Category Archives: About

Red and Black

Posted on by

Daisy Woodward, What We Wore: A People’s History of British Style, Another Magazine 5 November 2014.

…Andrew Gallix, writer… “I was only 11 when I got into punk, which was very young, even back then. The first punk garment I bought was a green t-shirt with a cheesy transfer of the words ‘punk rock’ daubed onto an unconvincing brick wall… The picture above is of me and my best mate Yannick. These red and black jumpers, knitted by Yannick’s mum, were part of our own distinctive style. They had a zip down one side or on the shoulder so you could put them on and take them off easily. The colours were those of the anarchist flag.”

The same picture appeared in Clash on 7 November 2014.

Scholarly Introduction

Posted on by

Michael Dirda, Rev. of The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure by C. D. Rose, The Washington Post 5 November 2014

After a scholarly introduction that touches on such topics as blankness, the whiteness of the page and the ontology of fiction, Rose opens The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure with an account of the life of Casimir Adamowitz-Kostrowicki.
The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure 300dpi

We’re Late…

Posted on by

Clare Margetson, “The Hay Relay: The End-less Wait is Over,” The Guardian 4 July 2007

I blame Andrew Gallix’s slow writing movement. David Hockney, too. Sparked by his concerns about our non-visual age I’ve taken a leaf out of his book and taken to gazing out of the window a great deal recently. But all these fantastic clouds in the sky are a huge distraction. So, we’re late, we’re late in putting up this post.

Stories That Would Prefer Not To

Posted on by

Jonathon Sturgeon, “In Praise of Literary Failure,” Flavorwire 30 October 2014

The book’s introduction, too, is one of the finer pieces of literary criticism to be released this year. Written by Andrew Gallix, editor-in-chief of 3:AM Magazine, which purports to be “the first literary blog,” the intro deftly surveys the gamut of literary failure. Especially good and poetic is Gallix’s take on the scourge of the writer, the blank page:

Blankness is the sine qua non for inclusion in the BDLF, but it is seldom sought after directly. Manuscripts and books remain blank to us through being censored, lost, drowned, shredded, pulped, burned, used as cigarette paper or wrapped around kebabs, fed to pigs or even ingested by their own authors…These brief biographies are sketches that merely gesture towards the possibility of narrative development; stories that are cut short or fall silent. Stories that would prefer not to.

The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure 300dpi

Don’t Be Taken In

Posted on by

Douglas Lord, Rev. of The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure by CD Rose, Library Journal 16 October 2014

Don’t be taken in, as I first was, by Sorbonne instructor Andrew Gallix’s Very Serious Introduction in which he notes all sorts of high-level details, such as that most of the writers “…devoted their lives to the pursuit of some Gesammtkunstwerk…”.
The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure 300dpi

An Anarchic Ship of Fools

Posted on by

David Winters, “An Interview with David Winters” by Matthew Jakubowski, truce 21 October 2014

My first book review was of Barthes’ The Preparation of the Novel. I sent it to Andrew Gallix at 3:AM. He published it, and made me an editor shortly afterwards. I’m grateful to Andrew for that. And to Barthes!

… As for “guiding” the magazine, for me the most attractive aspect of 3:AM is its refusal to “stand for” anything! As Andrew often puts it, the site has “no party line”. It was always supposed to be a broad church — or an anarchic ship of fools, to mix the metaphor. The most amusing attacks on us have come from bloggers who treat book reviewing as if it were some sort of moral crusade; who want to divide readers’ tastes into “right” and “wrong”. We find factionalism quite infantile, and upsetting these dogmatists is as good a reason as any to keep publishing.

In the Beginning was the Unword

Posted on by

“The Boy Looked at Eurydice” featured in The Paris Review‘s “On the Shelf” daily links roundup yesterday.

“The history of punk is, above all, the story of the traumatic loss of its elusive essence: that brief moment in time when a new sensibility was beginning to coalesce … Punk died as soon as it ceased being a cult with no name.”

Carpe Diem Recollected in Cacophony

Posted on by

A piece of mine, entitled “The Boy Looked at Eurydice” appeared in Berfrois today. That’s me in the picture, reading to my sister Sarah, when we were both very young indeed.

Punk was carpe diem recollected in cacophony — living out your ‘teenage dreams,’ and sensing, almost simultaneously, that they would be ‘so hard to beat’ (The Undertones). The movement generated an instant nostalgia for itself, so that it was for ever borne back to the nebulous primal scene of its own creation. Its forward momentum was backward-looking, like Walter Benjamin’s angel of history.