his most recent work for children. ‘Steadman says his latest work has the same “wayward spirit” as Fear and Loathing – despite being aimed at a very different audience. “Little.com is different because I’m not so malevolent in it,” he adds. “A children’s book is small world that is large enough for a child’s mind at bed-time.”‘ [Related Link: ralphsteadman.com]

[books] News Unlimited wonders if Nick Hornby can write a sucessful new novel from a female point-of-view. ‘At his best, Hornby mines a seam that unites far more than it divides: the scary business of growing up, of putting away childish things, and of the struggle to become a fully-formed human being who can have relationships with parents, children, lovers, friends. So why is it any surprise when he decides to explore matters from a different angle in a work of fiction?’

[books] Guardian Unlimited interviews Luke Rhinehart aka George Cockcroft author of The Dice Man ‘Originally he had seen the dice as a way of breaking down some of the habitual stiffness he disliked in his own character: ‘I was a shy, uptight sort of guy in my teens and early twenties, and tremendously driven to succeed, get A grades and so on, and I did not like either of those characteristics one bit…’ He had the notion that by rolling a dice to make decisions, about what to read, where to go, how to react to people, he could bring risk into his life, which he otherwise seemed naturally indisposed toward. In this way, he hoped, he could turn himself into someone else.’

[books] A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers digested at Books Unlimited. ‘Toph is my laboratory. I can fill his head with my music, my books. He is one lucky, lucky guy. But he’s my problem, too. I mean, looking after your eight-year old brother is all very soulful, but how do you find the time to shag? When I’m not with him I worry someone’s hacking him to death and when I am, I just wish he’d fucking disappear and let me live my life.’

[Mailer] Norman Mailer on the sexual revolution. ‘The six times married Mailer, who stabbed his second wife Adele in 1960 after an all-night party, said the women’s movement has been “sold down the river for a mess of corporate pottage” and sympathised with President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair. “Mon frere, I thought. I’d have done it myself.”‘

[interview] The New York Times profiles/interviews Stephen King. ‘If there is a single trait common to most of King’s writing, it is the reader’s feeling that the author is playing God. He can and will make really bad things happen to his beloved creations. He will then watch them confront this evil, occasionally offering aid. Finally, after they’ve been scared witless and have proved themselves worthy, they are welcomed back into His warm embrace, humble and grateful.’

[Mr Blue] Excellent Edward Bunker retrospective in Crime Time ‘But apart from his friendship with Louise Wallis, Bunker continued to hang-out with low lifes: pimps, whores, dope-addicts and boosters. He tried heroin and then began selling crudely-harvested marijuana. While out on a delivery a police pulled up alongside him, indicating him to stop. Bunker drove off but crashed into a car and a mail truck. Apprehended by the law, he was sent to LA county jail.’ [via Beesley]

[britney] Elizabeth Wurtzel talks about Britney Spears in GuardianUnlimited. ‘The signifier and the signified have gone their separate ways, as is always the case in current semiotic thinking. Men with long hair might vote for Tory MPs, guys with earrings – I mean in both ears – are usually not gay, Princess Zara has a tongue stud, Prince William wears an Eton vest meant to look like something out of Austin Powers, and a ring in the nose is a passing teenage fad that has nothing to do with worshipping Kali or Vishnu. There are hippie capitalists, there are millionaire computer programmers in Silicon Valley with purple hair. And so it has been for quite a while now. What, in this day and age, is really subversive?’

[books] Have I ever said how much I like James Ellroy books?

[books] Quick interview with the great Scottish author Iain M. Banks. “Though it also strikes me that the Culture would only work with people who are nicer than us – less bigoted, less prone to violence and genocide. We don’t know to what extent aggression is necessary to achieve sentience, consciousness, space travel, a genuinely stable civilisation. We don’t know if we’re a particularly violent species or a relatively mild one – in which case you’d better hope we haven’t been discovered yet.”

[web] Douglas Rushkoff talks about the “social currency” of the media and internet. Social currency is like a good joke. When a bunch of friends sit around and tell jokes, what are they really doing? Entertaining one another? Sure, for a start. But they are also using content – mostly unoriginal content that they’ve heard elsewhere – in order to lubricate a social occasion. And what are most of us doing when we listen to a joke? Trying to memorise it so that we can bring it somewhere else. The joke itself is social currency. Interesting in regards to weblogs — I hope LinkMachineGo provide social currency in the form of interesting/useful links… [via Metafilter]

[books] Interesting interview with Alex Garland author of The Beach. Covers the story’s origins as a comic book… . “He had drawn a 60-page comic book, a noir-ish tale based on his experiences in the Far East. He had a go at translating it into a novel. The origins of The Beach, which is written like a sequence of discrete man-on-a-desert-island cartoons, remain apparent. Its comic-book blueprint helps to account for its storytelling pace, and why even in quite horrific and bloody scenes there is a Pulp Fiction element of slapstick.”

[books] Media Nugget of the Day covers Enders Game.

[books] newsUnlimited reports that christian apocalyptic fundamentalists set to knock Harry Potter off top of the book charts in the US. “In interviews, Mr LaHaye appears to be the more driven member of the successful duo, saying that the books’ message ‘is the greatest message of hope in the world’. Mr Jenkins, by contrast, seems more worldly. ‘There are some times when I think I was born for this project,’ he said recently. ‘Other times I think I was born to play golf.'”

[books] Media Nugget of the Day covers Michael Lewis’s Liar’s Poker.

[books] Experience in 400 words. “It is the late 1970s. The gross of condoms that Kingsley gave me and Phillip have long since been used.”

[books] More strange quotes from Barbara Cartland. “Men have always made a fuss of me. I still have several admirers who send me jewellery and chocolates. So I must be doing something right” – aged 96. [via Adorable]

[quote] The wisdom of Barbara Cartland: “The trouble with half the Socialists is they’re suffering from vitamin dificiency”

[news] Barbara Cartland is dead. The BBC has a tributes page — some of them sound… well, a little critical. I wonder why? “Perhaps her works were ignored by critics because they deserved to be ignored by critics. Dame Barbara blamed women for the permissive society. She blamed women for teen violence. She blamed women for – well, let’s face it: Dame Barbara blamed women for everything. Maybe that attitude was acceptable a century ago, but no longer. We women don’t need pampered millionaires scolding us for running our lives as we see fit. And we don’t need their implausible melodramas, either.”

[books] Surprisingly, Julie Burchill likes Kingsley Amis. Wierd!

[book] 253 a novel for the Internet about London Underground in seven cars and a crash

[interview] An interview with John Diamond [Text-Only] in the Observer. Diamond’s columns can be found at The Times Website. [Originally, I’d decided not to link to the John Diamond interview but it stuck in my mind for a couple of days, a friend mentioned it to me and I suddenly realised that columnists in newspapers and webloggers probably have a lot in common…]

[books] More profiles of Martin Amis: [BBC] The Martin Amis Experience [Sunday Times] Middle age is drawing the poison from his pen.

[books] Another Amis posting — the Digested Letters of Kingsley Amis.

[books] Final extract from Amis Autobiography — When darkness met light

[books] Extracts from Martin Amis’s new autobiography Experience: “I’ve been name dropping, in a way, ever since I first said: ‘Dad'” and “Mum, do you think I’m her father? – Definitely”

[books] booksUnlimited interviews Martin Amis. [Text Only]

[news] two random, unconnected (but interesting!) links from BBC News: Net sex addiction on the rise and Author [Stephen] King feeling better [after nasty car accident last year].

[tech] The wisdom of Jerry Pournelle: Installing A Linux Server Takes Savvy. Guh?

[books] booksUnlimited has Adrian Mole on the web: Diary of a Provincial Man.

[comics] Neil Gaiman has a website.

[pulp!] Pulp Book covers: Sex and savagery of Hells Angels, Satan was a Man or Confessions of a Pychiatrist — Every Boudoir was his office Every patient his plaything! [via PhilB<-Memepool]

[tech] Julie Burchill comes out of the closet as a technophobe [Text Only].

[lists] An interesting “Best of” series book-list from clip2.com.

[Books] Here’s the first chapter of Man and Boy. Tony Parson’s chats about his book in talkUnlimited.

[Books] Interview with Nick Hornby about the new film of his book High Fidelity. [Via Ghost in the Machine]

Can men read? Apparently men don’t like reading books with “love” in the title.

Books Unlimited lists Mohamed al Fayed’s favourite books. Here’s a link to the BBC News profile of al Fayed from late last year.

A life in Crime — Ian Rankin on crime novels. “Here’s the scoop: crime writing is sexy.”

According to the Guardian Labour MPs love Harry Potter books.