A phwoar for blood and insurrection (almost) in Stoke Newington!

Report from the Stoke Newington Literary Festival, starring Farah Damji, Darcus Howe, Diane Abbott, Suzanne Moore and Gavin James Bower

In rainy Stoke Newington last Saturday, black and white did not make a murky shade of grey. Farah Damji was there to talk about her book Try Me, which Frances Lynn (shortly to be interviewed on Madame Arcati) has described as "gripping, unputdownable and explosive", and the con of multiculturalism with a little help from her mate Darcus Howe.

We didn't really get enough of Farah on the book which earned her the title "London's Most Dangerous Woman". Darcus Howe held forth about that subject most dear to his darkened Black Panther heart, racism and multiculturalism.

There was a standing room only situation at the event which had been heaviliy oversubscribed. Present in the audience were the Mail on Sunday's fragrant Suzanne Moore and the not-so-lovely Labour leader contender Diane Abbott. Political watchers will know that Darcus dissed Suzanne and favoured Diane in the recent by-elections at which Suzanne dared to stand against the rolly incumbent.

There was a fraught moment which made even the novelist and notoriously smooth Gavin James Bower look a little anxious when Suzanne asked why her children, when they were in nursery school, should be made to learn Black History at the expense of other important events. Farah agreed and said she supported a transcultural historical curriculum. But Darcus said that the Black History fight was won after tears, blood and riots in the streets: in one case he was even falsely accused by the London Evening Standard of congratulating rioters for smashing open a policeman's head.

It should be noted that Abbott fought for supplementary schools and Darcus has been a long term supporter of her politics and attacked Suzanne personally before even meeting her. The argument was to study St Patrick as well as Malcolm X. Darcus rolled his eyes and the luvvies of Stoke Newington let out a collective roar, or was it a phwoar, at the scent of blood and the sight of insurrection.

Since we have Black History Month (October in the UK) please can we also have Pink Faggot Month, Asian Hottie of the Month and My Favourite Fascist Month, please? Candidates may self-nominate on the back of a £50 note and send here...

To buy a copy of Farah Damji's Try Me, click here

Dapper Dicks: The penis gets the Barbie treatment

The first thing I heard today was the president of Mattel telling me that Barbie was aspirational and about to embark on her 125th career. Then this afternoon I popped over to the site of the world's handsomest novelist, Gavin James Bower. His latest post is about Dapper Dicks, a company that designs clothes for the penis. Barbie and Dapper Dicks made for a nice synchronicity. Let's dress up our playthings.

Dapper Dicks have all sorts of looks for the phallus: the piratical, the dandiacal. The fireman. And others. I quite like the pinstripe suit. Jackets can accommodate a 7" girth. Hats are available. "Dapper wear must be removed prior to intercourse," we are warned. I suppose some people need to be told this.

I utterly applaud this sartorial initiative. For too long the penis has been a synonym for stupidity: we speak of dickheads and people talking cock. So-'n'-so is such a knob. Now's the chance to rebrand a much maligned tool and give it a good styling, like popping Vinnie Jones into a Brooks Brothers. In time we may see Anna Wintour in the front row at Dapper Dicks runway shows. Anything's possible.

Gavin James Bower interview: 'I'm straight but a raving queen ...'

Lancashire-born Gavin James Bower launched his literary career last year with Dazed & Aroused, an artfully breathless novel set in the world of high fashion and modelling. As a former runway clothes horse himself he chose his subject wisely - and he looked the part: why, even the Sun came calling when the tabloid tarts eyeballed his bod. The novel may sound Glamour mag but think Glamorama for category purposes: GJB has something to say and a special way of saying it. He talked about his work, cock and ... Dazed & Confused's horrible Jefferson Hack with Madame Arcati.

Gavin James Bower! Happy New Year! Now that I've actually read your debut novel Dazed & Aroused I find it (as I wrote on Twitter) ... dilateful. That is to say, it makes me dilate, ie parts of me fill out (irises, for instance). Should a novel have this effect? (you will have to interpret this as you see fit) And did it make you dilate while writing it?

Writing the novel did indeed make me dilate, especially when I wrote the sex bits. In the nude...that’s what you’re getting at, right...?

To be fair I wrote one, which was so mechanically pornographic that I later realised, in hindsight, it was purely for my own amusement. It was later deleted. But yes, ideally, a novel should be ‘dilateful’. And it should start with you, the writer. If it doesn’t turn you on, what chance does it have of ‘dilating’ anyone else?

Much is made of your handsome looks, the fact you were once a male model and are aged 20-something. Do you think your publisher Naim Attallah at Quartet factored this into the question of whether to publish you? - given the problems of releasing books by unknowns and the general appalling gargoyle sight of writers, their personal problems and hygiene issues.

I could answer this in several ways:

1. Funny – for example, ‘I can't speak for Naim, but rumour has it he likes girls.’

2. Wounded – for example, ‘Well, that I was once a model and am in my twenties was probably helpful, given that I wrote about being a model...and being in your twenties...’ *Storms out of room*

3. Flippant – for example, ‘Some writers are frightful to look at, but almost all are ugly on the inside too. I, however, am neither.’

Tell us a little of your modelling days. Did you travel the globe, not eat and meet Kate Moss? Are male models mainly gay - did any of your colleagues come onto you? Was this a problem? (Farah Damji, who found you cute when you did a London reading together, tells me you're straight - is this label accurate?)

Nearly everyone in Fashion is gay – that’s why girl supermodels are such dykes – and those that aren’t, like me, are raving queens by society’s standards anyway.

I did go to Milan and discover its dirty little secret, though; namely, that it's the shittest place on earth. And I've been to Milton Keynes.

And I didn't meet Kate Moss but I did manage to piss of Jefferson Hack. I used to think it was the title of the book, or that he felt threatened by me. But if truth be told it’s probably Alex’s suggestion, in the book, that he's not all that impressive. Have you met him, though? He's really not all that impressive, and he was rude to me when I interned at Dazed. Who's laughing now, eh?

Oh.

Is Kate Moss fanciable? I imagine post-coital smells are a bit faggy and citric-burpy, but you may not know that ....

I couldn't say. I hate the taste of cigarettes when kissing, though. That and burping. In case she's bothered...

When you walked the catwalk did you think you'd become a published novelist? Were there psychological or behavioural signs of the fictive outsider observing his peers? - please think anecdotally. You're a history graduate ain't ya? How do you think your fellow models perceived you?

I can vividly remember almost falling over on my first catwalk appearance - for John Galliano in 2005 - and realising that I would indeed one day be a published novelist. I blame my near-Naomi Moment on this epiphany...

To be honest, modelling was a kind of out of body experience. I just went with it, like most other boys that fall into that world.

And that's not to say I'm now trying to distance myself from it or the choice to pursue that as a career - albeit a short one. I was ready for it to take off, and made changes in my life to give it a go - moving from the North to London, getting part-time bar work to clear my days, and so on. It just never took off.

But I was a writer before modelling, while at uni, and was always going to go back to writing. I had a premise and a story for a novel already. The modelling just gave me a world to set it in.

Please supply a short history of your cock.

0-13: Owner occasionally and accidentally gets a hardon in non-sexual situations

13-16: Owner prays to God that he would go through puberty and his cock grow

17-: Owner rejects God

Now, back to Dazed & Aroused. The exotica and glamour of the high fashion modelling world is plainly unsatisfying to your central character Alex - who I assume has some of your DNA. Did you feel this void as a model, or did the absurdities of the runway life only hit you when you allowed your distancing literary mind to take over later? Basically, is the novel an example of creative bipolarism?

You know what they say about assumptions being the mother of all fuck ups? Well.

I went into modelling with my eyes open. The only thing I found illuminating was something quite outside of Fashion, about what it feels like to be post-university bubble living in a post-postmodern city in a post-industrial Capitalist economy. (Post much?!) It's that sense of alienation, based on a social relation that is itself predicated on a kind of ephemeral exploitation - taking what you can, now, and worrying about it later - that I discovered while modelling. Fashion's just symptomatic of all that.

Did you do drugs on the circuit? Do you now?

I am a pussy.

Was there ever an issue over the use of an ampersand in your book title? And give me your honest appraisal of the lipsticky cover, which one blogger likened to an Athena card. I think they should have put you on the cover (without lipstick).

Yes! And how did you know?!

I wanted an ampersand so I could be sure of ripping off the magazine and pissing off Jefferson Hack (see above).

Whenever I see it without one, a small part of me dies. In fact, I think my cock shrinks a bit too (see above).

I love the cover. And Athena. Can we bring it back...?

Which writers (if any) gave you the confidence to abandon punctuation in places, to give us a sense of the randomness, chaos or flow of the modelling life? Do you admire Bret Easton Ellis to whom some have claimed your book's a homage?

The no punctuation thing was a product of reading aloud, and getting very excited by a breathless stream of consciousness - and how that worked so well for Alex's POV.

I credit Burroughs and also Roger Avary, the latter for a very short sequence in his adaptation of BEE's Rules of Attraction, during which the character Victor Ward (incidentally, also a model) breathlessly 'does Europe', taking in maybe a dozen countries and quite a few more girls without ever giving you, the viewer, a sense of anything substantial. I liked that a lot. The BEE links are there for everyone to see, of course.

On that, some reviews - both positive and negative - have likened my book and writing style to his. I wear my influences on my sleeve, and was very upfront about admiring BEE. I nod to him a few times in the book too, and was definitely influenced stylistically.

But this influence, beyond the inspiration to one day maybe be a writer myself (after reading Less Than Zero in my late teens), is minimal. I always knew that the central premise of my book - about an unwillingness to empathise and do something, and the consequential focus on ephemera - was unique. Dazed & Aroused is an indictment of Capitalism and an allegory for the social relation at its heart. It's less a rip off of Less Than Zero, therefore, and far more a rip off of Marx's Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. I've said this in other interviews, but not one person has accused me of ripping that off...

I like the sexy sharp opening from your next novel Made In Britain, published on your blog. Very different from Dazed & Aroused, not at all glam. Tell us about it and whether Quartet will publish it.

I wanted to show that, despite once being a model, I could write about something other than modelling. So, being a Northerner, I decided to write about being Northern. (For my next book, I plan on writing about a washed up novelist who relentlessly promotes his two published novels, until his dying days...)

Made in Britain is finished and with my agent. I think it's the best thing I've written, a kind of love-hate story between me and the place I'm from. I'm quite proud of it.

Like most writers you're sensitive about adverse criticism - you've even feuded on Twitter with some literary nonentity. Which reviewer has most pleased you to date and most offended you - feel free to unleash your inner Nero and fiddle out a stream of abuse over their burning carcass.

I'm sensitive about most things, and a bad review, especially a negative one that's not all that constructive, will bother me for a bit. But I get over it pretty quickly.

The more people read your work, the more chance there is of someone hating it. And the more you put yourself out there, so to speak, the more criticism you invite and encourage. It's fair play and the rejection - as well as the praise - is just part of the same process. It doesn't change whether you're unpublished looking for an agent, or a heavyweight writer with a Booker Prize.

The most pleasing review (of sorts) came from 3:AM Magazine. They likened my book to BEE and Less Than Zero (in a positive, non-rip-off kind of way) and that made me very happy. It still does in fact. I love 3:AM Magazine and, even though I was prepared for rejection, I wanted their acceptance.

Have there been movie, modelling, TV offers as a result of your literary fame? And who have you written the Dazed & Aroused screenplay for?

I've written the screenplay for myself, first and foremost, as I think I'd like to go in that direction creatively. It's been really enjoyable, especially the collaborative aspect of it.

As for offers, I'll probably just put myself in the film version. Seriously.

Do you like Martin Amis' work?

I tried to read something he did for Granta a million years ago and couldn't finish it. Good luck to him, though.

Darling, enter my Tardis. You're 44, your looks are fading. You have eight acclaimed novels behind you, and two ex-wives. Tell us of the Gavin you'd like to be at 44 and where you'd like him to be.

Not writing a sequel to Dazed & Aroused, in which the characters are middle aged and looking back on their lives. (Even my jokes are nods to BEE.)

I'd like to be on a boat off the coast of France, somewhere near Cannes maybe. And I'd like to have found God, or at least be over the whole showing my cock to as many people as possible thing...

And finally for now, my sweet, do you prefer sex with or without a condom?

I wear two. There's safety in numbers.

That reminds me of a good joke I know. 9 out of 10 people enjoy gang rape...

I'm sorry.

Gavin! Thank you! I call upon Arcatistes to read Dazed & Aroused! It's ... dilateful!

GJB's website
Naim Attallah's blog
Dazed & Aroused to buy
Gavin James Bower and Sebastian Horsley perform together

Gavin James Bower: Nice bod, what about the novel?

Gavin James Bower

Gavin James Bower is helping to sex-up the world of letters with his debut novel Dazed & Aroused. Its themes and terrain - fashion, vacuity, coke, superficiality, runways, Kate Moss - resonate nicely as Bret Easton Ellis generational updates while playing shrewdly on universal media preoccupations. The PR mega-plus - that he himself is a former high fashion runway model and looks it - must have caused a ripple to pass along Quartet publisher Naim Attallah's perineum: beauty and literariness is a romantic and potent mix in the world of Snipcock & Tweed. It may spell profit but mostly it promises psycho-dramatic glamour.

If you can't find it then invent it - hence Katie Price.

All this may seem most unfair on Gavin. He has after all written a novel, and one that's enchanted a few critics by all accounts. There is a grave suspicion he can write and tell tales. I put it like that because I cannot be certain I shall ever read Dazed & Aroused.

Like most people these days I hardly ever read fiction. You read the reviews and author interviews and perhaps the chapter excerpts on Amazon (if any). You ask people at parties about the author in question and the troops at the front (the "readers") spoon feed you a view. That view then gets repeated by you until it becomes a quotation in a review of the author's subsequent work. Copies may be sold but how many get read cover-to-cover?

I stopped reading modern (literary) fiction when I realised I was more intelligent than most novelists, knew more about life than they do, wrote better than most of them, was blessed with greater human insight, didn't need to kill time and have found more productive ways of getting through the day, and tend to mentally rewrite (improve) the work-in-hand as I go along . Most of the people I know who read modern fiction tend to fall into one of the following:

1. Professional reader
2. Unread
3. Depressed
4. Aspiring novelist
5. Fan

There's nothing wrong with any one of the above. But it's as well to know your market. I think Gavin will do very well. I am happy to tell you that I think his novel is probably quite entertaining, judging by the reviews. Being gorgeous-looking is no literary demerit - F Scott Fitzgerald looked fuckable in his prime - a great many novelists share a certain pulchritude up to the age of 31. Please feel free to use my hearsay in future reviews of Gavin's work. Here, I'll give you a quote: "The British heir to Bret Easton Ellis".

Interview with Gavin
Buy it if you dare
Gavin's blog