Five Dials is a literary magazine published monthly by the Hamish Hamilton publishing house.  Each edition explores a theme, and includes a few unrelated articles.  I recently downloaded and read issue 6, Obscenity.

This issues features interviews with John Sutherland, John Mortimer, Ann Mallieau and John Calder exploring the change in British Culture brought about by the relaxation of censorship; and the relationship between censorship, obscenity, power and control. There is also an archive article from Richard Hoggart, a witness at the trial of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

Art Spiegelman, Jello Biafra, and Jerry Heller are also interviewed and talk about censorship around art, music, and the relationship of these to the media in the USA.

There are two articles about obscenity as well, one from Patrick Neate about teenage boys and identity, and a rather overwritten and over-wrought one from Arundhati Roy (who is currently facing obscenity charges in Inida) about Gujarat.

The remainder of the issue is an odd mix: an obituary for Lux Interior, a longish piece about watching the Obama inauguration, an article by Alain de Botton, and a piece on Muriel Spark.

I’m not entirely convinced by Five Dials . Hamish Hamilton have a fine stable of authors to call on for content, but the magazine needs a more selective editor to make the themes work.  I like the idea of a literary magazine in pdf form, and it’s probably worth a look every so often. And it’s free.

“I think it’s highly inequitable that the talented should be permitted access to erotic fields denied to the clumsy, talentless majority. We should not only… defend to the death other people’s right to say things with which we disagree; we must also allow them to do it in abominable prose”

John Mortimer

Five Dials Number Six: The Obscenity Issue
Hamish Hamilton

To read my review of Arundhati Roy’s new book of essays, Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes on Democracy, please visit http://www.literateur.com/2009/11/listening-to-grasshoppers-by-arundhati-roy/

So for the uninitiated of you, a place to head for some quality Australian literature these days is the Hamish Hamilton list of Penguin Australia. All Penguin’s high-end literature sits on this list – some recent treasure include Breath, The Tall Man and The Boat. Not too shabby, eh. And one other HHer is Peter Goldsworthy’s Everything I Knew.

Peter Goldsworthy and I did not get off to a good start when I was forced to read his harrowing, god-awful novella Jesus Wants Me For a Sunbeam when I was in college (and then again this year for work! CRUEL FATE!). I was kind of intrigued by the plot of Everything I Knew (boy falls in love with his hot high school teacher, it’s season 1 of Dawson’s Creek all over again, which is fine by me) and knew it would be good (since it’s a Hamish) and I like the B format cover. So that’s why it was on my shelf. But I didn’t know if I could get past the Jesus experience. 

Finally, though (and this is why I keep mentioning the damn list), I made a goal for myself to read all of the Australian HH books. A nice and achievable goal, by the way, since I’m pretty deep into it already and it’s no skin off my nose to read some more great contemporary literature. So to show my dedication to this end, I got stuck in to Everything I Knew. And I think Goldsworthy and I are on good terms at last.

Robbie Burns is a strange mix of nerd and bad boy at fourteen and his head is completely turned when the sassy, sexy Miss Peach rides into his high school on her exotic Vespa. Miss Peach is only twenty and idealistic and only twenty. Sheesh. That fact alone kept smacking me over the head while I was reading it. Anyway, Robbie’s crush gets more and more problematic, and he gets more and more creepy, and things don’t go down so well. For anyone. That’s the gist of it.

The unreliable narrator – you know, that hackneyed old thing – works well here, and you don’t quite realise how well until the last bit where Goldsworthy rips the literary rug right out from under you – or does he? Robbie is pretty loathsome, as far as I’m concerned, but from what I can remember most fourteen-year-old boys are, and the “After” section at the end shows that maybe he wasn’t as hideous as the impression that he gave. 

As an aside, there’s a disconcerting themal similarity here to Breath – and, to a lesser extent, Butterfly and “Halflead Bay”, Nam Le’s long story smack in the middle of The Boat. Is this what Australian literature wants me to believe is ahead of me when I hit my grown-up years? Trying to pinpoint the exact crossover moment between adulthood and childhood, a distinct fascination with “youth”, a looking back on a time so sharp and awful and wonderful and exciting? Or maybe this is just a literary coincidence on the HH list. I sure hope so, I’m quietly content with the relegation state of my high school years.

Anyway, I thought that it was by no means perfect. I could’ve done without the long, detailed sci fi stories, but I guess I can grudgingly accept that they were necessary. And I wasn’t sure about the Aboriginal stuff, it seemed an awkward and not-fully-realised subplot. But I ripped right through it nonetheless, and the tone was painfully perfect. And the denouement! That moment of grotesquerie that drew it all together. Good stuff.

So, Mr Goldsworthy, it seems that you’re almost forgiven for that pain you put me through with Jesus Wants Me For a Sunbeam.

Well played.

Get on the download!

Related post:
Five Dials

Lots of random things arrived in the post today. Along with all the usual ephemera and assorted landfill, came this rather curious pistachio green business card.

It’s from Five Dials, a new (to me at least) literary magazine from publishing house Hamish Hamilton. Stylistically, it is similar to the superb McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern created by Dave Eggers in California, but this one is born and raised in London, which makes me happy.

Five Dials have had the good sense not to add clutter to the magazine shelves in Borders, nor publish themselves into instant obsolescence in book form (short story collections and literary periodicals are woefully and notoriously overlooked in bookshops, despite being packed with nuggets). None of that traditional publishing nonsense for Five Dials. The magazine is available as a monthly download, designed to be printed out on the office printer while no-one is about, then read on the bus home. And it’s great. I’ve just ploughed through Issue One this evening, with great work from Keep Left favourites Iain Sinclair and Alain De Botton and many others, plus some tasteful, quality illustration front to back.

Both of those authors are of course on the Hamish Hamilton roster, but this is not simply a shrewd way to promote their own stable, as submissions are included from known and unknown writers alike.

Visit Five Dials to download all the issues and subscribe for future releases direct to your inbox.

Related Posts:
McSweeney’s
Alain De Botton
Kaleidescope Magazine – Free Download

Good to see Tilt still getting up. You may know him from his rather naughty Bubble Girls Series and his clothing designs for Kid Robot.

Vincon. The original design shop.

The Translation issue of Hamish Hamilton’s Five Dials is out today. I’m delighted to have contributed an interview with the Chinese translator Howard Goldblatt.

Five Dials é uma nova revista literária lançada pela editora Hamish Hamilton. De periodicidade mensal, a publicação pode ser descarregada gratuitamente aqui. O design está muito apelativo e atraente. Era interessante que as editoras portuguesas também criassem projectos similares, onde os seus autores contribuíssem regularmente com novos textos. Todos sairiam a ganhar: os escritores divulgavam o seu trabalho; as editoras beneficiavam com a venda dos livros. E um PDF, completamente gratuito, exige recursos mínimos. Por cá, a Saída de Emergência é a única a apresentar uma revista online e gratuita, a Bang!, dedicada à ficção fantástica.