LIKE A BY-THE-WAY-THING

3ammagazine.com features a strange "interview in 2 parts" with yours truly (2005-2003). We did the 2005 part a few days before the London bombings. On 7/7, at the crucial time, the interviewer was in the Tube and got scared shitless. Later in the day he wrote us about something completely different ("We have a feature in our Buzzwords section whereby authors give us their top 5 music tracks/records of the moment. Could you etc."). In the PS, he added: "Al Qaeda didn't get me today!". In the PS. Like a by-the-way thing. You just can't help admiring these Brits and the way they've faced such a mayhem... Did anyone recall that Culture song about "two sevens" clashing? 'When the two sevens clash - you better do right'. Most of them did. Grace under fire.
And what about our friend John Eden? On the very same day he put a pic on his blog. There's a guy standing at the King's Cross police line, and he wears a "BABY, I'M BORED" T-shirt. Caption by John: "Your ironic t-shirt is out of fashion as of 8:50am this morning".

AN INTERVIEW IN 2 PARTS WITH 3AM MAGAZINE

During the double interview we answered questions on the G8 summit, Italian terrorism, our novels, our readers, Cary Grant, Neoism, history, the war on Iraq, and Italian politics. We even called Burlesquoni "a crawling shit sausage".
A highlight:
'The whole Red Brigade thing is a farce. The "New Red Brigades" were just a bunch of half-witted weirdos. They took their trip to Fantasyland, and when Ricardo Montalban -- very cool in his white suit -- asked them what he could do for them, they answered: "WE WANNA BE THE RED BRIGADES!" He gave them toy guns, fake moustaches and a life-size inflatable doll of Joe Stalin, and let them play as long as they wanted. The Italian intelligence has been aware of their activities for years, it turned out that Nadia Lioce was under surveillance since 1999, and yet she shot down Professor Marco Biagi in Bologna in 2002. The state simply let them do whatever they pleased, their very existence provided the perfect smear campaign, the whole Left was guilty by association. This is the way things go in our country. As far as we're concerned, we despise anyone who wants to turn the clock back to the style of 18th and 19th century conspiratorial organisations. Secret societies are freak factories, the revolution is not a Masonic affair.*' Read the rest here

*A piece of trivia: The Revolution is Not a Masonic Affair is the title of a 32-page book published by Unpopular Books, London, in 1997. It features key chapters of Boris Nicolaevsky's (1877-1966) study of "Secret Societies in the First International", with a long introduction by Richard Essex. Precious stuff, but it's been out of print for eight years.

[They keep calling us "anarchists", we don't know why... It must be a British thing. Anyway, great review. What a light-hearted thing to read on a London newspaper four days after...]

The Independent, 11 July 2005

54 By Wu Ming
EVERYONE WANTS TO BE CARY GRANT. EVEN PRESIDENT TITO...
By David Isaacson

Wu Ming, which means"anonymous" in Mandarin Chinese, is the new incarnation of Luther Blissett - the pseudonym under which four Italian anarchists wrote the novel Q. Reinforced by an additional member, the gang has produced another kaleidoscopic epic, this time about the year 1954.
Pierre Capponi, a bartender and king of the filuzzi dancers in Bologna, decides to search for his father, who has fled to Yugoslavia as a political refugee. In the course of his quest, his path crosses that of historical characters such as Lucky Luciano, who is setting up a drug-trafficking operation in Naples, and, to Pierre's utter disbelief, Cary Grant.
Everyone wants to be like Cary Grant, "the perfect prototype of Homo atlanticus". It is something that unites the proletariat and bourgeoisie. Pierre copies his walk and has "almost perfected his way of keeping his hands in his pockets". Archibald Leach, the actor who became Cary Grant, impersonates his own persona. As the intrigues of the Cold War become more intense and MI6 tries to bring Yugoslavia onside, Tito uses his leverage to demand a meeting with the screen idol.
This cultured comedy focuses on America's influence on Europe, and Italy in particular. Steve "Cement" Zollo, a homicidal gangster from New York who works for Luciano, acquires Salvatore Pagano, a Neapolitan youngster, as a sidekick. Salvatore lands a bit part in To Catch a Thief, which Hitchcock is filming in Cannes, all the while mistaking the director for Winston Churchill.
A TV set that doesn't work because it's stuffed full of hidden heroin is not a particularly subtle metaphor for America, but it is beautifully handled. The McGuffin Electric deluxe model spent the first weeks of "his life" in a home in Baltimore, where he broadcast the news of Stalin's death. Further sensational scoops are followed by disappointment: "He didn't match the Swedish furniture." McGuffin is sold to the army, which deploys him at the allied military base in Naples before he is passed on to a bar in Bologna. When McGuffin can't produce a picture, he reflects the faces of disillusioned viewers.
54 is similarly scathing about the ideologues on the Soviet side. In one interior monologue, Tito recalls arguing with an apparatchik who held that mirrors stimulate "petty-bourgeois narcissism". To which Tito replies: "So how do you trim your moustache, by leaning over puddles?" In Moscow, the head of the newly formed KGB comes up with a plan to embarrass Tito over his counter-revolutionary ambitions regarding Cary Grant.
The authorial omniscience, satirical tone and historical veracity might seem quaint coming from a band of anarchists. Yet by the collective nature of its fluent voice, Wu Ming subverts traditional literary norms. In contrast with those Structuralist and Marxist academics who have produced reams of speculative theories on the death of the solitary auteur, Wu Ming has acted.