Tag: nightclubbing

Review | Virginie Despentes, Vernon Subutex 1 | Maclehose Press

“Some said it was karma, the industry had grown at an extraordinary upturn in the era of C.D.s – selling their clients their whole discography on a medium that cost half the price to make and was sold for twice the price in shops . . . with no real benefit to music fans, since no one had ever complained about vinyl records . . .” Age twenty, Vernon Subutex started work as an assistant at the record shop Revolver, and took over when the owner moved to Australia. File sharing on the internet thanks to the likes of Napster and Limewire heralded the beginning of the end of the party. In 2006 he shut up shop. 

Live for today, who cares about tomorrow?

Easy-going Vernon had drifted through Parisian night life, lost in music and high on sex and drugs, oblivious to time passing and how people change. “He didn’t do monogamy . . . Vernon understands women, he has made an extensive study of them. The city is full of lost souls ready to do his cleaning and get down on all fours to lavish him with lingering blow jobs designed to cheer him up.” Continue reading Review | Virginie Despentes, Vernon Subutex 1 | Maclehose Press

Spotlight | Beauty Victims at Le Palace | 3:AM Magazine 2005

An early article, Beauty Victims at Le Palace by Georgia de Chamberet for 3:am magazine (2005) from the BookBlast® Archive.

During a recent trip to Paris, I mentioned to various French publishers that in the UK, nostalgia for the underground  movements of the last thirty years is flourishing. Yet despite the outpouring of books, films, documentaries, compilation CDs and exhibitions like the Vivienne Westwood, it is obvious to me that one side of the London-New York-Paris “golden triangle” has been overlooked. Between artists there is always a cross-fertilisation of ideas, and the effect of the Parisian underground remains influential. Grace Jones learned devices for subversive performance during her time at Fabrice Emaer’s legendary club, Le Palace — the Studio 54 of its day — and Madonna was backup singer and dancer for disco star Patrick Hernandez when his hit “Born To Be Alive” went global.

I argued that people who enjoy reading, and relish the likes of Michael Bracewell, Ben Myers, Jeff Noon and Robert Elms should be given a chance to check out their French counterparts. But I was told by the French publishers that English publishers are not interested in a certain type of French culture, and translation is seen as a risky venture, so to pitch offbeat or outrageous books considered to have limited sales potential would be a waste of time. Bonjour tristesse. From idea to bookstore the reader comes last in a long line of corporate decision-makers, in a game of blind man’s bluff. Continue reading Spotlight | Beauty Victims at Le Palace | 3:AM Magazine 2005

Review | A Life of Disquiet, Gérard Garouste & Judith Perrignon | 3:AM Magazine 2009

Since 2004, Georgia de Chamberet has occasionally written for 3:AM Magazine. 

“I am the son of a bastard who loved me. My father was a furniture dealer who collected and sold the property of deported Jews … I had to dismantle that great lie which passed for an education, word by word. Aged twenty eight, I experienced a first episode of delirium. Others followed. I was regularly interned in psychiatric hospitals … For years, I have been but the sum total of myriad questions. Today, I am sixty three years old. I am neither wise, nor cured. I am an artist. And I believe I can pass on what I have come to understand.”

A Life of Disquiet: Self-portrait of an Artist, a Son, a Madman is a powerful account of a dysfunctional father-son relationship marked by aggression and conflict, and its consequences. The book has received wall-to-wall press coverage in France, and has been a word-of-mouth success with over 40,000 copies sold to date.

Continue reading Review | A Life of Disquiet, Gérard Garouste & Judith Perrignon | 3:AM Magazine 2009

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