WAVVES LIVES WITH HIS PARENTS
But He Still Gets Lonely
Nathan Williams is 22 and makes music on his own in a lo-fi band/solo-project/whatever he calls Wavves. He used to be in a band called Fantastic Magic which actually managed to out-lo-fi Wavves. Once you hear Wavves you’ll find that hard to believe. Every Wavves track that gushes never-endingly from Nathan’s busy MySpace page and numerous salivating blogs seems to rip and grab from every one of his beloved childhood influences. He casually shimmy’s between West Coast G-funk, slacker pop, surf rock and girl group melodies all bathed in a warm hissing, crackling fuzz that makes your average K Records release sound like it was recorded by Bob Rock. He also maintains a great classic rap blog called Ghostramp.
Vice: Why does your record sound like it was recorded in a tin can at the bottom of the ocean?
Nathan Williams: I just record everything into Garageband. Sometimes I’ll go through the 4-track into Garageband and just keep playing. I try and record everyday but my drum kit just got stolen.
How did that happen?
I left it at my apartment and went on a trip and when I got back it wasn’t there. I think it was my little brother’s friends though. That’s my theory.
You can definitely hear some doo-wop melodies in there amongst the swamp. What are your top three girl groups?
I like the Marvelettes and the Ronettes a bunch and the Shangri La’s obviously even though that is kind of boring to say. My usual guideline is that if it ends in ‘ettes’ it will usually be pretty ok.
Do you ever get lonely playing on your own?
Constantly. The only way to get over it is to smoke weed and watch Seinfeld.
Due all the distortion it’s difficult to make out the lyrics. Do you want to tell the people what you’re singing about?
Being lonely.
You’ve had a pretty intense amount of coverage on the blogs considering you’ve only been doing this since February. Do you think they picked up on it so quickly because you are a blogger yourself?
Maybe? The blogging thing just came about because I was working in this music store in San Diego called Music Trader. It was an awful place filled with racist jocks and douche bags and I just couldn’t handle the 9-5 so I ended up quitting but the sparkle in my day while I was there had been these nice guys who would just come and in and talk rap records with me. Once I quit the job I suddenly had all this time on my hands and wanted to talk rap records but had no one to talk about them with so I started Ghostramp. I’d always listened to rap though because as kid the two things my mum wouldn’t let me listen to were West Coast G-Funk and alternative guitar music so those were the two things I got heavy into.
So Wavves is just a combination of what your mum wouldn’t let you listen to as a kid?
Exactly. I am living at home again now after I quit at the record store actually. I bet she can’t wait to see the back of me.
CALVIN JAMSON
myspace.com/waves
Wavves have 7” entitled So Bored forthcoming on Young Turks
Thursday, 9 April 2009
Vice v7n1 Feature: The Busy Gallows Of Iran
This was something that I put together with Pegah Farahmand who very kindly conducted all of the interviews and did all the translating for me. Thanks Pegs!
THE BUSY GALLOWS OF IRAN
Iran is the only country in the world that continues to execute juveniles in 2008. This year alone has already seen six teenagers have the chair kicked from under them (hanging is the preferred method) and on the 9th October (one day after Iran’s ‘Day of the Child’) the Islamic regime in Iran is planning to execute Mohammad Reza Haddadi for a crime he allegedly committed 3 years ago when he was 15.
One of the most well known cases of teenage capital punishment in Iran is that of Atefeh Rajabi, who was sentenced to death for having sex with a married man when she was 16 years old. In 2004 Atefeh was taken to prison but claimed in court that she had been raped by the 51 year old married taxi driver Ali Darabi who had picked her up on the street. After her outburst in court judge Haji Rezai sentenced her to death and a week later he personally put the noose around her neck which killed her. Oh, and it was later revealed that there was evidence that Rezai had raped Atefah while she was being tortured in prison.
Iran may be an Islamic country entrenched in the teaching of the Koran, which isn’t such a big deal when it comes to stuff like cutting bacon out of your diet, but the underbelly of corrupt religious fundamentalists disregarding of the rules of International law and hanging kids like its going out of fashion are beginning to anger and inflame even the most conservative elements of the Iranian public. Many feel that something has got to give. And soon.
Stop Child Executions recently released the most comprehensive list of recommendations ever published for ending the practice of juvenile execution in Iran. Included in this document were the cases of 140 Iranian children currently facing the death penalty in Iran.
We talked to two Iranian children defence lawyers, Mohammed Mustafa and Ahmad Rezai, about some of the cases they have worked and why Iran is still obeying laws that were made over 1400 years ago.
VICE: Could you explain what exactly would constitue a ‘crime against chastity’ that would result in capital punishment? When Atefeh Rajabee was 16 she was sentenced to death because she had sex with a married man. Is that enough to get you strung up?
Ahmad Rezai: Like many people in Iran, I have been following this case for a while. It is very clear that the government lied many times over Atefehs sentence, and that she should not have been executed. Atefeh had a very difficult childhood. Her mother died in a car accident at a very young age and her father became a drug addict so she was left in the incapable hands of her very old grand parents who left her to her own devices, loose on the streets which for that time and in the village that she was living in was not a respectable way for a young girl to be living. She was taken to prison for having sex with a married man. He was in his 50’s, had a daughter and was a simple taxi driver. When she was in court she claimed that she was raped. Merely a week after being accused the Judge sentenced her to death. Her case was not given adequate time or considered fully. It has been alleged that the Judge raped Atefeh during sentencing. Many believe that out of shame and fear of the truth being exposed he wanted her dead straight away.
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: As an Islamic country, the law which the parliament decides on in Iran is based on the laws of the Islamic religion. Issues concerning adultery, do not exist solely in Iran, but in many other Islamic countries as well, such as Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Jordan. The Islamic law states that if a married man or a married woman has any sexual relations outside of marriage, the punishment that they will receive is stoning to death. This case is complicated but the laws are fairly clear.
From what age does it become acceptable to chuck stones at people until they die?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: In our country it is established that any girl from the age of 9 and any boy from the age of 15 is liable to be punished. At that age it is deemed that they have reached puberty so in the eyes of the law they are capable of committing this kind of crime so they can in turn be punished accordingly. This doesn’t just include sexual crimes, They can be punished for any criminal activities from this age.
16 seems very young to be sentenced to death for taking part in an act that she may well have had little control over? Shouldn’t it be the guy swinging? Didn’t he just get cained?
Ahmad Rezai: Yes he received 95 lashes. This is the exact reason that Anmesty International, as well as other organisations protecting human and childrens rights, are still investigating into this case. It was an incredibly unfair and tragic ruling. What’s worse is that they used the term ‘had sexual relations’ when it was actually rape, and that they also lied about her age, stating that she was 22, when she was just 16 years of age. No one knows for sure if she was tortured while she was in prison. But it is quite usual for this to go on even though it is against the law.
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: Since I have been looking after these kind of cases, I have come across many young children who have been punished by execution. Iran, is not obliged to obey any kind of international law. Amnesty International have notified the government that no one under the age of 18 should be sentenced to death and every time I represent one of these young people in court, I put the case forward that international law’s state that they are not allowed to be executed as under 18’s but this argument it is powerless in the face of the testimony of Islam. This is a law that began 1400 years ago and that is still followed today.
Who is in charge of seeking out these kinds of crimes? The pastor’s or the 110 ?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: The 110 are the same as the police in our country. We also have a kind of police that we call “Basij” or pastors who look after religious law. They both work under the influence of the court and high court but the Baseej continually take the law into their own hands and treat these kind of crimes with their own rules of punishment. They interfere with each others duties and this is something that we are, as a nation, frustrated with.
Ahmad Rezai: The 110 are the official fast Police, they are on the payroll. When I say fast I mean as in they are who you call in case of an emergency as opposed to not eating. It is like 911 in the states. Our emergency number is 110 so that is how they got their name. They are totally useless though. Once our neighbourhood was being robbed, it took them over 45 minutes to get to us and when they turned up they didn’t have any hand-cuffs. When they finally caught the thief they tied his hands with some cable. There is also a lot of corruption within the 110. They will beat students and young people for nothing and are partial to bribes. If you have a relative who is a lawyer, or any kind of connection to the police you can just use their name and they are likely to leave you alone and not bother you. The law can be on your side if you have connections or money. Which is incredibly unlucky for 90% of Iranians. The Basij are really fucked up. They are like those ‘Young Nazi Believers’. There is this old joke: A maths teacher asks a Basij in school: “what are parallel lines?” and he says “parallel lines can never reach each other, unless a supreme leader says they cross over one another”. In translation it might not make sense, but it perfectly captures their mind set. In their view, even parallel lines will cross paths if a leader says so.
That’s really depressing.
Ahmad Rezai: It is. I was in Germany recently, and read a lot about Nazi Germany and I have to admit that I see a lot of similarities. There are only 90,000 uniformed Basiji the rest are what we call " Lebas Shakhsi" or those with no uniform. They are usually from poor, sections of the society and together the different forces work like the Gestapo and the SS and police all elements of society. For example during the student movment, the Police (110) did nothing. They stood by, but the Lebas Shakhsi beat everybody in sight. Everyone knows that they did it but because they are not officially affiliated you cannot point the finger. They permeate all levels of society. For example, when I was having coffee with my cousins one night in Isfeshan some uniformed Basij came and grabbed my cousin and threw him in the back of the van and took him to prison for the night and beat him for having long being into Metallica.
How would they have found him?
Ahmad Rezai: The Basij along with a clergy who controls them work below the supreme leaders delegate in each city who organizes the Basij of that city.
Their real function is to balance any kind of movement particularly amongst the young and universities. If you are a young, registered Basiij, you can say so on your application to university and they automatically let you in to help monitor freedom of speech, women’s movements and so on.
What would they make of a freshers fare in England where its just one long fuck fest?
Ahmad Rezai: Well in Iranian Universities if a boy and girl are found sitting next to each other then they will come and give you a warning and notify you.
Is torturing something usual in Iran?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: In Iran, and in most of the kind of cases that I deal with, the person who has committed the crime will not get any legal aid or representation unless they are very wealthy. Therefore torture is likely to take place. If you have a lawyer to represent you, then this can be avoided. Because it is difficult for the police to gain any evidence, they turn to torture methods for confessions. If I know there is someone who has not had any kind of representation, then I can be pretty sure they have been put through some kind of torture.
So if you have a lawyer you avoid the whole torture process but if not you’re screwed?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: Essentially: yes.
How common is it for the body of a criminal convicted to death not to be returned the deceased family?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: Normally after someone has been sentenced to death, the family come and pick up the body after the execution. However, if the family don’t come to pick up the corpse after a certain amount of time then the government will bury the body themselves in an unmarked grave in a cemetery.
At what age do the parents of offenders have to come to court?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: Well the problem we have is that we do not have a special court for young people. What Iran is lacking and what it needs is a court especially for children, where we can prioritise their needs, and their problems. These kind of children are not treated in the just way that they should be.
Can you tell me a bit about the case of Saeed Jazee, wasn’t he hung after killing a guy in self defence over a sandwich?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: Saeed was 16, he was at his parents home alone one night and because he was hungry he went to his friends sandwich shop to get some food. He helped himself to a sandwich but a new employee at the shop didn’t recognise him. The new guy started to argue with him and Saeed picked up a kitchen knife. As he picked up the knife he stabbed the guy in the stomach. The blow killed him. He was sentenced to death but after sending his case to the supreme court he was set free.
Did it make a difference that he killed in self-defence? Does manslaughter exist in Iran?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: Here is doesn’t really make too much of a difference if it was in anger or self-defence. Either way they will eventually be sentenced to death. It makes no difference.
How come they forgave in this case?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: The parents of the victim chose to not to take Ghesass or revenge as you would call it. The choice is given to the parents of the deceased at final verdict to take revenge and execute the guilty or forgive the guilty and accept a payment in compensation known as Diyeh. The standard fee for Diyeh is 40M Tomans but the amount is negotiable.
Wow. Literally blood money. How often are people forgiven for crimes like murder in Iran?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: Well it really depends upon the family. Bad families don’t forgive. But it does happen. The case of Siya Paymand is well known. He was a 16 year old whose dying wish was to play the flute. He played on the gallows and the family of the deceased were so moved that they forgave him. Paymand’s family still had to pay 150M Toman in Diyeh to free him.
What happens if a family are too hard up to pay the Diyeh?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: Unfortunately if the family don’t have the money then the chances of being forgiven by the victims family are very low. This is where the difference between the rich and poor becomes apparent. The poor are more likely to suffer. It is that simple. The current case of Behnood Shojaee demonstrates this. He was a 16 year old who was walking in a park one day when one of his friends get into an argument. Behnood separated the fight but as he was walking away, one of the gang cursed his mother. Behnood turned around and stabbed him in the chest with a piece of broken glass from the ground. Due to the slight that provoked him he was forgiven by the victims family but his own family were too poor to afford the Diyeh. He is yet to hang but it looks like he will.
Does the government take any of the blood money?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: No it all goes to the families.
Where did the law of blood money come from?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: It came from the Khoran.
What are the conditions like on Death Row?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: In Iran there is only prison. The guilty go straight from prison to their death, there is nowhere in between. Hanging is the only method of execution used in Iran today. They hang a rope around the neck of the convicted, put a chair beneath them and then kick the chair hard from underneath them.
What happened to good old stoning?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: That is no longer used. Executions are also no longer public. Normally they get executed inside the prison, unless in special cases where they want other people to learn a lesson.
What kind of cases would that include?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: Multiple murder or dealing drugs
Is it common for older convicts to scapegoat the young to escape punishment themselves in the belief that the young will get acquitted?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: Children and very easily influenced and vulnerable to these kind of situations making it quite common for young people to be used as scapegoats. A prime example of this is the case of Delara Dabiri. She was an artist, a very talented painter who had created a number of drawings that she exhibited all over and the country and some abroad. When she was 17, she got involved with a boy which caused disagreement between the pair and Delara’s aunt. One night they went to the aunts house and killed her. Apparently it was over some documents. Because Delara was so young and in love she allowed the boy to convince her that she wouldn’t be punished due to her age. She pleaded guilty but the court realised that she did not commit murder so the case remains open.
Delara suffered from serious mental problems after entering prison. How bad is the prison system?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: Due to her age and innocence being subjected to prison caused great stress and pressure that she was not able to deal with. Prison is very difficult and upsetting environment to be put in for a long time no matter your age. Combined with her own innocence I think it is easy to understand that it was too much for her. The Iranian prison system is full of people who have no hope and have lost all faith. There is a lot of violence and corruption. Those things exist everywhere but in prison, drugs are distributed regularly, and there is a lot of illness. The people in prison know that their life is going to end and live in a state of desperation and despair. Prison is very difficult.
The Iranian judicial system also seems to not really be big into guys liking other guys.
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: When two men have sexual relations with each other the punishment is
death. The law is very clear and very hard on homosexuals.
Hard on homosexuals. Sounds like a movie. So gay guys are executed just for having sex?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: Yes. I just think the death penalty is not a correct resolution to the problem in general.
That of course assumes that homosexuality is a “problem in general”. What is your opinion on the death penalty “in general”?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: Personally I disagree with capital punishment. I think that those who are over 18 should be held accountable for their actions but it has been proven that the death penalty has not helped to stop crime or lessen the rate of criminal activity in any way. I work mostly with children, sometimes on up to 25-30 cases at a time and all of these kids are on death row with little chance of living.
Can you see change in the future?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: The laws have changed in the past, so it seems natural that they may change in the future. In the past punishment was worse than it is today. They would torture the body while they killed it with methods such as heat torture which involved taking a piece of iron, heating it in the fire and pushing it through the hand. Or making people walk over hot sand which can be very painful. These methods have not been used for many years now and I can see a time when the current laws change.
How do you cope with working day in day out with young children who will almost inevitably be sentenced to death?
Ahmad Rezai: I have stopped being angry as it is a waste of energy. Many of the people enforcing these laws are from the harsh, poor sections of society. For Islam to survive a large portion of society must be kept in bad conditions and the rest presided over by the very rich. However I am remain optimistic as this way of life is doomed to fail.
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: I just think about helping them and try to distance myself from work in my personal life. Otherwise there is no way I would be able to focus. I have been working on children’s cases now for 4 years but before that I was working with Sang Saz (the method of stoning to death). This was equally trying but that method of execution does not exist anymore. Thankfully.
THE BUSY GALLOWS OF IRAN
Iran is the only country in the world that continues to execute juveniles in 2008. This year alone has already seen six teenagers have the chair kicked from under them (hanging is the preferred method) and on the 9th October (one day after Iran’s ‘Day of the Child’) the Islamic regime in Iran is planning to execute Mohammad Reza Haddadi for a crime he allegedly committed 3 years ago when he was 15.
One of the most well known cases of teenage capital punishment in Iran is that of Atefeh Rajabi, who was sentenced to death for having sex with a married man when she was 16 years old. In 2004 Atefeh was taken to prison but claimed in court that she had been raped by the 51 year old married taxi driver Ali Darabi who had picked her up on the street. After her outburst in court judge Haji Rezai sentenced her to death and a week later he personally put the noose around her neck which killed her. Oh, and it was later revealed that there was evidence that Rezai had raped Atefah while she was being tortured in prison.
Iran may be an Islamic country entrenched in the teaching of the Koran, which isn’t such a big deal when it comes to stuff like cutting bacon out of your diet, but the underbelly of corrupt religious fundamentalists disregarding of the rules of International law and hanging kids like its going out of fashion are beginning to anger and inflame even the most conservative elements of the Iranian public. Many feel that something has got to give. And soon.
Stop Child Executions recently released the most comprehensive list of recommendations ever published for ending the practice of juvenile execution in Iran. Included in this document were the cases of 140 Iranian children currently facing the death penalty in Iran.
We talked to two Iranian children defence lawyers, Mohammed Mustafa and Ahmad Rezai, about some of the cases they have worked and why Iran is still obeying laws that were made over 1400 years ago.
VICE: Could you explain what exactly would constitue a ‘crime against chastity’ that would result in capital punishment? When Atefeh Rajabee was 16 she was sentenced to death because she had sex with a married man. Is that enough to get you strung up?
Ahmad Rezai: Like many people in Iran, I have been following this case for a while. It is very clear that the government lied many times over Atefehs sentence, and that she should not have been executed. Atefeh had a very difficult childhood. Her mother died in a car accident at a very young age and her father became a drug addict so she was left in the incapable hands of her very old grand parents who left her to her own devices, loose on the streets which for that time and in the village that she was living in was not a respectable way for a young girl to be living. She was taken to prison for having sex with a married man. He was in his 50’s, had a daughter and was a simple taxi driver. When she was in court she claimed that she was raped. Merely a week after being accused the Judge sentenced her to death. Her case was not given adequate time or considered fully. It has been alleged that the Judge raped Atefeh during sentencing. Many believe that out of shame and fear of the truth being exposed he wanted her dead straight away.
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: As an Islamic country, the law which the parliament decides on in Iran is based on the laws of the Islamic religion. Issues concerning adultery, do not exist solely in Iran, but in many other Islamic countries as well, such as Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Jordan. The Islamic law states that if a married man or a married woman has any sexual relations outside of marriage, the punishment that they will receive is stoning to death. This case is complicated but the laws are fairly clear.
From what age does it become acceptable to chuck stones at people until they die?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: In our country it is established that any girl from the age of 9 and any boy from the age of 15 is liable to be punished. At that age it is deemed that they have reached puberty so in the eyes of the law they are capable of committing this kind of crime so they can in turn be punished accordingly. This doesn’t just include sexual crimes, They can be punished for any criminal activities from this age.
16 seems very young to be sentenced to death for taking part in an act that she may well have had little control over? Shouldn’t it be the guy swinging? Didn’t he just get cained?
Ahmad Rezai: Yes he received 95 lashes. This is the exact reason that Anmesty International, as well as other organisations protecting human and childrens rights, are still investigating into this case. It was an incredibly unfair and tragic ruling. What’s worse is that they used the term ‘had sexual relations’ when it was actually rape, and that they also lied about her age, stating that she was 22, when she was just 16 years of age. No one knows for sure if she was tortured while she was in prison. But it is quite usual for this to go on even though it is against the law.
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: Since I have been looking after these kind of cases, I have come across many young children who have been punished by execution. Iran, is not obliged to obey any kind of international law. Amnesty International have notified the government that no one under the age of 18 should be sentenced to death and every time I represent one of these young people in court, I put the case forward that international law’s state that they are not allowed to be executed as under 18’s but this argument it is powerless in the face of the testimony of Islam. This is a law that began 1400 years ago and that is still followed today.
Who is in charge of seeking out these kinds of crimes? The pastor’s or the 110 ?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: The 110 are the same as the police in our country. We also have a kind of police that we call “Basij” or pastors who look after religious law. They both work under the influence of the court and high court but the Baseej continually take the law into their own hands and treat these kind of crimes with their own rules of punishment. They interfere with each others duties and this is something that we are, as a nation, frustrated with.
Ahmad Rezai: The 110 are the official fast Police, they are on the payroll. When I say fast I mean as in they are who you call in case of an emergency as opposed to not eating. It is like 911 in the states. Our emergency number is 110 so that is how they got their name. They are totally useless though. Once our neighbourhood was being robbed, it took them over 45 minutes to get to us and when they turned up they didn’t have any hand-cuffs. When they finally caught the thief they tied his hands with some cable. There is also a lot of corruption within the 110. They will beat students and young people for nothing and are partial to bribes. If you have a relative who is a lawyer, or any kind of connection to the police you can just use their name and they are likely to leave you alone and not bother you. The law can be on your side if you have connections or money. Which is incredibly unlucky for 90% of Iranians. The Basij are really fucked up. They are like those ‘Young Nazi Believers’. There is this old joke: A maths teacher asks a Basij in school: “what are parallel lines?” and he says “parallel lines can never reach each other, unless a supreme leader says they cross over one another”. In translation it might not make sense, but it perfectly captures their mind set. In their view, even parallel lines will cross paths if a leader says so.
That’s really depressing.
Ahmad Rezai: It is. I was in Germany recently, and read a lot about Nazi Germany and I have to admit that I see a lot of similarities. There are only 90,000 uniformed Basiji the rest are what we call " Lebas Shakhsi" or those with no uniform. They are usually from poor, sections of the society and together the different forces work like the Gestapo and the SS and police all elements of society. For example during the student movment, the Police (110) did nothing. They stood by, but the Lebas Shakhsi beat everybody in sight. Everyone knows that they did it but because they are not officially affiliated you cannot point the finger. They permeate all levels of society. For example, when I was having coffee with my cousins one night in Isfeshan some uniformed Basij came and grabbed my cousin and threw him in the back of the van and took him to prison for the night and beat him for having long being into Metallica.
How would they have found him?
Ahmad Rezai: The Basij along with a clergy who controls them work below the supreme leaders delegate in each city who organizes the Basij of that city.
Their real function is to balance any kind of movement particularly amongst the young and universities. If you are a young, registered Basiij, you can say so on your application to university and they automatically let you in to help monitor freedom of speech, women’s movements and so on.
What would they make of a freshers fare in England where its just one long fuck fest?
Ahmad Rezai: Well in Iranian Universities if a boy and girl are found sitting next to each other then they will come and give you a warning and notify you.
Is torturing something usual in Iran?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: In Iran, and in most of the kind of cases that I deal with, the person who has committed the crime will not get any legal aid or representation unless they are very wealthy. Therefore torture is likely to take place. If you have a lawyer to represent you, then this can be avoided. Because it is difficult for the police to gain any evidence, they turn to torture methods for confessions. If I know there is someone who has not had any kind of representation, then I can be pretty sure they have been put through some kind of torture.
So if you have a lawyer you avoid the whole torture process but if not you’re screwed?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: Essentially: yes.
How common is it for the body of a criminal convicted to death not to be returned the deceased family?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: Normally after someone has been sentenced to death, the family come and pick up the body after the execution. However, if the family don’t come to pick up the corpse after a certain amount of time then the government will bury the body themselves in an unmarked grave in a cemetery.
At what age do the parents of offenders have to come to court?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: Well the problem we have is that we do not have a special court for young people. What Iran is lacking and what it needs is a court especially for children, where we can prioritise their needs, and their problems. These kind of children are not treated in the just way that they should be.
Can you tell me a bit about the case of Saeed Jazee, wasn’t he hung after killing a guy in self defence over a sandwich?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: Saeed was 16, he was at his parents home alone one night and because he was hungry he went to his friends sandwich shop to get some food. He helped himself to a sandwich but a new employee at the shop didn’t recognise him. The new guy started to argue with him and Saeed picked up a kitchen knife. As he picked up the knife he stabbed the guy in the stomach. The blow killed him. He was sentenced to death but after sending his case to the supreme court he was set free.
Did it make a difference that he killed in self-defence? Does manslaughter exist in Iran?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: Here is doesn’t really make too much of a difference if it was in anger or self-defence. Either way they will eventually be sentenced to death. It makes no difference.
How come they forgave in this case?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: The parents of the victim chose to not to take Ghesass or revenge as you would call it. The choice is given to the parents of the deceased at final verdict to take revenge and execute the guilty or forgive the guilty and accept a payment in compensation known as Diyeh. The standard fee for Diyeh is 40M Tomans but the amount is negotiable.
Wow. Literally blood money. How often are people forgiven for crimes like murder in Iran?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: Well it really depends upon the family. Bad families don’t forgive. But it does happen. The case of Siya Paymand is well known. He was a 16 year old whose dying wish was to play the flute. He played on the gallows and the family of the deceased were so moved that they forgave him. Paymand’s family still had to pay 150M Toman in Diyeh to free him.
What happens if a family are too hard up to pay the Diyeh?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: Unfortunately if the family don’t have the money then the chances of being forgiven by the victims family are very low. This is where the difference between the rich and poor becomes apparent. The poor are more likely to suffer. It is that simple. The current case of Behnood Shojaee demonstrates this. He was a 16 year old who was walking in a park one day when one of his friends get into an argument. Behnood separated the fight but as he was walking away, one of the gang cursed his mother. Behnood turned around and stabbed him in the chest with a piece of broken glass from the ground. Due to the slight that provoked him he was forgiven by the victims family but his own family were too poor to afford the Diyeh. He is yet to hang but it looks like he will.
Does the government take any of the blood money?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: No it all goes to the families.
Where did the law of blood money come from?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: It came from the Khoran.
What are the conditions like on Death Row?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: In Iran there is only prison. The guilty go straight from prison to their death, there is nowhere in between. Hanging is the only method of execution used in Iran today. They hang a rope around the neck of the convicted, put a chair beneath them and then kick the chair hard from underneath them.
What happened to good old stoning?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: That is no longer used. Executions are also no longer public. Normally they get executed inside the prison, unless in special cases where they want other people to learn a lesson.
What kind of cases would that include?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: Multiple murder or dealing drugs
Is it common for older convicts to scapegoat the young to escape punishment themselves in the belief that the young will get acquitted?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: Children and very easily influenced and vulnerable to these kind of situations making it quite common for young people to be used as scapegoats. A prime example of this is the case of Delara Dabiri. She was an artist, a very talented painter who had created a number of drawings that she exhibited all over and the country and some abroad. When she was 17, she got involved with a boy which caused disagreement between the pair and Delara’s aunt. One night they went to the aunts house and killed her. Apparently it was over some documents. Because Delara was so young and in love she allowed the boy to convince her that she wouldn’t be punished due to her age. She pleaded guilty but the court realised that she did not commit murder so the case remains open.
Delara suffered from serious mental problems after entering prison. How bad is the prison system?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: Due to her age and innocence being subjected to prison caused great stress and pressure that she was not able to deal with. Prison is very difficult and upsetting environment to be put in for a long time no matter your age. Combined with her own innocence I think it is easy to understand that it was too much for her. The Iranian prison system is full of people who have no hope and have lost all faith. There is a lot of violence and corruption. Those things exist everywhere but in prison, drugs are distributed regularly, and there is a lot of illness. The people in prison know that their life is going to end and live in a state of desperation and despair. Prison is very difficult.
The Iranian judicial system also seems to not really be big into guys liking other guys.
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: When two men have sexual relations with each other the punishment is
death. The law is very clear and very hard on homosexuals.
Hard on homosexuals. Sounds like a movie. So gay guys are executed just for having sex?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: Yes. I just think the death penalty is not a correct resolution to the problem in general.
That of course assumes that homosexuality is a “problem in general”. What is your opinion on the death penalty “in general”?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: Personally I disagree with capital punishment. I think that those who are over 18 should be held accountable for their actions but it has been proven that the death penalty has not helped to stop crime or lessen the rate of criminal activity in any way. I work mostly with children, sometimes on up to 25-30 cases at a time and all of these kids are on death row with little chance of living.
Can you see change in the future?
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: The laws have changed in the past, so it seems natural that they may change in the future. In the past punishment was worse than it is today. They would torture the body while they killed it with methods such as heat torture which involved taking a piece of iron, heating it in the fire and pushing it through the hand. Or making people walk over hot sand which can be very painful. These methods have not been used for many years now and I can see a time when the current laws change.
How do you cope with working day in day out with young children who will almost inevitably be sentenced to death?
Ahmad Rezai: I have stopped being angry as it is a waste of energy. Many of the people enforcing these laws are from the harsh, poor sections of society. For Islam to survive a large portion of society must be kept in bad conditions and the rest presided over by the very rich. However I am remain optimistic as this way of life is doomed to fail.
Mohammed Mustaaf’i: I just think about helping them and try to distance myself from work in my personal life. Otherwise there is no way I would be able to focus. I have been working on children’s cases now for 4 years but before that I was working with Sang Saz (the method of stoning to death). This was equally trying but that method of execution does not exist anymore. Thankfully.
Vice v7n1 Wazzup Piece: Buttplug Apocalypse
A kid called Christopher Harding set this all up and did the q&a. I did the edit and the intro.
BUTTPLUG APOCALYPSE
If You Go Down To The Desert Today Be Sure Of A Big Vibrating Multi Coloured Surprise
Randy Polumbo is a mildly spoken artist who makes the often snooze-inducing world of modern sculpture seem a hoot a minute. We defy you to bring us the head of any other young sculptor working today who regularly exhibits giant condom zeppelins and wheelie penis hot dogs. If none of that last sentence makes any sense to you, go check out his website at polumbo.com for a heap of knob and naughty-stuff strewn work that will tickle your funny bone and make your eyes happy.
Randy also co-organises the annual Art Queen fair in his native Joshua Tree that sees a whole host of arty people pitch up and do arty stuff in a field on Randy’s land for a month or so every winter. After letting out a plot of land to the god-fearing folk of the Jesus House of Prayer you can imagine poor old Randy’s surprise when the local Sheriff’s department covered up his main work with a blue tarpaulin after complaints from his Jesus lovin’ lodgers on the grounds of public obscenity.
Oh, did we forget to mention that the work in question is a huge sea-anemone like installation called “Buttercup” (arf arf), shaped like a flower and made out of over-sized dildos with a butt-plug for a stigma and solar panels for petals that allow the whole thing to suck up desert sun all day and blaze all night with a technicoloured sex glow that was so powerful it pulsated straight through the censorship tarp? We decided to catch up with Randy and talk penis sculpture and church persecution
Vice: Try and tell me that if you walked past this thing in the street while you were walking your gran you’d not go at least a little bit blushy?
Randy Polumbo: The pretty but ugly contrast is one of the best things in life. Some of the best foods are very near the threshold of being too gross to eat. Exotic cheese, raw meat or fish, not to mention beverages and sex acts.
Which sexual acts would you say are on a par with sushi?
The idea is more that it is powerful to wrap something ugly in a handsome cloak and make both aspects amplified by the juxtaposition. It is a challenge to make a poetic little flower out of tiny ejaculating real penises.
So what actually happened when they tried to close down your butt plug oasis?
The tent full of the extremist revival church guys who I’d given a plot to on the premise that they could use it as and office freaked out and called the police without even speaking to me. Their case to the police was that their parishioners and family folk would see my work as they passed. Then a guy from the Sheriff's department covered it up with the blue tarp. After some to and froing it’s all simmered down and it’s just one fellow who marches and yells about Jesus on Sundays now with this big placard about hell and punishment.
That’s it?
There were also some threats including violence and death. But talk is cheap. Right.
BUTTPLUG APOCALYPSE
If You Go Down To The Desert Today Be Sure Of A Big Vibrating Multi Coloured Surprise
Randy Polumbo is a mildly spoken artist who makes the often snooze-inducing world of modern sculpture seem a hoot a minute. We defy you to bring us the head of any other young sculptor working today who regularly exhibits giant condom zeppelins and wheelie penis hot dogs. If none of that last sentence makes any sense to you, go check out his website at polumbo.com for a heap of knob and naughty-stuff strewn work that will tickle your funny bone and make your eyes happy.
Randy also co-organises the annual Art Queen fair in his native Joshua Tree that sees a whole host of arty people pitch up and do arty stuff in a field on Randy’s land for a month or so every winter. After letting out a plot of land to the god-fearing folk of the Jesus House of Prayer you can imagine poor old Randy’s surprise when the local Sheriff’s department covered up his main work with a blue tarpaulin after complaints from his Jesus lovin’ lodgers on the grounds of public obscenity.
Oh, did we forget to mention that the work in question is a huge sea-anemone like installation called “Buttercup” (arf arf), shaped like a flower and made out of over-sized dildos with a butt-plug for a stigma and solar panels for petals that allow the whole thing to suck up desert sun all day and blaze all night with a technicoloured sex glow that was so powerful it pulsated straight through the censorship tarp? We decided to catch up with Randy and talk penis sculpture and church persecution
Vice: Try and tell me that if you walked past this thing in the street while you were walking your gran you’d not go at least a little bit blushy?
Randy Polumbo: The pretty but ugly contrast is one of the best things in life. Some of the best foods are very near the threshold of being too gross to eat. Exotic cheese, raw meat or fish, not to mention beverages and sex acts.
Which sexual acts would you say are on a par with sushi?
The idea is more that it is powerful to wrap something ugly in a handsome cloak and make both aspects amplified by the juxtaposition. It is a challenge to make a poetic little flower out of tiny ejaculating real penises.
So what actually happened when they tried to close down your butt plug oasis?
The tent full of the extremist revival church guys who I’d given a plot to on the premise that they could use it as and office freaked out and called the police without even speaking to me. Their case to the police was that their parishioners and family folk would see my work as they passed. Then a guy from the Sheriff's department covered it up with the blue tarp. After some to and froing it’s all simmered down and it’s just one fellow who marches and yells about Jesus on Sundays now with this big placard about hell and punishment.
That’s it?
There were also some threats including violence and death. But talk is cheap. Right.
Vice v7n1 Literary Reviews
ALL KNOWN METAL BANDS
Dan Nelson
McSweeny’s
Is this Dan Nelson the same Dan Nelson that replaced Joey Belladonna in Anthrax? Does anyone still even listen to Anthrax? I am afraid that I don’t actually know the answer to either of those questions. I do however know that this is without a shadow or even a hint of a shade of a doubt one of the best books to cross my desk in ages. Not best as in reading it has changed my perception of day-to-day existence just best as in it is an amazing concept executed amazingly. You see, All Known Metal Bands is just that. A list of ALL known metal bands. I am not sure how you quantify “known” but there are over 50,000 band names in here, which are more than enough to fill at least a month worth of loo breaks. Plus I bet you haven’t really heard of Lymphatic Pleghm, Yigga Digga or Zabytye Tverdyni L Dov have you? Don’t even try and sit there and pretend that you have.
mcsweeneys.net
HACKNEY, THAT ROSE RED EMPIRE: A CONFIDENTIAL REPORT
Iain Sinclair
Hamish Hamilton/Penguin
You might have already heard about this one. Iain Sinclair was banned from launching his love letter, requiem and valediction to the borough of London he has lived in for thirty years in Hackney itself because of its “controversial content”. The content in question being his opinions and theories about the ‘development’ of the area for the forthcoming Olympics. It is a something that Sinclair sees not as development, more as erasure and mismanagement. We mentioned the very same topic back in our Toxic Cities report so we are inclined to agree. The future aside it is for Hackney’s past that you might want to give this one a go. Sinclair tackles it with his usual brand of not-quite-truth, not-quite-fiction and manages to squeeze in Lenin, Stalin, Baader-Meinhof guerilla’s and Orson Welles. In other words: essential reading.
fivedials.com/
SAVAGE MESSIAH No.10
Laura Oldfield Ford
Self-released
This has a really confusing time continuum. It starts in London in the future but not far enough in the future that the scratchy; pencil drawn tower blocks and crumbling estates look that much different from images of the very same kinds of places when it jumps back to the 70’s or forward again to the 90’s. The effect of it shooting around with bars of typed text guiding you through the intricate, hand-drawn scenes of a city in decay can be quite disorientating and wholly depressing. By the end I was quite glad to put it down. In a good way. Roll on issue 11.
savagemessiahzine.com/
FODIDO E XEROCADO NO.7
Self-released
I am pretty sure that ‘fododio e xerocado’ means something along the lines of ‘fucked up and photocopied”. Which is a pretty accurate description of the inside of this ‘zine: lots and lots of fucked up kids at punk shows photocopied in black and white and shoved into an envelope. The shows mainly appear to be in Brazil though which explains my rudimentary translation of the titles Portuguese. I went to Portugal once and all I can remember is the swear words. Swear words and how to ask for a ham and cheese toasted sandwich. They must also have a UK correspondent because there are shots from Fucked Up at the Barfly and UK Subs at the LA2. The best bit of all though is that the envelope is made out of brown paper. Brown paper makes everything seem hyper considered and classy. If you wrap flowers in brown paper they go from being a thought to a pre-meditated act. I’d wrap myself in brown paper if I could.
myspace.com/fodidoexerocado
BAD HAM
Chris Seddon
Self-released
This one could have gone either way as, despite being amazingly well presented, it perpetuates a single joke: that it is a tribute issue to a made up musical genre called ‘HAM’. Written down that doesn’t sound so funny. Maybe it isn’t and I I’ve just lost any sense of humour but I was literally falling off my chair reading the mocked up interviews and fliers for nights at places like ‘Le Porcine’ in Marseille with lineups including Wiggy Fettel and Nicky Iberico playing HMNML to baying charcuterie loving French crowds. It’s a bit like that Cake episode of Brass Eye but about pork and not on TV.
cseddon.co.uk
SMOKING OUTDOORS
Chris Leah
Self-released
Being forced out into the wet, freezing, windy, rain sodden outdoors for indulging in the simple pleasure of slowly killing yourself has been a hardship the smoking public have been putting up with, reacting and adapting to in this country for a year and a half now. This has been ample time for Chris Leah to gallop around the UK taking shots that are hilarious, depressing and sometimes both at once. Some of the “you’re robbing us of our rights” commentary that accompanies the images grates after a while, even as a resolute twenty-a-day guy, but there is enough here to make it well worth seeking out. Even if only to show your kids the days when you could still smoke outdoors as opposed to only in a chained casket, in a basement, below the tube lines. Oh wait. They kill your chances of having kids too. Whoops.
smokingoutdoors.org
THE ART OF ROMANCE: HARLEQUINN MILLS & BOON COVER DESIGNS
Joanna Bowring and Margaret O’Brien
Prestel
I have never read a Mills & Boon. There was however a white, corrugated, rotating, metal bookstand that stood by the service window at my local Post Office as a kid. Whenever I was paying the TV license for my mum or sending two ten pence pieces sellotaped to a bit of Rice Krispie packet in an envelope to join the Beano fan club or whatever you do when you’re seven I’d stare at the covers as I queued to get served. They seemed so strangely soft focused, innocent and almost welcoming. I could never get past the covers though and never picked one up so still have no idea what the stories are like. I always imagined them to be like sanitized Jilly Cooper minus the horses. Now that I have this bulky compendium of all the covers I’ll probably never know.
prestel.txt.de
Dan Nelson
McSweeny’s
Is this Dan Nelson the same Dan Nelson that replaced Joey Belladonna in Anthrax? Does anyone still even listen to Anthrax? I am afraid that I don’t actually know the answer to either of those questions. I do however know that this is without a shadow or even a hint of a shade of a doubt one of the best books to cross my desk in ages. Not best as in reading it has changed my perception of day-to-day existence just best as in it is an amazing concept executed amazingly. You see, All Known Metal Bands is just that. A list of ALL known metal bands. I am not sure how you quantify “known” but there are over 50,000 band names in here, which are more than enough to fill at least a month worth of loo breaks. Plus I bet you haven’t really heard of Lymphatic Pleghm, Yigga Digga or Zabytye Tverdyni L Dov have you? Don’t even try and sit there and pretend that you have.
mcsweeneys.net
HACKNEY, THAT ROSE RED EMPIRE: A CONFIDENTIAL REPORT
Iain Sinclair
Hamish Hamilton/Penguin
You might have already heard about this one. Iain Sinclair was banned from launching his love letter, requiem and valediction to the borough of London he has lived in for thirty years in Hackney itself because of its “controversial content”. The content in question being his opinions and theories about the ‘development’ of the area for the forthcoming Olympics. It is a something that Sinclair sees not as development, more as erasure and mismanagement. We mentioned the very same topic back in our Toxic Cities report so we are inclined to agree. The future aside it is for Hackney’s past that you might want to give this one a go. Sinclair tackles it with his usual brand of not-quite-truth, not-quite-fiction and manages to squeeze in Lenin, Stalin, Baader-Meinhof guerilla’s and Orson Welles. In other words: essential reading.
fivedials.com/
SAVAGE MESSIAH No.10
Laura Oldfield Ford
Self-released
This has a really confusing time continuum. It starts in London in the future but not far enough in the future that the scratchy; pencil drawn tower blocks and crumbling estates look that much different from images of the very same kinds of places when it jumps back to the 70’s or forward again to the 90’s. The effect of it shooting around with bars of typed text guiding you through the intricate, hand-drawn scenes of a city in decay can be quite disorientating and wholly depressing. By the end I was quite glad to put it down. In a good way. Roll on issue 11.
savagemessiahzine.com/
FODIDO E XEROCADO NO.7
Self-released
I am pretty sure that ‘fododio e xerocado’ means something along the lines of ‘fucked up and photocopied”. Which is a pretty accurate description of the inside of this ‘zine: lots and lots of fucked up kids at punk shows photocopied in black and white and shoved into an envelope. The shows mainly appear to be in Brazil though which explains my rudimentary translation of the titles Portuguese. I went to Portugal once and all I can remember is the swear words. Swear words and how to ask for a ham and cheese toasted sandwich. They must also have a UK correspondent because there are shots from Fucked Up at the Barfly and UK Subs at the LA2. The best bit of all though is that the envelope is made out of brown paper. Brown paper makes everything seem hyper considered and classy. If you wrap flowers in brown paper they go from being a thought to a pre-meditated act. I’d wrap myself in brown paper if I could.
myspace.com/fodidoexerocado
BAD HAM
Chris Seddon
Self-released
This one could have gone either way as, despite being amazingly well presented, it perpetuates a single joke: that it is a tribute issue to a made up musical genre called ‘HAM’. Written down that doesn’t sound so funny. Maybe it isn’t and I I’ve just lost any sense of humour but I was literally falling off my chair reading the mocked up interviews and fliers for nights at places like ‘Le Porcine’ in Marseille with lineups including Wiggy Fettel and Nicky Iberico playing HMNML to baying charcuterie loving French crowds. It’s a bit like that Cake episode of Brass Eye but about pork and not on TV.
cseddon.co.uk
SMOKING OUTDOORS
Chris Leah
Self-released
Being forced out into the wet, freezing, windy, rain sodden outdoors for indulging in the simple pleasure of slowly killing yourself has been a hardship the smoking public have been putting up with, reacting and adapting to in this country for a year and a half now. This has been ample time for Chris Leah to gallop around the UK taking shots that are hilarious, depressing and sometimes both at once. Some of the “you’re robbing us of our rights” commentary that accompanies the images grates after a while, even as a resolute twenty-a-day guy, but there is enough here to make it well worth seeking out. Even if only to show your kids the days when you could still smoke outdoors as opposed to only in a chained casket, in a basement, below the tube lines. Oh wait. They kill your chances of having kids too. Whoops.
smokingoutdoors.org
THE ART OF ROMANCE: HARLEQUINN MILLS & BOON COVER DESIGNS
Joanna Bowring and Margaret O’Brien
Prestel
I have never read a Mills & Boon. There was however a white, corrugated, rotating, metal bookstand that stood by the service window at my local Post Office as a kid. Whenever I was paying the TV license for my mum or sending two ten pence pieces sellotaped to a bit of Rice Krispie packet in an envelope to join the Beano fan club or whatever you do when you’re seven I’d stare at the covers as I queued to get served. They seemed so strangely soft focused, innocent and almost welcoming. I could never get past the covers though and never picked one up so still have no idea what the stories are like. I always imagined them to be like sanitized Jilly Cooper minus the horses. Now that I have this bulky compendium of all the covers I’ll probably never know.
prestel.txt.de
Vice v7n1 La Vida Es En Mus Record Reviews
A while back we put Fucked Up on at The Old Blue Last. Now, you may or may not know that punk fans are notoriously anal record collectors. If a 7” is released in three different colours your average hardcore geek will get duplicates in all variants just to be on the safe side. This guy we know (whose exact identity we can’t tell you) who runs an excellent record label called La Vida Es Un Mus decided to grab about 100 random 7”s and press them up with artwork taking the piss out of the Nathan Barley twats he assumed would be at a show at our bar buying up the merch to seem as though they had a clue what’s up. Who wouldn’t want a 7” limited to 100 copies to go with their lumberjack Supreme coat and knuckleduster New Era right? Turns out only too right. The records went in about 12 seconds flat and appeared on Ebay the next day for up to £200 a pop. Despite the fact they had no Fucked Up music on them. The EP was called Hoxton Cunts and since then we have been more than a little in love with Mr Es En Mus. At long fucking last we have put together a little round up for the guy who once bluntly told us that he liked us but hated “everything you stand for”.
La Vida’s back catalogue is varied and ludicrously great so pop over to lavidaesunmus.com to pick up bits or listen to MP3’s by the likes of Latino Chicago legends Los Crudos, queercore greats Limp Wrist or Spanish punks Destruccion. In terms of new things on offer you can check out current Spanish stuff coming out of Barcelona in the shape of Invasion’s self titled LP or La Caza 12” (both 8) or Grupo Sub 1’s Tercer Grado en Leningrado LP (7). Sweden is represented by the great Warcharge 7” (8) by Anger Burning as well the Presagio de Muerte 7” by Delerium Tremens. You can get some established US garage punk from the Observers on the Ando Solo 7” (8) as well as up and coming UK garage on the Straight Forward 7” (9) by the awesome Shitty Limits. Other great UK stuff the label is peddling includes noise punk from The Wanky’s with their Hero: The Very Best Of LP (10) as well as Oi! legends Hard Skin on a split with Fucked Up (9). Basically, we’re saying La Vida is pretty great. Go buy some records.
La Vida’s back catalogue is varied and ludicrously great so pop over to lavidaesunmus.com to pick up bits or listen to MP3’s by the likes of Latino Chicago legends Los Crudos, queercore greats Limp Wrist or Spanish punks Destruccion. In terms of new things on offer you can check out current Spanish stuff coming out of Barcelona in the shape of Invasion’s self titled LP or La Caza 12” (both 8) or Grupo Sub 1’s Tercer Grado en Leningrado LP (7). Sweden is represented by the great Warcharge 7” (8) by Anger Burning as well the Presagio de Muerte 7” by Delerium Tremens. You can get some established US garage punk from the Observers on the Ando Solo 7” (8) as well as up and coming UK garage on the Straight Forward 7” (9) by the awesome Shitty Limits. Other great UK stuff the label is peddling includes noise punk from The Wanky’s with their Hero: The Very Best Of LP (10) as well as Oi! legends Hard Skin on a split with Fucked Up (9). Basically, we’re saying La Vida is pretty great. Go buy some records.
Vice v7n1 Record Reviews
The Chuck Dukowski Sextet
Reverse Of The Polarity
Nice & Friendly
1 I have this friend who is a really big Arsenal fan. I don’t get football but he was trying to explain to me the other day that no matter what he does Ian Wright is basically infallible as far as your average Gooner is concerned due to past services rendered. Well I do understand Black Flag and if Ian Wright ever made something like this I’d call him out on it no matter how much I was into The Arse. Or whatever it is they call themselves.
Taake
Taake
Dark Essence Records
9 Maybe if he wasn’t constantly running around Germany with a Swastika casually daubed on his chest or getting locked up for violent assault then Hoest might get around to averaging more than one album every four years. Or maybe without all that stuff he wouldn’t only ever make near-classics that anyone who likes black metal should have already pre-purchased.
Earthless
Live At Roadburn
Tee Pee
8 If you are a person who still listens to music on actual real life vinyl records then once you get to the third side of this double disc set you would still only be halfway through the second song of the show captured here in all of its ragged, raging, psyched-out-of-its eyeballs splendour. It almost makes you want to go “meh” in the face of that Sleep reunion show. Almost.
Broken Arm
Shields Mystical
Sea Records
7 First Rot In Hell, then Mob Rules, and now Broken Arm. What’s going on? Last time I checked Leeds was brimming with pointy shoed, pork-pie hat festooned kids who hung out at Pigs or gurning bassline house guys with names like MC Wicksy and Charma D. When did it go and become great hardcore central overnight?
The Nightingales
Insult To Injury
Klangbad
8 The Nightingales played more Peel Sessions than any band whose name doesn’t rhyme with Ball or have Mark E Smith on vocals. I kind of didn’t pay much attention when they got back together a few years back but this one is produced by Jochen Irmler from Faust and is the best thing Robert Lloyd has put his name to since The Prefects single.
Secret Machines
Secret Machines
World’s Fair/Cooperative Music
2 Does anyone still care? Remember these guys? Floppy fringes and faux-prog? Yep, them. I bet floppy fringe guy one is hella pissed that his floppier fringed brother went off to do that School Of Seven Bells thing with those cute twins which approximately three more people seem to be into than this mess. You really need to start to worry when your biggest champion is The Edge.
Wavves
Wavvves
De Stjil
8 Yikes, this one is like someone took a blender to all the good bits of slacker punk, surf rock and girl group harmony then spat it all out under a heady fug of hiss and static that makes it all sound like it was recorded on a melting 8-track tape. Annoyingly as good, if not better, than everyone says it is.
Zero Boys
Vicious Circle
Secretly Canadian
10 If, by 1982, every town in the US had at least one hardcore band it still shocked many that one of the first and best LP’s the movement produced came out of Indianapolis. The History Of comp. is great and everything but this is the definitive article. Awesome sleeve to boot. What happened to Secretly Canadian putting out mumbly singer songwriters? More punk re-issues yes please.
The Hunches
Exit Dreams
In The Red
7 Making a truly awful garage rock record would be way more impressive than making a really great one. How do you fuck up ripping of The Velvet Underground and The Wipers? It’s pretty tough but some have succeeded in the past. The Hunches will have to get waaay shitier if they want that crown though ‘cos this one is a more than adequate approximation of the template.
Phosporescent
To Willie
Dead Oceans
5 On his last one he cribbed the Will Oldham schtick wholesale and on this one he’s nicked the concept of Willie Nelson’s great Lefty Frizell covers record For Lefty. You might not get a whole lot of originality from Mathew Houck but if you like earnest guys with gravel-strewn voices covering Willie ‘I really like weed and should quite possibly think about getting a mans haircut at the sprightly age of 98’ Nelson songs then there’s eleven of them right here just for you.
Gore
Hart Gore/Mean Mans Dream
Southern Lord
10 I never got why people slept on Gore. They had it all. A thick, sludgy, terrifyingly loud sound that made you feel a bit like you were the guy on the receiving end of the Vulgar Display Of Power sleeve, artwork that your parents would definitely not approve of at 12 years old and lyrics to instrumental songs that made Carcass sound like Dr Seuss.
Fauna
Rain
Aurora Borealis
8 One track. 64 minutes. Aurora Borealis. What part of this is still not screaming, “yes please!” at this point?
Reverse Of The Polarity
Nice & Friendly
1 I have this friend who is a really big Arsenal fan. I don’t get football but he was trying to explain to me the other day that no matter what he does Ian Wright is basically infallible as far as your average Gooner is concerned due to past services rendered. Well I do understand Black Flag and if Ian Wright ever made something like this I’d call him out on it no matter how much I was into The Arse. Or whatever it is they call themselves.
Taake
Taake
Dark Essence Records
9 Maybe if he wasn’t constantly running around Germany with a Swastika casually daubed on his chest or getting locked up for violent assault then Hoest might get around to averaging more than one album every four years. Or maybe without all that stuff he wouldn’t only ever make near-classics that anyone who likes black metal should have already pre-purchased.
Earthless
Live At Roadburn
Tee Pee
8 If you are a person who still listens to music on actual real life vinyl records then once you get to the third side of this double disc set you would still only be halfway through the second song of the show captured here in all of its ragged, raging, psyched-out-of-its eyeballs splendour. It almost makes you want to go “meh” in the face of that Sleep reunion show. Almost.
Broken Arm
Shields Mystical
Sea Records
7 First Rot In Hell, then Mob Rules, and now Broken Arm. What’s going on? Last time I checked Leeds was brimming with pointy shoed, pork-pie hat festooned kids who hung out at Pigs or gurning bassline house guys with names like MC Wicksy and Charma D. When did it go and become great hardcore central overnight?
The Nightingales
Insult To Injury
Klangbad
8 The Nightingales played more Peel Sessions than any band whose name doesn’t rhyme with Ball or have Mark E Smith on vocals. I kind of didn’t pay much attention when they got back together a few years back but this one is produced by Jochen Irmler from Faust and is the best thing Robert Lloyd has put his name to since The Prefects single.
Secret Machines
Secret Machines
World’s Fair/Cooperative Music
2 Does anyone still care? Remember these guys? Floppy fringes and faux-prog? Yep, them. I bet floppy fringe guy one is hella pissed that his floppier fringed brother went off to do that School Of Seven Bells thing with those cute twins which approximately three more people seem to be into than this mess. You really need to start to worry when your biggest champion is The Edge.
Wavves
Wavvves
De Stjil
8 Yikes, this one is like someone took a blender to all the good bits of slacker punk, surf rock and girl group harmony then spat it all out under a heady fug of hiss and static that makes it all sound like it was recorded on a melting 8-track tape. Annoyingly as good, if not better, than everyone says it is.
Zero Boys
Vicious Circle
Secretly Canadian
10 If, by 1982, every town in the US had at least one hardcore band it still shocked many that one of the first and best LP’s the movement produced came out of Indianapolis. The History Of comp. is great and everything but this is the definitive article. Awesome sleeve to boot. What happened to Secretly Canadian putting out mumbly singer songwriters? More punk re-issues yes please.
The Hunches
Exit Dreams
In The Red
7 Making a truly awful garage rock record would be way more impressive than making a really great one. How do you fuck up ripping of The Velvet Underground and The Wipers? It’s pretty tough but some have succeeded in the past. The Hunches will have to get waaay shitier if they want that crown though ‘cos this one is a more than adequate approximation of the template.
Phosporescent
To Willie
Dead Oceans
5 On his last one he cribbed the Will Oldham schtick wholesale and on this one he’s nicked the concept of Willie Nelson’s great Lefty Frizell covers record For Lefty. You might not get a whole lot of originality from Mathew Houck but if you like earnest guys with gravel-strewn voices covering Willie ‘I really like weed and should quite possibly think about getting a mans haircut at the sprightly age of 98’ Nelson songs then there’s eleven of them right here just for you.
Gore
Hart Gore/Mean Mans Dream
Southern Lord
10 I never got why people slept on Gore. They had it all. A thick, sludgy, terrifyingly loud sound that made you feel a bit like you were the guy on the receiving end of the Vulgar Display Of Power sleeve, artwork that your parents would definitely not approve of at 12 years old and lyrics to instrumental songs that made Carcass sound like Dr Seuss.
Fauna
Rain
Aurora Borealis
8 One track. 64 minutes. Aurora Borealis. What part of this is still not screaming, “yes please!” at this point?
Wednesday, 10 December 2008
Martin Amis Interview
Sometimes you get to do things that really make the job worthwhile. This one was for the Vice Fiction Issue 2008.
IT’S NOT LIKE THAT ANYMORE IT’S LIKE THIS
But Martin Amis is Still Obsessed With Masculinity
Martin Amis is one of the great writers of modern fiction. Even if he’d given up putting pen to paper after his third novel, Money, this would be an irrefutable fact. Period. Sorry. He writes grippingly of ugly characters addicted to themselves and the world around them, consuming for the sake of consumption and blind to their own greed. His ugly, and occasionally hilarious, creations were both of their time and chillingly predictive of what is going on outside your window right now. He also threw unreliable narrators, himself and a bit of time reversal into his novels helping create a little genre people call ‘postmodernism’ which you might have heard of.
As a thirteen year old boy watching the Cuban Missile Crisis unfold before his own eyes it is unsurprising that his novels have not only been filled with personal armageddon but also the impending threat of macro-armageddon on a planet wide scale. An initial preoccupation with Cold War threat gave way to a recent fascination with the conflict between the West and the Muslim world leading to his recent collection of shorter works The Second Plane.
Amis gives interviews rarely and has a reputation as for being spiky and guarded. Having read his work and been more than a little into all of it, actually picking up the phone to talk to him had me shaking like a Bolivian coke mule about to ingest a loaded johnny. Luckily, Amis (‘Marty’ to his buddies apparently) was kind, willing and open. He also has the most mesmerising way of emphasizing words mid-sentence. Go watch him talk about House of Meetings on the Charlie Rose show on YouTube right now. Then you’ll get the bits in italics.
Vice: Having grown up with a successful novelist for a father was there a point where you made a conscious decision to be ‘a writer’ or was it just assumed?
Martin Amis: At around thirteen a certain self-awareness came over me as I was writing prose and poems in notebooks and diaries. What you are doing at that age is communing with yourself in a new way and becoming articulate within yourself. I think that everyone goes through that state and the people who end up becoming writers are simply those who never grow out of it. I never did. I also have to admit my father as an early influence. I read his stuff but felt like it was an independent decision that I made and I knew that it wasn’t a case of just writing a single novel and thinking: “I’ve done that now” or impressed my father and purged the influence. I had the feeling that it would be a long haul thing. In a good way.
What other novelists were early influences on your writing?
Well, I’d not read Bellow by the time I had written my first novel. I read a lot of Austen early on but I fail to see how anybody could be influenced by her, she’s simply too lucid. I’d read some Nabokov but I suppose the biggest early influence was Dickens. His stuff was just nuts and wild which is beguiling at that age. It’s impossible to imitate Austen, as it is all understatement whereas with Dickens the prose is so hairy and muscley; you can really gorge on it.
In you early work particularly you seem preoccupied with the present, its excess and its vacuity both in the rampant consumerism of Money and the Thatcherite capitalism of London Fields.
Certainly during the early period yes but there comes a point where you’re not really in the culture any more. You become removed from it. My father put it well to me once. He said: “at a certain age you think it’s not like that anymore it’s like this but you are not quite sure what this is”. I think it would be insane to harbour ideas that you can remain plugged in forever.
You spoke of being “addicted to the 20th century”, has the 21st proved not quite as addictive?
Possibly that was the point where that became this. You are certainly of your time and while you still have you’re slant on it all you find that you are no longer swimming amongst it. The novel I am coming to the end of now is set in 1970 so perhaps I am clinging to the 20th century.
London has always had a looming presence in your novels, what was it about the city that fascinated you?
I always felt grateful to be in one of the worlds great cities and it would have been completely impossible to write anything like the novels I wrote in somewhere like Cambridge. It was very much a case of being in it again. Living, breathing and swimming in it and as we all know: the fish doesn’t ask about the water. You just sit there, run your nerve endings up against it and it all comes out of the other end of your pen.
At times you have written in forms outside of fiction to reflect upon society in the same way you have within your fiction. Do you think that things that are not formally fiction ever make comment in the same way as fiction?
Fiction utilizes a different part of the mind and you can see it in action and see the difference when you produce non-fiction. I studied Stalinism and Russian history extensively when working on Koba The Dread (non-fiction) and then House Of Meetings (fiction) and due to the formal difference similar feelings were expressed in different ways. Fiction acts like a slow zoom lens, it allows you to go deeper in and say something else. It took three years to get from the brain to the back of my spine and then I felt ready to say something.
Even when not dealing directly with the directly political your novels exist in an atmosphere of political threat. Over time the threat has shifted from Soviet Cold War to Axis Of Evil but always with a sense of potential armageddon.
I was very un-political as a young man. I was left of centre but being surrounded by Trotskyites like Christopher Hitchens made me seem moderate by comparison. I was unattractively proud of not knowing a great deal about politics. Literature was what I had and it was my thing. Despite writing about nuclear weapons (Einstein’s Monsters) and the Holocaust (Time’s Arrow) I only really gave myself a political education when I began to study Russia and suddenly I could see the categories and the precedents. It all came alive to me. When September the 11th came along I wasn’t prepared for anything as interesting as that to happen in my lifetime. If I had to explain what my novels were about in one word it would be masculinity and here was masculinity in a whole new form. It takes that essence of what it is to be a man straight back to violence and really the political history of man is the history of violence. The social history of man is simply sex. Those have always been the most interesting questions to me: what is it that makes man put himself about in such a way and what is it that makes him treat women in the way he does. In terms of when I have chosen to speak out about topics in non-fictional form it is with these concerns in mind and because I felt I had something to say.
Are you talking here about The Second Plane?
Yes. I felt I had something to say and non-fiction was a very immediate way of saying it. So I did.
The plot devices that you became infamous for using later became known as ‘postmodern’. Were they conscious formal decisions or were they subconsciously demanded by the story?
Postmodernism wasn’t really this grand bandwagon that it may have seemed at the time. It was in the air and if you are of your time you saw the point of it. In the end it proved not the rich vein some had hoped and something of a dead end but it was very predictive in terms of life itself becoming very postmodern, what with buildings having their piping on the outside and politicians talking openly about ‘the plumbing’. There was a whole new level of self-consciousness that developed as well as an interest in ones own age that would have been unknown in say the 18th century. History is still speeding up and you want to reflect that so when I sit down to write I want to push the form of the novel and play with it so there is that conscious and deliberate sense of pushing the form. If anything though I am now returning to realism with a modernist sensibility without that tricksiness of postmodernism.
How do you feel about the current state of fiction, will it survive?
It will always be produced; I worry more about it being read. Poetry is already dead in those terms. Poetry requires that you stop the clock. When you read a poem the writer is saying let’s stop and examine this writing. People feel uneasy due to the pace that time passes to actually stop. They don’t like solitary reflection anymore. Poetry no longer has a place in the culture. This will eventually seep out to include the novel. The day of the long, reflective, discursive novel, such as the great Saul Bellow novels, which were eight-month bestsellers in their time are over. The novel now is streamlined and sped up. It is as a reflection of the age.
Are there any young novelists working now producing such work who you admire?
The truth is that I don’t read my youngers. It seems a terribly uneconomical way to organize your reading by studying those unproved by time. I read my friends so I take in Will Self and Zadie Smith with great interest and it all seems healthy out there but I can’t make any broad statements about ‘where’ the novel is now. Sorry.
In conversation with Self you have said that “the middle classes are under-represented in my novels”, you also seem to have a recurring pre-occupation with the lower classes.
I like extremes. There is a certain latitude necessary to be a character, often in a repulsive way in the case of the upper classes, but it gives you a freedom to be a little more extreme and extravagant at either end of the social scale. The pressures at the lower end of the spectrum are very intense and that leads to characters becoming interestingly twisted into strange shapes. The middle classes are written about by everyone. They shan’t whimper with neglect because I am not writing about them. All fiction is essentially kitchen sink. It is just that some kitchen sinks are more expensive than others.
You mentioned a novel that you are working on now. Can you tell us anymore about that or will you get in trouble?
I hope not. It is a novel set in the social revolution and the main character is twenty years old. Its title is The Pregnant Widow, which comes from a remark by the wonderful Russian thinker Alexander Herzen. He said that when political or social orders change by revolution one should be pleased that the old is giving way to the new but the trouble is that you get the death of the new order and no heir apparent. You are left not with a child but a pregnant widow and much grief and tribulation will take place between the death and the birth. I would say that even now the baby of the social revolution is yet to be born thirty years on.
Like London the figure of America figures often in your novels. In Money you portray the country as the unbridled consumerist paradigm that London strived to be. But lacking that British inhibition.
America is a wild place, an awesome place and like Henry James I very much believe it be a world rather than a country. As a place it is very difficult to generalize about. Having watched the last eight years with horror I am of course thrilled about the election because the potential to go wrong in America is so huge and here at last is someone genuinely impressive as well as someone who can help heal that great wound in American life. I think we could be entering a great era.
Perhaps an ear in which we see the baby of the social revolution born?
Perhaps.
There was talk at one point of David Cronenberg making a film of London Fields was there any truth to that?
There was. I met him a couple of times and he re-wrote the script a little but he would only have got a sliver of the novel and not the whole book so it was left. The project is still alive though. They did The Rachel Papers, which was fun, and Dead Babies, which was sort of fun. They are making my novels in order. Just at twenty-year intervals. I have never had a great time with writing for cinema though, I did a terrific script for an adaptation of Northanger Abbey, which was picked up by Miramax and then sat on. I’m not sure what happened to it, I should probably check on that actually. Cinema is a wonderful form though and a young form. As Bellow said: film is about exteriors whereas the novel is concerned with interiors so there are many possibilities yet to explore.
What caused you to move to Uruguay for two years?
My wife is half Uruguayan and half New York Jew, a heady mixture. She has about 25 first cousins out there. We visited it for a winter and liked it very much so we stayed. We eventually left as our girls outgrew it and needed better schools. The landscape is fantastic but it was too quiet politically to have any impact on my writing. It is a real anomaly in terms of how gentle and sane it is in the context of South America.
Recently you began teaching at Manchester University. Why of all places Manchester?
Quite simply: they asked me. My father taught and by all accounts was fairly good at it and I felt that I might do all right at it as well. I enjoy it very much and I like my colleagues, which is rare for a job. All I do is teach novels. What could be more agreeable than that? I don’t guide my student’s elbows while they write. In fact I don’t even see what they write. We talk about it a little and I talk a lot about Nabokov, Kafka and Dostoyevsky all of whom are the people I like to talk about anyway so I’m rather happy with myself.
Is it true that you were a Mod and then a Hippy during the ‘60’s and ‘70’s?
I was a Mod but that all ended after my fifth scooter crash, then yes I was a rather opportunistic hippy. All that free love and music sounded fun but I was never particularly pious. Mod was more about having the right pink socks on the right day anyway. The Hippy thing was more of a coherent idea but there was very dark side to it. Like John Updike said it was a fascinating dark carnival. All this optimism with a dark underbelly where, if you rooted around in it long enough, you’d find Charles Manson.
IT’S NOT LIKE THAT ANYMORE IT’S LIKE THIS
But Martin Amis is Still Obsessed With Masculinity
Martin Amis is one of the great writers of modern fiction. Even if he’d given up putting pen to paper after his third novel, Money, this would be an irrefutable fact. Period. Sorry. He writes grippingly of ugly characters addicted to themselves and the world around them, consuming for the sake of consumption and blind to their own greed. His ugly, and occasionally hilarious, creations were both of their time and chillingly predictive of what is going on outside your window right now. He also threw unreliable narrators, himself and a bit of time reversal into his novels helping create a little genre people call ‘postmodernism’ which you might have heard of.
As a thirteen year old boy watching the Cuban Missile Crisis unfold before his own eyes it is unsurprising that his novels have not only been filled with personal armageddon but also the impending threat of macro-armageddon on a planet wide scale. An initial preoccupation with Cold War threat gave way to a recent fascination with the conflict between the West and the Muslim world leading to his recent collection of shorter works The Second Plane.
Amis gives interviews rarely and has a reputation as for being spiky and guarded. Having read his work and been more than a little into all of it, actually picking up the phone to talk to him had me shaking like a Bolivian coke mule about to ingest a loaded johnny. Luckily, Amis (‘Marty’ to his buddies apparently) was kind, willing and open. He also has the most mesmerising way of emphasizing words mid-sentence. Go watch him talk about House of Meetings on the Charlie Rose show on YouTube right now. Then you’ll get the bits in italics.
Vice: Having grown up with a successful novelist for a father was there a point where you made a conscious decision to be ‘a writer’ or was it just assumed?
Martin Amis: At around thirteen a certain self-awareness came over me as I was writing prose and poems in notebooks and diaries. What you are doing at that age is communing with yourself in a new way and becoming articulate within yourself. I think that everyone goes through that state and the people who end up becoming writers are simply those who never grow out of it. I never did. I also have to admit my father as an early influence. I read his stuff but felt like it was an independent decision that I made and I knew that it wasn’t a case of just writing a single novel and thinking: “I’ve done that now” or impressed my father and purged the influence. I had the feeling that it would be a long haul thing. In a good way.
What other novelists were early influences on your writing?
Well, I’d not read Bellow by the time I had written my first novel. I read a lot of Austen early on but I fail to see how anybody could be influenced by her, she’s simply too lucid. I’d read some Nabokov but I suppose the biggest early influence was Dickens. His stuff was just nuts and wild which is beguiling at that age. It’s impossible to imitate Austen, as it is all understatement whereas with Dickens the prose is so hairy and muscley; you can really gorge on it.
In you early work particularly you seem preoccupied with the present, its excess and its vacuity both in the rampant consumerism of Money and the Thatcherite capitalism of London Fields.
Certainly during the early period yes but there comes a point where you’re not really in the culture any more. You become removed from it. My father put it well to me once. He said: “at a certain age you think it’s not like that anymore it’s like this but you are not quite sure what this is”. I think it would be insane to harbour ideas that you can remain plugged in forever.
You spoke of being “addicted to the 20th century”, has the 21st proved not quite as addictive?
Possibly that was the point where that became this. You are certainly of your time and while you still have you’re slant on it all you find that you are no longer swimming amongst it. The novel I am coming to the end of now is set in 1970 so perhaps I am clinging to the 20th century.
London has always had a looming presence in your novels, what was it about the city that fascinated you?
I always felt grateful to be in one of the worlds great cities and it would have been completely impossible to write anything like the novels I wrote in somewhere like Cambridge. It was very much a case of being in it again. Living, breathing and swimming in it and as we all know: the fish doesn’t ask about the water. You just sit there, run your nerve endings up against it and it all comes out of the other end of your pen.
At times you have written in forms outside of fiction to reflect upon society in the same way you have within your fiction. Do you think that things that are not formally fiction ever make comment in the same way as fiction?
Fiction utilizes a different part of the mind and you can see it in action and see the difference when you produce non-fiction. I studied Stalinism and Russian history extensively when working on Koba The Dread (non-fiction) and then House Of Meetings (fiction) and due to the formal difference similar feelings were expressed in different ways. Fiction acts like a slow zoom lens, it allows you to go deeper in and say something else. It took three years to get from the brain to the back of my spine and then I felt ready to say something.
Even when not dealing directly with the directly political your novels exist in an atmosphere of political threat. Over time the threat has shifted from Soviet Cold War to Axis Of Evil but always with a sense of potential armageddon.
I was very un-political as a young man. I was left of centre but being surrounded by Trotskyites like Christopher Hitchens made me seem moderate by comparison. I was unattractively proud of not knowing a great deal about politics. Literature was what I had and it was my thing. Despite writing about nuclear weapons (Einstein’s Monsters) and the Holocaust (Time’s Arrow) I only really gave myself a political education when I began to study Russia and suddenly I could see the categories and the precedents. It all came alive to me. When September the 11th came along I wasn’t prepared for anything as interesting as that to happen in my lifetime. If I had to explain what my novels were about in one word it would be masculinity and here was masculinity in a whole new form. It takes that essence of what it is to be a man straight back to violence and really the political history of man is the history of violence. The social history of man is simply sex. Those have always been the most interesting questions to me: what is it that makes man put himself about in such a way and what is it that makes him treat women in the way he does. In terms of when I have chosen to speak out about topics in non-fictional form it is with these concerns in mind and because I felt I had something to say.
Are you talking here about The Second Plane?
Yes. I felt I had something to say and non-fiction was a very immediate way of saying it. So I did.
The plot devices that you became infamous for using later became known as ‘postmodern’. Were they conscious formal decisions or were they subconsciously demanded by the story?
Postmodernism wasn’t really this grand bandwagon that it may have seemed at the time. It was in the air and if you are of your time you saw the point of it. In the end it proved not the rich vein some had hoped and something of a dead end but it was very predictive in terms of life itself becoming very postmodern, what with buildings having their piping on the outside and politicians talking openly about ‘the plumbing’. There was a whole new level of self-consciousness that developed as well as an interest in ones own age that would have been unknown in say the 18th century. History is still speeding up and you want to reflect that so when I sit down to write I want to push the form of the novel and play with it so there is that conscious and deliberate sense of pushing the form. If anything though I am now returning to realism with a modernist sensibility without that tricksiness of postmodernism.
How do you feel about the current state of fiction, will it survive?
It will always be produced; I worry more about it being read. Poetry is already dead in those terms. Poetry requires that you stop the clock. When you read a poem the writer is saying let’s stop and examine this writing. People feel uneasy due to the pace that time passes to actually stop. They don’t like solitary reflection anymore. Poetry no longer has a place in the culture. This will eventually seep out to include the novel. The day of the long, reflective, discursive novel, such as the great Saul Bellow novels, which were eight-month bestsellers in their time are over. The novel now is streamlined and sped up. It is as a reflection of the age.
Are there any young novelists working now producing such work who you admire?
The truth is that I don’t read my youngers. It seems a terribly uneconomical way to organize your reading by studying those unproved by time. I read my friends so I take in Will Self and Zadie Smith with great interest and it all seems healthy out there but I can’t make any broad statements about ‘where’ the novel is now. Sorry.
In conversation with Self you have said that “the middle classes are under-represented in my novels”, you also seem to have a recurring pre-occupation with the lower classes.
I like extremes. There is a certain latitude necessary to be a character, often in a repulsive way in the case of the upper classes, but it gives you a freedom to be a little more extreme and extravagant at either end of the social scale. The pressures at the lower end of the spectrum are very intense and that leads to characters becoming interestingly twisted into strange shapes. The middle classes are written about by everyone. They shan’t whimper with neglect because I am not writing about them. All fiction is essentially kitchen sink. It is just that some kitchen sinks are more expensive than others.
You mentioned a novel that you are working on now. Can you tell us anymore about that or will you get in trouble?
I hope not. It is a novel set in the social revolution and the main character is twenty years old. Its title is The Pregnant Widow, which comes from a remark by the wonderful Russian thinker Alexander Herzen. He said that when political or social orders change by revolution one should be pleased that the old is giving way to the new but the trouble is that you get the death of the new order and no heir apparent. You are left not with a child but a pregnant widow and much grief and tribulation will take place between the death and the birth. I would say that even now the baby of the social revolution is yet to be born thirty years on.
Like London the figure of America figures often in your novels. In Money you portray the country as the unbridled consumerist paradigm that London strived to be. But lacking that British inhibition.
America is a wild place, an awesome place and like Henry James I very much believe it be a world rather than a country. As a place it is very difficult to generalize about. Having watched the last eight years with horror I am of course thrilled about the election because the potential to go wrong in America is so huge and here at last is someone genuinely impressive as well as someone who can help heal that great wound in American life. I think we could be entering a great era.
Perhaps an ear in which we see the baby of the social revolution born?
Perhaps.
There was talk at one point of David Cronenberg making a film of London Fields was there any truth to that?
There was. I met him a couple of times and he re-wrote the script a little but he would only have got a sliver of the novel and not the whole book so it was left. The project is still alive though. They did The Rachel Papers, which was fun, and Dead Babies, which was sort of fun. They are making my novels in order. Just at twenty-year intervals. I have never had a great time with writing for cinema though, I did a terrific script for an adaptation of Northanger Abbey, which was picked up by Miramax and then sat on. I’m not sure what happened to it, I should probably check on that actually. Cinema is a wonderful form though and a young form. As Bellow said: film is about exteriors whereas the novel is concerned with interiors so there are many possibilities yet to explore.
What caused you to move to Uruguay for two years?
My wife is half Uruguayan and half New York Jew, a heady mixture. She has about 25 first cousins out there. We visited it for a winter and liked it very much so we stayed. We eventually left as our girls outgrew it and needed better schools. The landscape is fantastic but it was too quiet politically to have any impact on my writing. It is a real anomaly in terms of how gentle and sane it is in the context of South America.
Recently you began teaching at Manchester University. Why of all places Manchester?
Quite simply: they asked me. My father taught and by all accounts was fairly good at it and I felt that I might do all right at it as well. I enjoy it very much and I like my colleagues, which is rare for a job. All I do is teach novels. What could be more agreeable than that? I don’t guide my student’s elbows while they write. In fact I don’t even see what they write. We talk about it a little and I talk a lot about Nabokov, Kafka and Dostoyevsky all of whom are the people I like to talk about anyway so I’m rather happy with myself.
Is it true that you were a Mod and then a Hippy during the ‘60’s and ‘70’s?
I was a Mod but that all ended after my fifth scooter crash, then yes I was a rather opportunistic hippy. All that free love and music sounded fun but I was never particularly pious. Mod was more about having the right pink socks on the right day anyway. The Hippy thing was more of a coherent idea but there was very dark side to it. Like John Updike said it was a fascinating dark carnival. All this optimism with a dark underbelly where, if you rooted around in it long enough, you’d find Charles Manson.
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