Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. is an American novelist noted for his dense and complex novels. His fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, genres and themes, including history, music, science, and mathematics. For Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon won the 1973 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction.
The Smiths were an English rock band formed in Manchester in 1982. Their line-up comprised singer Morrissey, guitarist Johnny Marr, bassist Andy Rourke and drummer Mike Joyce. They are regarded as one of the most important acts to emerge from the British independent music scene of the 1980s.
The Beat Generation was a literary movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-war era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized by Silent Generationers in the 1950s. The central elements of Beat culture are the rejection of standard narrative values, making a spiritual quest, the exploration of American and Eastern religions, the rejection of economic materialism, explicit portrayals of the human condition, experimentation with psychedelic drugs, and sexual liberation and exploration.
Strangeways, Here We Come is the fourth and final studio album by English rock band the Smiths. It was released on 28 September 1987 by Rough Trade Records, several months after the group had disbanded. All of the songs were composed by Johnny Marr, with lyrics written and sung by Morrissey.
The Atrocity Exhibition is an experimental novel of linked stories or "condensed novels" by British writer J. G. Ballard.
Craig Gannon is an English guitar player, best known as the second guitarist in the Smiths. He is now a composer for film and television.
3:AM Magazine is a literary magazine, which was set up as 3ammagazine.com in April 2000 and is edited from Paris. Its editor-in-chief since inception has been Andrew Gallix, a lecturer at the Sorbonne.
Shaggy Dog Story is a charity programme for Children in Need, put together by the BBC in 1999 as a sequel to the previous year's Future Generations video, and the great success of 1997's "Perfect Day" charity single. It was first shown on 27 December 1999.
Spam poetry, sometimes called spoetry, is poetic verse composed primarily from the subject lines or content of spam e-mail messages.
"Ouija Board, Ouija Board" is a song by English singer-songwriter Morrissey, released as a single in November 1989. The track appears along with its B-side "Yes, I Am Blind" on the compilation album Bona Drag. A shorter edit, omitting a verse, appeared on the 2010 reissue of Bona Drag. The single was poorly received by the music press and the public; its highest position on the UK Singles Chart was No. 18, making it the first solo Morrissey single not to reach the top 10. "Yes, I Am Blind" was composed by Morrissey's ex-Smiths partner Andy Rourke, and the picture on the sleeve was taken by Anton Corbijn.
Nicholas Royle is an English novelist, editor, publisher, literary reviewer and creative writing lecturer.
Surrealist cinema is a modernist approach to film theory, criticism, and production with origins in Paris in the 1920s. The movement used shocking, irrational, or absurd imagery and Freudian dream symbolism to challenge the traditional function of art to represent reality. Related to Dada cinema, Surrealist cinema is characterized by juxtapositions, the rejection of dramatic psychology, and a frequent use of shocking imagery. Philippe Soupault and André Breton’s 1920 book collaboration Les Champs magnétiques is often considered to be the first Surrealist work, but it was only once Breton had completed his Surrealist Manifesto in 1924 that ‘Surrealism drafted itself an official birth certificate.’
The Offbeat generation was a loose association of like-minded writers working across different styles but united by their opposition to a mainstream publishing industry driven by marketing departments. The term—coined by Andrew Gallix in 3:AM Magazine in February 2006—was a pun on the Beat Generation but more likely to be associated with the Chemical generation immediately before it.
Martin Bax is a British consultant paediatrician, who, in addition to his medical career, founded the Arts magazine Ambit in 1959. He lives in London. Since he created it, Ambit has published poetry, prose and artwork from the likes of Fleur Adcock, Peter Porter, Tennessee Williams, J. G. Ballard, Eduardo Paolozzi and many others. He retired as editor in 2013.
Chicago Review is a literary magazine founded in 1946 and published quarterly in the Humanities Division at the University of Chicago. The magazine features contemporary poetry, fiction, and criticism, often publishing works in translation and special features in double issues.
Lee Rourke is an English writer and literary critic. His books include the short story collection Everyday, the novels The Canal, Vulgar Things, and Glitch, and the poetry collections Varroa Destructor and Vantablack.
Steven Patrick Morrissey, known professionally as Morrissey, is an English singer, songwriter, and author. He came to prominence as the frontman and lyricist of rock band the Smiths, who were active from 1982 to 1987. Since then, he has pursued a successful solo career. Morrissey's music is characterised by his baritone voice and distinctive lyrics with recurring themes of emotional isolation, sexual longing, self-deprecating and dark humour, and anti-establishment stances.
Autobiography is a book by the British singer-songwriter Morrissey, published in October 2013.
"Barbarism Begins at Home" is a song by the English rock band the Smiths. Featured on their second studio album, Meat Is Murder (1985), the song features lyrics against child abuse and a funk-inspired track based around Andy Rourke's bass line.
Carl Tighe was a prolific British writer, academic, essayist, novelist, and poet. He taught in Poland during the Cold War and was the first Professor of Creative Writing in the UK at the University of Derby.
